Puzzling Through It

jo(e) recently wrote a great post about her favorite childhood toys. The best part is you can tell she never outgrew them. Jigsaw puzzles are one of the toys she mentions. I am also a puzzler, although more so as an adult than a kid. I had some early formative puzzle experiences, to be sure. It is with great fondness that I recall an old wooden puzzle of the US where each state was a separate piece. I think I got that as a Christmas gift when I was 5 or 6 maybe. It prepared me well for the insipid little quizzes my 7th grade social studies teacher used to give, where he put cut-out shapes of the states on the overhead projector for us to identify by silhouette only. Ka-ching! Easiest.A.ever.

As an adult, puzzling is something I've really only come to in the last five years or so. Since we got our dining room table, anyway, because before that I wouldn't have had any surface big enough. I've had friends ask why I do puzzles; I know they seem utterly pointless to many people. Pretty much anything can be described that way, though, right? Pick your poison. Part of it is chaos reduction: it is very satisfying to create order where there was none. Part of it is I can puzzle while SodaBoy watches TV. I like to have puzzle project ongoing most of the time, but I don't usually sit and puzzle for hours on end. More often I'll just place a few pieces at a time while waiting for the water to boil for tea. It's filler fun.

And when SodaBoy wanted to experiment with time lapse photography not too long ago? A puzzle seemed like a good test run. I picked a small, easy puzzle. SodaBoy set up the tripod, and we took turns taking pictures. Curious about the time lapse thing, I immersed myself and put the puzzle together quickly, over the course of just two days. Then SodaBoy combined them to make this fun little movie, which I present for your enjoyment: