Puzzle Therapy

I started a new puzzle today.  Puzzles can be very therapeutic.  

When I moved into my new house I set up a table in the dining room where I always have a puzzle going.  During winter (and the dark, early nights) I have to move to the kitchen table where the light is better.  But now that Spring is close and the days are longer, the light is perfect for putting puzzles together.  

Nala Helping With Puzzle

If you’ve never put a puzzle together I have found there is no better way to have the hours fly by than by trying to fit 1000 or more tiny interlocking pieces of cardboard into a square picture.  

Everyone seems to have their own method for putting the pieces together. They either separate them by color, or group the ones with the same patterns together, or they start from the top and work their way down. 

The hardest part is trying to keep the cat from stealing the pieces and the dog from chewing them into little brown globs of paper. Nala, my cat, always seizes the opportunity to have my undivided attention by jumping up on the table and laying across the middle of what ever puzzle I am working on.

Weird shaped puzzle pieces.

After I went through all the puzzles that I had collected over the years, purchased from yard sales and resale shops, I ended up buying some new ones. Puzzles have really changed over the years! These pieces look like nothing I recognize and it has taken my brain quite a bit of processing power to actually be able to see how these pieces fit together.

There really is only one downfall to puzzles that I can see: I can’t seem to stop working on them. Even if I have arrived at a point where I am convinced that somebody came in during the night and swapped pieces from another puzzle into this one because none of the remaining pieces seem to fit together, I will sit there for hours systematically trying to fit each piece into a particular spot. 

I have this clock in my living room that chimes every 15 minutes. I recently realized that when I am working on a puzzle I don't hear the chimes any more. So I turned up the volume on the chimes--and I still don't hear it. When I do get to get my brain to pay attention to it, I will always tell myself that I have to stop at a certain amount of time. Inevitably I end up going over that time and saying, "Okay, just another 15 minutes," about three times. It’s an obsession, and hopefully it’s better for my brain than watching TV.

The other thing I've noticed is that I have found out I'm not the only one doing puzzles. The more people I talk to about it the more I realize that quite a few of you have puzzles going on in your dining rooms. Also, when people visit at my house and see what I have going on in my dining room, it usually elicits a response of "Ooh, a puzzle! I love puzzles!!"

So go ahead, pull out those puzzles that are in the back of the closets. You know you have at least one in there! Spread it out on the table and let the therapy begin.