Sunday, January 1, 2012

Puzzling

So I got Thing 2 a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas.  A picture of Times Square at night taken circa new millennium.  It's 2000 pieces which might have been a bit ambitious but the puzzle was kind of for me too and I have to get the big ones because I finish the others too quickly.

Anyway, Christmas afternoon I decided "we" should start working on this thing because it had been a weird ass day which included my father stopping by with a pair of skis for me.  That he pulled out of the dumpster behind his office.  And they looked perfectly fine to him but maybe I could sell them on ebay?  Except here's a few things about that: 1. I haven't been skiing in over a decade, 2. these are cross country skis and I only do downhill and 3. I've never sold anything online ever and why in the world would I start with dumpster skis now?  but...um...kmryxmasthx?

Thusly the puzzle was began.

The Things lost interest almost immediately because I am very adamant that all the edge pieces must be found and put together first.  You cannot begin to put together the middle pieces before the edge pieces.  You can't!  Heavy on the eyeroll, they left me with 2000 pieces of crazytown and turned on War of the Worlds instead.  And I manically puzzled my face off with Dakota Fanning screaming bloody murder every two minutes at full volume in the next room.  So yeah, all y'all can keep your cookies and your glowy fireplace photos, THIS is the stuff Christmas memories are made of in my house.

I worked on that puzzle for hours.  and hoursandhoursandhours.  taking small breaks for facebook and turkey basting and the kids ate Christmas Day dinner on the coffee table with the lights off and the world ending on TV because I was working on 2000 pieces spread all over the dining table.  I puzzled into the wee hours of the morning only stopping to sleep.

Woke up the next day and puzzled some more.  All day.  ALL.  DAY.  Because I didn't have to work but I forgot that temporarily and drove into the office anyway and I walked in and realized nobody else was there and the appointment book had the giant X meaning CLOSED across the Monday.  so PUZZLE TIME!  like a crazy person recovering from shock therapy.

I couldn't think of anything else.  I didn't want to.  I didn't want to read, or clean, or cook or do any other thing else except dive into that puzzle.  Which floored Audrey.  "How can you focus on a puzzle like that?  Don't you have enough puzzles to solve in your everyday?"  And I do of course, between junior counselor activity and just trying to make sense of the world in general but those things are nebulous and ephemeral and they go on and on forever.  I can touch puzzle pieces.  I can fit them together and they FIT.  And there is an end to it eventually.  And I need something I can work on that makes sense right now.  So I kept puzzling and the kids had pizza on the coffee table for dinner.

But the next day was Taco Tuesday and that can't be done via coffee table.  So I had to clean up puzzletown USA off the dining room table.  But here's what...It's TWO THOUSAND PIECES.  It's huge.  And way bigger than any piece of cardboard I have to put it on and I don't have one of those puzzle roll up things, so all the work - the hours of mental energy I'd devoted - had to get broken in half.  One on a piece of cardboard I'd used to cover up the hole in the wall the plumbers cut out to fix that leak a few weeks ago and the other on a banged up piece of plexi from one of those snaptogether poster frames I'd been meaning to put in recycling.

And I've done SO MUCH of the puzzle that there was no clean way to split it apart.  So the middle got all fucked up and it's not even which really stressed me out, because being even is more important to me than I realized apparently.  I set the two broke apart pieces of puzzle holder on the kitchen island because every other flat space in my house is covered but even those are hanging over the edge of the counter which is right in the middle of everything and I have to be careful not to bump into them so I don't lose any of the previously solved, now scattered pieces.  And it's been just sitting there like that for about a week.  In the middle of my space.  I just want to put it back together again.

So I went looking for a rolly up puzzle mat so I can get back to work.  And I found one.  But it's only for 1000 piece puzzles and smaller?  My gargantuan explosion of mental energy will simply not fit.  of course.  I don't know what the hell Buffalo Games is trying to do to me here, but I protest heartily.  I opened the box anyway just to see the components of said puzzle mat because where there's a will there's a way goddamnit and I am not without resources.  So it's just a piece of green felt and a cardboard tube which I can get in the right size at my local fabric store for the love a god for $4.17.

I got the stuff to make my own puzzle mat this afternoon.  But I'm not going freakshow obsessive like before.  Oh, it'll get put together, make no mistake about that, but with the right tools I'll be able to bring it out when I  have the proper time to pay attention to it.  Not because I feel like I'm on some fated mission to break the world's record for fastest best solving of something.

And when it's all put together, eventually, it will be beautiful.

1 comment:

jodifur said...

I am not good at jugsaw puzzles. Michael and Doug are though.