It's a puzzling thing

Last Saturday I was wandering around in Walgreens and found that they had jigsaw puzzles on sale for $1.00. I really love jigsaw puzzles and was facing a 4-day weekend with nothing that really had to be done, so I bought three of them.

What's kind of disconcerting about me and jigsaw puzzles is that I sort of obsess about them. Tom groans when he sees me dumping one out on the table because he knows that I'm going to be utterly useless until it's done (and NO, I don't want help with it). I started the first one Saturday evening. It must have been too easy, because I finished it Sunday evening. I still had two days, right? So I started the second one on Monday, and finished it during the inauguration Tuesday.

They're charming pictures. Not something I'd want on my wall, mind you, but they're sweet little scenes. They're by an artist named Heronim. The first one is called "Wing Walkers." The one below is "Grandma and Grandpa at Christmas."

Then I had to go back to work on Wednesday. I left the completed puzzles out on the dining room table. I like to look at them for a while. Then I take them apart, put them back in the box, and give them away at next year's White Elephant party.

But every day I kept seeing that third box (called "Harvest at the Mission"). It was crying to me; so when I got home from work yesterday, I started it. I'll probaby finish it today.

These seem to be just the right amount of difficulty for me, because each one only consumes me for a couple days, and they're hard enough to not be insulting -- yet not so hard as to drive me crazy. I think I've got the jigsaw puzzle jones out of my system for a while. Gary tells me, though, that he's got a couple I can do next summer when I go to his cabin in Montana (but I hope he doesn't have anything else he wants me to do while I'm there).

There's a really funny Monk episode where a bunch of kids entertain themselves by dumping about four jigsaw puzzles in a box, jumbling up all the pieces, and presenting them to Monk. Of course, he has to stop everything and put together all four puzzles. That'd be me. Don't ever do that to me.