The Jigsaw Puzzler

My car is in the shop. My office is 23 miles away and not located on any convenient public transportation route. Luckily, K., who works for another tenant in our suite, passes by my house on her way to the office and agreed to give me a ride.

K. is a middle aged divorced woman who works as a legal assistant. She likes to eat. She munches on snacks all day long -- chips, crackers, pretzels. While she sometimes has something fuity, she clearly prefers salty/crunchy. By 10:00 a.m., she is thinking about lunch. She has beautiful, big brown eyes and smiles easily. She is a bit bored with making tukey on Thanksgiving. She would like new recipes for the crock pot. She drives a Nissan X-Terra. She looks forward to Christmas, although she doesn't know why since everyone she loved died around Christmas-time.

On the way back from the office, K. told me that she and her 25-year old daughter like to do jigsaw puzzles. K.'s daughter struggles with depression and just last year was admitted to a county facility for observation. She used to play softball. Now she works in the furniture industry and currently does not like her job. K.'s daughter is very beautiful. I saw her once when she came to the office. She was going to design the bosses office for him because she is learning how to do interior design. She lives with K.

K. likes big, complex puzzles. The bigger the jigsaw puzzle, the better. The current puzzle is a "Da Vinci Code" puzzle. It does not have the picture on the box. Clues to completing the puzzle are contained in a booklet that comes with the puzzle. Also, you can start figuring out color schemes to help put it together.

"That's a nice thing to do together," I commented.

"Oh, we don't always work together. Sometimes my daughter works on it for a while when I'm doing something else. Or sometimes I just work on it. The puzzle is out all the time -- I have a place for it."

Their favorite puzzle features a scene of nine medieval women in a forest. "We're gonna frame that one," K. told me. "That one's real nice."

K. and her daughter only do the hard puzzles with a minimum of 1000 pieces. When they are done, she keeps the puzzles intact. She builds the puzzles on a poster board, and then stacks them up, one on top of another, when they are completed. I did not ask if she keeps the puzzle box afterward. "You'd be surprised," she told me, "You can find puzzles everywhere. Toys R Us, K-Mart, Target -- nice ones too. Of course, you can find them on the internet too, but I haven't gotten into that yet."