Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Pardon me, but it's a big-ass sky.

As a house bonding/mental escape exercise I bought a few jigsaw puzzles on the weekend.

There's something satisfying about finding a piece and hearing it snick into place. And there's the little tap thing where you line up the piece just on top of where it is supposed to go and then pop it in as if to say There. That's that one taken care of then. Job well done.

It's been cool. Various honorary housemates have wandered through and had a go as well as the original three. I get up at five in the morning and pop a few pieces in over coffee. I walked in yesterady to find three people gathered round the table listening to music and popping in a few pieces. But now we've hit the wall. There's a jigsaw mostly complete taking up the entire coffee table and a box sitting on top of it containing the final bits to get done. And they're all blue. The fucking sky always takes forever. One day I will cheat the shitty ending period of spending half an hour trying find one stupid blue piece to fit the gap I've chosen to make smaller and just do the sky first. Then the rest will fly along.

Cruiseydyke wanted to take a photo of the puzzle with blue paper under the empty bits where the sky should be to say we did it and then tear the thing up and put it away. Very cool idea, but it crosses a line for me. It is an inanimate object and therefore cannot be allowed to win. It is a process that needs to followed through until the end in order to allow satisfaction. It is making me wake up and realise how particular I am.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love those jigsaws you find in old junk shops, the 1970's scene of boats in a spanish harbour took me three months but i mastered it..... then sacrificially burnt it so i'd never be tempted again.

I've done the coffee table thing and i found that when you have a particuarly nosy two year old around you shouldn't leave your glass of coke sitting there. He up ended it all over the puzzle. It adhered a whole sectiom of the puzzle together and so now we have a cheat section already pre done.

Anne Geddes puzzles of many babies,cutsey as they are make you want to go out and push a pram in the river on purpose when you've finished them.

A psych once told me jigsaws would be theraputic for me. I sent him a bill for undue stress.

I'm a puzzle nazi, if anyone touches my puzzle i get the shits and have to start again, maybe that makes me incredibly analy retentive to. Hmm topics for discussion at my next psych session. :) xox

Sassy Sundry said...

I don't like puzzles for that very reason. Why put all that effort into making a sky?

dive said...

Damn! Now I'm going to have to go rummage in the attic again and lose days, patience and brain cells doing jigsaws.