Puzzling Moment

I am not a puzzle person. But, here we are.

I was having a socially distant chat with our neighbors Betsy and Tony (and the baby and the cat) and we all agreed we are "so over" this whole thing with staying at home. I confessed to them that I'm happy in most respects but I am bored a lot. 

The little projects of Operation Yoga Pants are mostly keeping me busy and entertained but I've sort of lost steam on a lot of them. I'm sick of TV. I read, but only get a few pages into any of the three books I have going before I feel bored with them as well.

All the laundry is washed. The dishwasher is loaded and unloaded frequently. The basement cleanup could be revisited but again... Meh.

I had posted on Nextdoor that I was looking for a puzzle to do, and Betsy saw my posting. Ironically, my nextdoor neighbor had to see on a neighborhood app that I was looking for something to entertain the brain. 

She brought this over and damn if it isn't the dumbest thing I've ever done, but I must needs do it because she brought it to me. 

I hate this puzzle. I hated it from the moment I opened the box and started sorting through the miniscule pieces for the edges. I hate it. 

That said. I'm still doing it out of the obligation of the Neighbor Code, she brought it out of the kindness of her heart, and ... well. Yes. 

The boy is also working on the puzzle, which is giving me joy. When he was little, the hell on wheels child that he was, he did enjoy puzzles but would lose pieces and get angry or frustrated with them. 

Now that he's much older, he's very careful and is doing a great patient job with this. 

We sorted the coke bottle pieces out, and the red logo circle into another pile. We found the edge pieces, mostly, and are focusing on building it from the outside in. Once we get to a certain point with the edges and their neighbors we'll start on the coke bottle. 

I already found the pieces for the bottom edge, almost all of them, and we have those pulled aside together. 

"I spent way more time than necessary looking for one piece," he says to me this morning. I told him I was looking for the same piece. It was a woman with a sailor's hat on, holding a bottle of coke in her left hand. 

The piece itself has her hat but not her face, so both of us were doing the same strategy - looking for hat and face. I found it by accident because the hat was against a black background that blended with the piece beside it. 

Still can't find her dumb face. 

But we're making progress, and I'm happy to see him poking at it. 

"It isn't a race, honey," I said to him. "And to be honest, if we never finish it that's okay too. It's just here to keep us busy and doing something other than watching television." 

He liked that answer. We both sipped glasses of wine and sorted the edges in silence. I kind of like this activity even if I hate this stinking puzzle.