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finishing this puzzle > everything else


jackson, caedmon and i put this puzzle together in about 4 hours or so.

it is 1,000 pieces.

it's nice to see that they've inherited my obsessive/compulsive tendencies.

let's just keep it real.  when i'm in the middle of a puzzle, finding the next piece trumps any other activity.  i will keep searching for pieces even if i'm sitting cross-legged and bouncing up and down with a bladder so full that it is likely to rupture at any second.  some things are just more important that bodily functions.  the same goes with meals.  finishing this puzzle is more important than meals.  i will simply eat whatever is easiest and quickest.  what's that first thing in the cupboard?  oh, it's a bag of flax seeds?  that'll work.  i'll eat that for dinner.  now hurry up, i'm trying to find this red piece with a little purple on the corner.  what, the district superintendent is on the phone?  tell him i'll call him back tomorrow.  i'm busy here.  i can't find this roundish-looking piece.

you know that feeling you get after you go to the theater for a matinee show, and you watch a whole movie in the dark, and then you exit the theater to the bright sunshine and you almost feel surprised, as if you had forgotten that the world was still going on without you outside the theater?  that's what finishing a puzzle (or a good book, for that matter), feels like to me.  i put the last piece in, and then i feel ridiculous for not eating anything but flax seeds and stale raisins for the last 9 hours.  i realize i haven't shaved, changed, brushed or even visited the bathroom.  i stand on the edge of reality, blinking, and sheepishly trying to find a moment to reenter.

at least this time i wasn't alone.

ps.  i love summer.  root beer taste tests.  puzzles.  last night we watched the 1968 version of "the love bug" (i love that movie).  then this morning we went to the farmers market and bought a new vegetable (daikon) and a new kind of cheese (danish havarti), in addition to some locally made sunflower honey.  summer is the best time to be a parent.  i intend to soak up every succulent second of it.
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