Rediscovered Joys of Life

For the past couple of weeks Mike has been working the night shift at work, leaving me completely alone with hardly anything to do in his absence. Fortunately I came upon the idea of asking my Mom if I could borrow a couple of puzzles that we used to do growing up. She told me that I could keep them as she didn't want them. So Mike and I went down to their house last Monday and to my utter surprise, when I told Dad why we were there he promptly loaded up every puzzle they had in the closet. I had only been hoping for a few but he gave me a lot.

That night when Mike went to work I went down to Tina's to have my hair redone. It didn't take as long as she thought it would. So I stopped in to say hi to Sue and to drop off The Bean Trees for her and then I came home and started working on puzzles. I did the Beauty and the Beast puzzle before moving on to the Disney Fantasy puzzle. I didn't finish the Fantasy puzzle because I grew too tired and went to bed.

The next day after I got home from work and after putting in a load of laundry I sat down with the dogs and began to work on the puzzle again. Priestly seemed very interested in the pieces of the puzzle, but didn't ever seem curious enough to pick one up so I paid him no mind. I regretted that. He wasn't interested in the pieces I was using he was interested in the pieces I had left in the box. After half an hour or so I heard an odd grinding noise, so I turned to check on the dogs and to my utter horror Priestly was on the back of the couch chewing on a puzzle piece. I managed to snatch it away from him, but now we have a puzzle that has puppy teeth marks on one of the pieces. Oh well, the puzzle was missing pieces anyway what's a piece with a few teeth marks on it?

The next puzzle I started was a Seascapes puzzle called Search For Harmony. It is really pretty with dolphins swimming around in the water and the sun setting over the mountains. So there are a lot of blues and purples and pinks and some green. I thought...wow it's so pretty and it looks simple enough. Ha! Did I eat my own words, I hadn't even finished the border when I knew this puzzle was going to be the hardest puzzle I'd ever done. But I started it and I was determined to finish it.

Mike said he would come home after work and could tell when I'd worked on the puzzle as I'd put it on the kitchen counter as it has smaller pieces and I was worried about the puppies swallowing a piece. So he could see my progress as I worked on it each day.

When Arla and Albert (for those who don't know they are my mother and father in law) came over Sunday for dinner Arla was delighted to see a puzzle on the table and tried to put a few pieces together. After a few minutes she got discouraged and told me she wasn't sure how I could stand doing this puzzle as it was quite hard. I agreed, I've never done a puzzle over 500 pieces before and this one is 750. But I was determined to finish it. So I worked on it after they left and today Monday April 19th, I Candace Christine Funk have finished the puzzle! I was so proud of myself. I had to do a victory dance while the dogs watched me in rapt amusement. But I didn't care the puzzle was very hard and I was very frustrated at times as it felt as though I weren't getting anywhere with it. But I did and you know what I look forward to taking it apart and doing it again some time. It was a lot of fun. It was nice listening to movies and working on something that was stimulating enough for me to have to try and search out each piece, which is probably why I like puzzles so much. The Disney ones are simple as they are much larger pieces, but I look forward to doing more like this.