I bought this puzzle as a prop for a blog post. It was a while ago and I can’t remember what I called it or what my point actually was at the time. Something about life falling into place. Ha! I’m sure I was convinced at that moment that happily ever after was just around the corner. When will I learn that ‘ever after’ is an illusion and right this minute is about all you can count on?
I dumped the puzzle pieces out onto the table and took a picture, and then put them back into the box and forgot all about it. But while on a trip recently there was a puzzle out on the table and we all attempted to put it together, and failed, but it was fun. I used to buy a Christmas puzzle every year and we’d all work on it, I loved that family activity. Consequently I bought a table just for that purpose, one with sides that fold down, and it sat up against the wall ignored most of the year. Not any more though. That table is now my do-everything table. All sewing and crafts, plus it’s where I stick things that I can’t figure out what else to do with but also feel like it would be a sin to just throw them away. After they sit there long enough they do get tossed, but it’s like the left-overs in the refrigerator, I have to let them age a while before I can feel saintly about getting rid of them.
And so when I got home from that trip I got the irresistible urge to ‘do’ that puzzle, and even though I told myself that I shouldn’t, that I’d wind up mad at myself with a puzzle half-done and some other use for the table in mind, but I dumped it out anyhow. And sure enough, it has taken over my life ever since. This is exactly the reason I shouldn’t bake, because no matter how I tell myself I’ll put those cookies in the freezer for ‘company’, I eat them. I don’t buy candy, bread, and ice cream for exactly the same reason. I really should listen to that voice in my head once in a while, but I hardly ever do.
Then this long, cold, rainy/overcast, weekend arrived, and I was determined to get that puzzle over-with. So I could get my sewing machine out. And by last night I was convinced that the puzzle-maker had screwed up. I had several puzzle pieces that both belonged in the exact same spot, and there was supposed to be a skinny yellow window in one of the doors of the puzzle, and those pieces were simply not there. I was composing a scathing letter to Big Ben Puzzles in my head, and there may have been a cuss word or two spoken. Enter my uncle, who picked up the problem section of puzzle pieces and moved everything one space to the left, and like a miracle everything fell into place! From now on when I reach an impass in life, and am ready to tear my hair out, I hope I remember to move one space to the left and see how things look from there…
I brilliantly took a picture of the puzzle box, which was small and it was impossible to see the details of the puzzle on the image. Then I put the picture onto the computer screen and zoomed in and I could roll over the image and see the details. See the feature photo. And even that didn’t help. I’ll never know if I’d have figured it out on my own. This determination to do everything by myself isn’t always the best idea.
And it was a successful trip. Yes, one of the birds in question did show up and zoom into the hole in the tree and disappeared. Not one of us got a shot of that. The leader of the trip said that he felt that that was it, the event was over. But he had one trick up his sleeve. He used his phone to play the call of the red-cockaded woodpecker, rather quietly I thought, but it was enough to get this little guy to stick his head out of the nest to see what was going on.
I’m looking at these on the screen of the desktop right now and they don’t look nearly as good as they did on my phone. Oops.