April showers . . .

Strange week . . . I'm feeling a little like the weather tonight--drizzled. Just enough of a question mark in my life--maybe a fork or two in the road ahead--to make finishing seem more important than beginning.

I think when I look back on this year I'll smile at the organized butterfly I've almost become. Taking stock isn't a bad thing, even if doing so much of it all at one time feels a little out of character.

And there's still time for play. I finally succumbed, after a couple of months of the free daily online jigsaw, and bought a set of 50 digital puzzles yesterday (and have already completed 4!). And Kira should have plenty of whatever that Webkinz currency is called now that she's addicted me to Cash Cow, versions 1 and 2! Still trying to figure out the Monkey game . . .

But there's more to life than playing on a virtual playground. I'm playing in real time with the "babies" Saturday morning so that their daddy can finish his kitchen renovations (speaking of which, but that's 1,001 and counting on my priority list so I won't go there, yet).

Michael doesn't know it but he's about to get introduced to the virtual playground too--his very own first Webkin (a beagle like his Lucy and everyone's Snoopy) and other birthday secrets. Shhh, don't tell him! Can't believe he's almost 4 . . .

Also on the weekend's agenda: planting more roses (they keep appearing on my doorstep, but I'm not complaining).

Off to spend the day with a real author tomorrow, the third time in a month. Am I jaded or what?

One day, maybe, I'll take that fork in the road, the writingabook path. Or maybe not. . .

Definitely drizzled tonight!

a jigsaw story

Science has always been a puzzle to me. This time, though, science taught me something about puzzles, puzzles of the jigsaw variety.

A student's science fair project compared how long it took several individuals to assemble several jigsaw puzzle. On the computer!!!

Where have I been? Working too hard? I had no clue!

I assembled my first one online this morning--38 minutes (I hope it was rated HARD).

Challenging? You bet!

At least it wasn't a Ravensburger . . . or 3000 pieces!

Ten Things I Didn't Know About Jigsaw Puzzles...

1. that jigsaw puzzles for adults have been around for 100 years. Contemporary [early 1900s] writers depicted the inexorable progression of the puzzle addict from the skeptic who first ridiculed puzzles as silly and childish to the perplexed puzzler who ignored meals while chanting "just one more piece," to the bleary-eyed victor who finally put in the last piece in the wee hours of the morning.



2. that early jigsaw puzzle pieces were cut out on the lines in the picture, which meant no interlocking pieces and no pieces that showed adjacent elements in the picture.



3. that early jigsaw puzzles for adults did not include pictures of the assembled puzzle.



4. that early jigsaw puzzles, priced out of the range of the average worker (10% of monthly take-home pay), were often the featured entertainment at high society weekend parties.



5. that Parker Brothers stopped manufacturing games in 1909 in order to produce jigsaw puzzles full time.



6. that jigsaw puzzles became a kind of therapy during the Great Depression. Puzzles seemed to touch a chord, offering an escape from troubled times as well as an opportunity to succeed in a modest way.



7. that unemployed craftsmen created the affordable jigsaw puzzle in their home workshops during the Great Depression.



8. that, during the Great Depression, libraries and drugstores rented jigsaw puzzles and newstands sold weekly jigsaw puzzles every Wednesday.



9. that the first ever world's most difficult jigsaw puzzle--Convergence--challenged hundreds of thousands of Americans in 1965.



10. that wooden jigsaw puzzles, once the playthings of the rich, are making a comeback today.

Reference: Williams, Anne. Jigsaw Puzzles: A Brief History. http://www.mgcpuzzles.com/mgcpuzzles/puzzle_history/literature_on_puzzles.htm

Ravensburger (aka Bid Time Return)

JP: So, RT, I guess you’re going to glue me together and frame me?
RT: And where exactly do you think I might hang a gaudy landscape such as you?
JP: You were comfortable enough using me as your dining room centerpiece the last two years!
RT: Covered you up when company came for dinner, if you’ll remember.
JP: One long hot week in July!

I so love the challenge of a new jigsaw puzzle! Have so since memory began…

Ravensburger was grounds for divorce though.

From puzzles, that is.

Well, almost…

We often gift each other with similar, sometimes identical, gifts in my family. Every Christmas counts at least one package with that telltale dry rattle even the youngest among us recognize. Christmas 2004 was no exception.

I honestly can’t remember if I gave anyone a puzzle that Christmas but I do remember discovering the puzzle roll-ups and thinking how convenient that would be now that there were no spare puzzle tables in our lives, now that every flat surface in our homes were needed when setting places at mealtimes for our ever-growing extended family. I bought a puzzle roll-up for Kimberly.

And Kimberly bought a puzzle roll-up for me. A sheet of green felt—generous enough to cover my dining room table, leaves and all. Spacious enough to accommodate, with inches to spare, the 3,000 piece Ravensburger spring azalea scene that came with it. 3,000 pieces!!! I was intrigued. My personal best was 1,500 but I’d had help with that. Could I solo this challenge?

When company left—New Year’s 2005 had dawned—I opened Pandora’s box. Something to while away dull January and February. Surely I’d be done by spring… Not!

The bottle of glue—why puzzles need their own kind I haven’t yet figured—sat on a nearby shelf, undisturbed, all that year. When company came, we ate in other rooms, at other tables, or, sometimes, spread placemats over the few pieces that had found and held fast to their mates.

That Christmas, 2005, I rolled the stillfarfromcomplete puzzle up in its felt shroud, tucked it out of sight in one of the new cabinets purchased for the tuckingoutofsight of noteveryday things. That Christmas, 2005, I had an awful idea, a get-even idea. Kimberly discovered her own 3000-piece Ravensburger Pandora’s box under my tree.

When company left—New Year’s 2006 had dawned—I unrolled the soft green shroud. So much of my work undone in all that rolling and unrolling... By summer, I vowed.

When company came—a week in hot July—we covered blue water, magenta azaleas, a border that had been redone twice over and more until every fit was fitting—with blue linen. Out of sight. Out of mind. Until…

Thanksgiving 2006. So close and yet so far away, that lastpieceinitsplace jubilation. Please! By Christmas? Please!!!

JP: OK, so it’s December 27th. And what of it?
RT: When they told me three pieces were missing, I just had to check on dinner…
JP: Two were cowering under the felt.
RT: I know. I heard. But that last piece???
JP: Can’t remember where they finally found it… Wasn’t my doing, you know.
RT: They saved it for me. Brought their cameras in. Don’t you love the angle of this one?

JP: You look almost gleeful, pretending to be all that young again…
RT: If you could only read my mind…
JP: Thinking where to hang your latest accomplishment, your masterpiece?
RT: Not exactly…………….
JP: I’ve grown accustomed to this room, soft lighting, brocade walls…
RT: Turn back the clock, JP. 3000 bits of priceless time. Time foreverlost…
JP: What then…
RT: Bid time return? scccrrrrruuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnchhhhhhhhh!
JP: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo……