Americana

I'm a nerd. I admit it. I love to do puzzles. Be it jigsaw, riddle, sudoku, crosswords...I just really love to figure stuff out and the sense of accomplishment that comes when a puzzle is complete. This fact has become evident on this most recent trip home. The other day I sat down at the kitchen table to help my mom with a jigsaw puzzle she had been working on for months. I quickly became obsessed! I could not pull myself away and I basically finished the whole puzzle by myself, with intermittent help from mom, dad, and Desiree in 2 days. It was a lovely little picture of a horse drawn carriage in front of a perfect little house with a white picket fence and it was entitled "Americana". Just as I had destroyed it, I realized that I should have taken a picture to document how my time at home was spent (I promise that I will get better at this. Amy, now I understand your blog silence when your camera was missing. It is an essential element). So, with my new obession underway and with a real desire to post a photo of a completed puzzle on my blog, my mom and I started another puzzle (this time of the kiss between Scarlette O'hara and Rhett Butler...classic). This one had half the pieces of the one I started earlier, so I was sure I could knock it out in a couple of ours and satiate my puzzle jonesing. After an hour of work...this is as far as we got. It was an impossible puzzle which consisted of only 3 colors which all varied slightly and somehow turned into Scarlette and Rhett's faces. We even had the help of my friend Alice...also a puzzle fanatic (she once missed a flight because she was so into a puzzle at the airport while she was waiting to board. It was a sudoku puzzle...but I like the image of her with a big jigsaw puzzle spread out on the floor of the airport with all of her perfectly organized piles of pieces just waiting to be placed in their proper spot). Needless to say, I was frustrated. It was not a happy hour of puzzling. Now, because of my competitive nature, I may spend the entire day tomorrow working on the puzzle (without the distraction of my family who will all be working). Sorry Amy, we're going to have to cancel lunch.