Keeping busy and out of trouble can be a challenge for everybody. Since I’ve retired I’ve been able to keep myself occupied by joining a senior softball league, golfing with my old friends (and I mean old, I think they use their golf clubs more like canes than clubs) and sharing my wisdom through these musings I call blog posts. Think about it, by reading my stuff, it will save you a trip to a high cliff in the Himalayas to visit a guru.
Unfortunately, as I have mentioned before, we out here in California are being plagued by winter weather, something that’s not supposed to happen. Instead of dipping from the 80s down to the sixties (only at night), our temps have gotten as low as the 20s in areas where that is not supposed to happen and it has been snowing. It has also been raining a lot. Our hills are green, rivers are running and reservoirs almost half filled now. I moved to California to avoid winter. Very disturbing. The point I’m trying to make is that instead of me being out enjoying the open air, sunshine, getting some exercise, losing a few bets at golf and lying about my batting average, I’ve been stuck indoors. Again, disturbing.
Combined with the pandemic, this has now been going on for the last three years. Almost like when I lived in Chicago. Around December you head indoors and don’t show your pasty face until April. Out here, I should be getting a sunburn in January.
My wife recognized that while hibernation for bears is great, it doesn’t work the same for me. Her solution was to go out and buy us a jigsaw puzzle to occupy our time until I could get back outdoors. It now seems we have a jigsaw puzzle in some state of progress on our dining room table during the winter months. I’m not addicted to doing puzzles. I can quit anytime. Just not today.
Like all addictions, smoking, drugs and alcohol, it feels good, for a while that is. The deeper you get into it, the less pleasurable it becomes. You start feeling guilty but you can’t push the puzzle away. I have to keep working on it, no matter how frustrating it is…but it helps pass the hours.
My wife and I have done 500 piece puzzles, 1,000 piece puzzles, 3D puzzles and a measly 250 piece puzzle picked up at the local 99¢ Store. I just finished one with covers from 1960s Life Magazines. Reliving the past one piece at a time.
Puzzles are a challenge at first, but grow tedious and frustrating, that is until you put the final piece in place, thrust your arms in the air and celebrate your victory over that multi-piece devil in front of you.
You may go a day or two without starting another one but before you know it, you have opened a box and started looking for the edge pieces to get the frame of the puzzle in place. If you have a different way to start your puzzle, keep it to yourself and seek help.
You are probably wondering why I have another puzzle handy anytime I want to start one. It’s because friends of ours, who are also into puzzles, keep passing their finished ones on to us. Basically they are our puzzle pushers. They have us hooked and keep supplying the product.
There are always a few thing that happen when someone works on a jig saw puzzle. There are several pieces, of the same color and will fit perfectly in the wrong place. Just getting one in the wrong location will cause chaos as you move forward. You will also find that pieces will stick to your arm as you reach across the puzzle and then get dropped onto the floor. Just hope you see it before you vacuum the area. Digging through a vacuum cleaner’s dust bag can play hell with my allergies. Another thing, for a vision challenged guy like me, the picture on the box is way too small to see detail. A couple of the puzzles did come with folded up pictures of the finished puzzle and that made life easier. I have also had pictures that have come with the puzzle that are different from the finished puzzle. Why do they do that? Trying to see a small face in the distance on a picture is hard enough, but then seeing that instead of a face on the final puzzle, it is a fire hydrant? That is maddening. We had one puzzle based on one of my favorite subjects, Guinness posters, but the only picture of the final product had a Guinness banner covering a third of the picture making what was underneath invisible. Challenging but downright annoying. Still going to keep drinking Guinness. All the pieces fall into place for that.
The rain is falling outside and my softball game is canceled. Once I get done with this blog post I will be starting on my next puzzle. I did try to seek help but I couldn’t find a Puzzles Anonymous meeting. “My name is B.B. and I’m addicted to puzzles, have you seen a corner piece with the beak of a flamingo on it. Just asking.”
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