Is this who I am now? A holiday puzzle master? Or puzzle\ndork? And an injured, hobbled, doubled-over one at that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The things we find ourselves doing over the holidays \u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not normally a puzzle kind of guy. But it had been\nraining. My daughter was getting over being sick. We were all cooped up in the\nhouse a couple days before Christmas, watching so much television that I could\nliterally feel my brain cells snapping like popcorn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe need to play a game,\u201d I finally said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there are only so many times that you can be beaten by a\n13-year-old kid before you either resort to bourbon or throw in the towel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So my wife offered a suggestion in her chipper way: \u201cHow\nabout a puzzle?!?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was when it all started to spiral out of control.\nWhen I was swallowed deep, down into the belly of the beast. Consumed by a\nmonster. Overtaken and addicted to the thrill of fitting all those oddly-shaped\nbits of cardboard together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a 700-piece, 3-foot long puzzle of Times Square.\nThere were so many billboards and lights and different colors that the box\nwarned if you stared too long, it could induce a seizure. Most puzzles I\nremember as a kid were of bears, pastel scenes or mountain landscapes. You\ncould bundle little piles of matching colors together and work on it\nstrategically thanks to gentle transitions and easy-to-spot patterns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not Times Square, though. This looked like a paint factory that\nblew up in a fireworks display, and then they poured confetti on top. None of\nit made any sense at all because \u2026 well \u2026 the actual Times Square makes no\nsense. It\u2019s like a mad scientist built it as some grand experiment to test\nwhether sensory overload would cause normal people to drop tons of money on\nphotos with Elmo and Empire State Building shot glasses they will never use. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And this? This wasn\u2019t a puzzle. It was a sadistic torture\nchamber of wonderous doom. Seven hundred over-stimulated pieces in a spasm of\nlight, color and out-of-control humanity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was hooked! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, hooked is a nice way to put it. Hooked is enthralled,\nexcited, captivated. It\u2019s mostly harmless. I swung a little more to the insane\nside \u2013 crazed, delirious, feverish, bats in the belfry. Prone to saying things\nlike, \u201cWhere are you, little demon?!? Tell me your secrets. Where do you\nbelong?\u201d and \u201cHoney, do we have a chamber pot?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I stayed up until after 11 that night, hunched over while\nidentifying pieces and trying to make sense of it. I dreamed of it in my sleep,\nand then jerked awake at 6 a.m. to get back to work. Nerves in my back started\nto sting me like bolts of lightning, and my eyes screamed for mercy. Around 10:30\na.m. I realized I was still in my pajamas, hadn\u2019t eaten breakfast, hadn\u2019t\nshowered, hadn\u2019t brushed my teeth, and had no intention of doing any of it\nuntil I was further along. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the thing with puzzles is there\u2019s always one more piece\nto identify. One more pile of pieces to sift through. \u201cFurther along\u201d is all\nrelative, and the more you find, the more it sucks you in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Around 2 p.m. things really started hurting. Going downhill\nfast. I was dehydrated. I was having caffeine headaches from all the coffee I\nwas drinking. My eyes hurt from the straining and staring through a magnifying\nglass. EVERY-thing was starting to hurt. My family had turned from quiet\namusement to seriously considering calling the authorities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I finally found the final piece and slotted it into\nplace that afternoon, I crumpled to the ground, coughing. Wheezing. Sweat\npouring down my body. Unable to straighten my back. But \u2026 a victor!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with dad?\u201d my daughter asked as they stared at\nme. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe hurt his back puzzling,\u201d my wife said, and both\nsnickered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t hurt my back!\u201d I snapped. \u201cIt\u2019s my sciatic nerve.\nFrom leaning over the table too long.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s a sciatic nerve?\u201d my daughter asked.
\n
\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s his butt,\u201d my wife replied. More snickering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The price we puzzle-masters pay for our art. Our sport. Our\nconquests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s done, and it\u2019s a masterpiece. It sits on the bar\nnow, all 3 feet of it. I don\u2019t know what I\u2019ll do with it. What I do know is I can\nnever break it apart. Not my great accomplishment. It caused me so much pain\nand delirium and hardship. And the worst part: I can\u2019t even look at it because\nstaring too long gives me seizures. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is this who I am now? A holiday puzzle master? Or puzzle dork? And an injured, hobbled, doubled-over one at that. <\/p>\n
The things we find ourselves doing over the holidays \u2026 <\/p>\n
I\u2019m not normally a puzzle kind of guy. But it had been raining. My daughter was getting over being sick. We were all cooped up in the house a couple days before Christmas, watching so much television that I could literally feel my brain cells snapping like popcorn. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to play a game,\u201d I finally said. <\/p>\n
But there are only so many times that you can be beaten by a 13-year-old kid before you either resort to bourbon or throw in the towel.<\/p>\n
So my wife offered a suggestion in her chipper way: \u201cHow about a puzzle?!?\u201d <\/p>\n
And that was when it all started to spiral out of control. When I was swallowed deep, down into the belly of the beast. Consumed by a monster. Overtaken and addicted to the thrill of fitting all those oddly-shaped bits of cardboard together. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[575,561,556],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-nutshells","category-family","category-holidays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2023,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions\/2023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}