November 30, 2018
Dear Everyone:
Breaking News:
Christmas is coming!
Even before Halloween arrived, I encountered the first of the Holiday
Popcorn cannisters in a store.
That’s when I realized that I still had one left on the dining
table from last year.
Two things: 1)
I don’t generally use the dining table for dining.
My needs are simple.
Plus, it’s a handy horizontal surface to catch the day’s mail and
things. 2)
The cannister has been filling a vital function all these months:
It’s been holding up the
jigsaw puzzle from last Christmas.
Each year, “Marshall” would bring a genuine
Liberty Classic Wooden
Jigsaw Puzzle for Christmas.
The idea was that the family could while away countless hours fitting
pieces together. Finding
that one particular piece, often one of dozens of fanciful shapes, like
a house, or an ice skater, or in this particular case, one of several
cats, is so satisfying.
However. Last year,
“Marshall” pointed out that “Jeannie’s” two recently-acquired cats,
Benedick and Beatrice, would gladly conscript any number of pieces as
“cat toys”. Benny, in
particular, was still a kitten who would happily scatter puzzle pieces
around the room, and under various kinds of furniture, just for the fun
of it. Or, in “Marshall’s”
words: “The cats will eat
them.”
So we decided that the puzzle assembly would need to take place in my
home. I rearranged some
furniture, and moved things to other locations in anticipation of
setting the dining table up as “ground zero” for the puzzle.
Then “Jeannie” forgot to bring it with her.
A few weeks later, I took possession of the large box containing “513
pieces” and carted it back to my place.
I actually did put nearly one side together on a flat sheet that
was originally intended to protect the countertop from overly-hot pans.
Then I placed the whole thing on top of the cannister of Holiday
popcorn, where it sat for nearly a year in a complete state of
incomplete-ness.
Until Thanksgiving rolled around and I suddenly realized that the puzzle
had been shamefully neglected.
I got out all the flat surfaces I could find; cookie sheets,
large plastic containers, anything that could hold groupings of puzzle
pieces. Pretty soon all the
available horizontal surfaces in the living room were drafted into
service.
There were white pieces, mostly depicting winter snow.
Dark pieces, possibly tree bark or branches.
Colored pieces of various kinds of cats.
The overall picture was supposed to be a half-dozen large cats in
a musical band performing for dozens of attending kitty cats.
A winter scene with trees of various sorts.
A Resounding Success
was the title.
Usually, when you assemble a jigsaw puzzle, you start by finding the
four corners and the flat-edged outer pieces.
Once you have the “frame” in place, you can start filling in the
picture.
Not with Liberty Puzzles.
The manufacturer takes enormous pride in making things far more
difficult than necessary.
There are no corner pieces.
Instead, two to three apparently unassociated pieces combine to form a
corner. Or not.
A flat edge is no guarantee of being anywhere near the outer
frame.
Instead, I would focus on combining possible set pieces such as a large
orange cat playing a green French horn.
Maybe. On the other
hand, there seemed to be dozens of orange cats throughout the overall
image.
Little by little, I found things that went together and corralled them
in one place or another.
Ultimately, it came down to the process of elimination.
Does this piece, with half-a-clover shape fit in anywhere?
No? Set it aside and
move on to another one.
Eventually, I found the last few pieces through sheer determination and
just plain stubbornness.
I realize that some people might consider this to be a monumental waste
of time. Nonsense.
I was multitasking.
Which is to say, while searching for puzzle pieces, I was also
binge-watching the first season of
Outlander on the TV. All
16 episodes.
Love, as always,
Pete
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