All it took was one teeny puzzle to shred my last atom of sanity. You won’t believe this story, but I have the photos.
It looks like a run of the mill puzzle. However the activity I selected to fill yesterday’s tech break was so insane that you would not believe it if I didn’t have photos. Had Willy Wonka strolled by and seen what I was doing, he would have raised a serious eyebrow and then steered all of the lucky golden ticket winners to a different part of the factory. The build up and ultimate culmination in yesterday’s insanity explosion proceeded as follows:
Last week, I wanted the kids to put down the phones so I pulled out some unopened jigsaw puzzles. My son picked this innocuous looking Star Wars puzzle. He is smart as a whip, but for some weird reason, he absolutely stinks at these and always manages to stick pieces where they don’t belong.
Finished! Or so I thought.
So as expected, I eventually had to get involved. It took me a while to undo his incorrect pieces and then tackle the leftovers. At last we finished the puzzle – yay! But then – no yay. Big big no yay. Because we were totally missing a piece. One frickin piece. Everyone converged to search for the missing piece to no avail (as my two-year old walked away suspiciously…she has still refused to confess to the crime).
Back at ya Boba.
We have never ended with incomplete puzzles despite the numerous jigsaws we have tackled together. We even have a spot at the new house to hang them. Not dorky at all, right? It’s in a back hallway where cool people aren’t invited so zip it!
So now we have 2 puzzles.
I tried to forget it but the stupid thing got under my skin every time I passed it. It gnawed at my brain for days. But then I remembered how the kids had griped about how we somehow ended up with two of these! I could find the piece and be done with the madness! I dug through the game cabinet and found the puzzle…the puzzle that was NOT THE SAME PUZZLE.
For anyone keeping score at home with limited counting skills, I am at 3 puzzles.
By this point my crazy behavior generator was really kicking into gear. I was hell bent on tracking down that last piece. “Hello Amazon! Prime delivery you say? Yes and thank you.” Two days later, I received the other other puzzle….the other other puzzle that once again did not match the puzzle I had purchased as shown in the item description and seller photo but that did match the incorrect other puzzle I already had in my possession. I had the wrong damn puzzle AGAIN.
Yes – the double pack requirement put me at 5 puzzles. 1 original, 1 matching from the double pack, and 3 unwanted alternates.
“Hello Amazon? About that puzzle. I am having an inexplicable nervous breakdown and therefore need the actual puzzle I ordered…. Uh huh… I see… So to make sure that I actually will get the one I want, I will need to order the double set? So I’ll have a third unwanted puzzle plus a whole one and one missing a piece? You’re effing kidding me, right? Also I want a return label asap for the initial wrong puzzle hose job. Yes yes of course via prime!” Argh yet again!!!
I received the replacement puzzle(s), returned the incorrect listing offender, and rallied the kids into action. Which one of us would be the THE ONE!?!?!? Who would find that piece before the others and have all of the nerd glory???
***Spoiler alert – NO ONE AT ALL.***
It would take some portion of each of these five pieces to complete the one missing spot.
Yeah. We tested all of the hundreds of extra puzzle pieces in the spot. None fit. The kids almost took up drinking right then and there. I was so confused and started to look through them again as the kids realized that their lives were too precious to waste any further time on this shiznet. I’m a slower learner it seems. But I did learn one thing I had not known before The Puzzle Situation.
Puzzles with the same picture on them are not necessarily cut the same way. ARE YOU FRICKIN KIDDING ME.
Obviously just chucking the old puzzle or being even more rational and not worrying about the last piece at all was out of the question. I contemplated cutting the five relevant pieces and sticking them together to fill the gap. That was laughable so I quickly dismissed that thought.
And then technology turn off time rolled around, and the only reasonable alternative came into play. Rather than have one puzzle missing one piece, I would fix it by putting together an entire other puzzle and yet still maintain the original puzzle with a missing piece.
I’m at a loss for words here folks. There is no appropriate caption for this madness.
It was like watching myself through a two-way mirror as the person on the crazy side did the second puzzle above. I had to finish it. Did it change the missing piece in the other puzzle? Clearly no. Did it give me the sense of completion I wanted so I would then be able to discard the original? You must be kidding. After all we have been through together, I am going to ask to be buried with the damn thing.
As an inconceivable bonus, I now find myself wrestling with the two blue jokers below. I’m not kidding. The stupid blue boxes sit there incomplete, and the longer they are there, the more they bug me. I hear them calling for me to put them together… Where is the therapist who should be making fat cash off my madness? And is it tech turn off time yet? I have a couple…err…tasks…I need to complete.
I want to believe that I won’t tackle the other two, but I will. W. T. F?????
Momentum of Joy 