2023, Family, Gatherings, holidays, home, Kids, Uncategorized, Weather

Passing The Time

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Daughter’s visit last week was an opportunity for us to finally celebrate a very belated Christmas. She got her father a 1000 piece puzzle of Birds of the Backyard, which we have been working on daily since he unwrapped it. We haven’t worked on a jigsaw puzzle since the kids were young.

The puzzle It is set up on the dining room table, and we will just eat and work around it until it is completed. The dog got a couple of pieces but only did minor damage to them.

We may have a lot of opportunity to work on the puzzle this week, as a snow storm is coming that the National Weather Service says could be a blizzard of historic proportions. Their models are showing wind speeds that are the strongest they have seen in 20 years.

Husband is traveling to Bismarck for work Sunday and Monday, and will return Monday before the storm hits on Tuesday. We are rarely bored, but a puzzle will be just the thing to help us pass the time if we are snowed in.

How do you like to pass the time when you can’t leave the house? What is your most memorable jigsaw puzzle?

44 thoughts on “Passing The Time”

  1. I participate in approximately two jigsaw puzzles a year—both of them when we are in a cabin with the whole family up in Grand Marais. None of them have been especially memorable.

    As to passing the time, and with the restriction that I have to rely on the resources at hand, I need only look back to the height of the pandemic. I took several online classes, participated in a couple of online transcription projects, repaired some books, cut mylar covers for about 100 books, catalogued my nineteenth century humor books, with notations as to their condition, read a lot, and fixed things around the house. At the same time, Robin was knitting, sewing, embroidering, spinning, reading a lot, also did some transcribing, and copied about 1000 pages of letters sent between her mother and her grandmother in the years Robin’s family lived in Japan. Neither Robin nor I have any difficulty finding ways to pass the time. We have difficulty finding enough time.

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      1. Clear Mylar, not the silver-coated Mylar you’re probably more familiar with. It’s what they use to cover the dust jackets of library books.

        Tech Services always covered the books at the library, so they were done before we got hold of them, but I got to do it once for a customer when I worked at Barnes & Noble in the 1990s. When I was working Special Orders at Borders we didn’t have mylar covers but we re-shrinkwrapped a lot of books; that was actually kind of fun, so long as you kept your fingers away from the heat sealer and didn’t breathe the plastic fumes.

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  2. Because doing jigsaw puzzles is one of the things Husband can still do well and easily at home, it has been a major activity since his stroke, year round. We have a standing “station” in the front solarium (former porch), where there is always one in progress. I’ve taken photos of each one, and looking back at the photos is akin to reading a journal of trips taken. We have done, to date, 40 (forty) 500- to1000-piece puzzles, one of them a little like Renee’s birds up top. Maybe the most memorable was the San Diego OldTown Market, where we had to find online the picture to work from.

    Reading is my favorite other thing to pass the time, and getting out in nature for a walk in good weather. Cooking new recipes, playing cribbage or Mexican Train, and re-arranging things are also right up there for me.

    I wish I would find some handwork project, and maybe I’ll get back to quilting at some point – if I find a way to work on a (portable) section at a time.

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  3. Our dog has been passing the time these past two days playing with a dessicated lime I dropped on the floor while cleaning out a bowl of fruit we keep on the dining room table. He rolls it and tosses it and gently gnaws on it. I didn’t think dogs liked citrus flavors. What a goofy pup.

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  4. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    My response is similar to Bill’s—never enough time, which relates back to the post last week about doing too much. Of course there is not enough time. So then a day when I cannot leave the house is a respite. Usually I take a nap, watch some TV which I don’t do much, and knit or play with clay.

    Renee, the outside edge of that puzzle is really appealing. Please post a picture when done. Last week someone told me about a game of birds called “Wings” which looks interesting and beautiful. I have a puzzle of birds that I do every several years. It is so pretty and I enjoy the colors, so it is a joy to put together.

    Lou has a pinched nerve, probably some SI stuff, and pain in his back. I am running him around today since he cannot drive on the medications for this.

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  5. Best puzzle we ever did was a photomosaic puzzle of Earth viewed from outerspace. 1,000 pieces. All photos of individual people.

    I’d pass quarantine time mostly by reading and writing.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  9. I was gonna say I don’t do crossword puzzles, but the other day Ari got a United States or maybe it was a world map crossword puzzle that he was very excited to put together, and I showed him how you find the straight pieces for the outside edges, and then put those together and then you can figure out where the inside goes and it was fun watching the gears turn inside of his brain. That’s the first crossword puzzle. I’ve done in 25 years.

    as far as spending relaxation time, I tend to watch old movies soak in the tub often times while watching old movies I have such a long to do list that I can pick off one or two items and try and get those checked off at a leisurely pace, as opposed to a got to get it done pays like I’m out with my taxes right now

    back in the day are used to love going for Sunday drives and walks in the woods, listening to jazz on my headphones and today I do books on tape and podcasts while I’m in the midst of other tasks like my delivery stuff not very restful, but it keeps my brain occupied

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  10. I love doing jigsaw puzzles – especially 1000 piece ones. I can’t tell you how many I did during the height of the pandemic. I even like doing the Puzzle Twist ones (finished puzzle doesn’t look like the photo on the box). The hardest one I’ve done so far was given to me as a gift from my best friend. It was a close up of a wolf’s head, in the shape of the head – so no straight edge border pieces. That took me a very long time to finish, and I never repeated it. I’ve also never attempted a 3-D puzzle.

    For relaxation at home I enjoy reading, crossword puzzles, playing piano, watching my favorite PBS shows (Shetland, Endeavour, Vera, Foyle’s War, etc.) either on DVD or streaming, and just listening to MPR Classical.

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  11. I wrote a piece about my most adventuresome puzzle. It was a 1100-piece polar bear with the Polar bear filled in with all kinds of Arctic scenes but no straight edges and all the pieces very funny shaped. This was the one where at one point I tried to figure out how long it was going to take to finish this puzzle by using an Excel spreadsheet. It’s also one (where for the first time ever) I hid five pieces in my room so that if YA got re-interested in the puzzle toward the very end, I would have the last five pieces to do. it was a killer.

    As other baboons have mentioned, no problem filling time when I’m stuck inside. Cooking, reading, jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, of course, paper arts in my studio, and I suppose if I get really desperate, I can always clean something around here. I don’t usually get that desperate.

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      1. No she didn’t…

        Another happy note, I bought ingredients for a dish today and she wanted me to make it tonight (so she could take some to lunch tomorrow). I wasn’t really in the mood to cook tonight, so she did it. That’s not the actual happy note. At one point I went downstairs, and she had covered every counter with cooking utensils, but she cleaned it all up afterwards. Woot woot!

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  12. I just took 3 things off my weekly schedule trying to find time for more important things, only one of which came close to being relaxing. Then my local gastroenterologist informed me a few months back that he is no longer my doctor and he transferred me to one up in the cities. No other one here will take me so that sucks more hours out of my time traveling up and back because I need to see one. But I do not need to worry about that for three months because it is that long a wait for appt. Or I could just forget about it.

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  16. My sisterand I had a puzzle of the United Staes when we were kids, probably similar to Ari’s. Some of the smaller states in the northeastwere combines on a single piece so you wouldn’t have really tiny pieces. Vermont and New Hampshire were on one piece. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island were on another. I think New Jersey was appended to Pennsylvania.

    I gained a sense of where the states were, and I can still pick them out pretty easily by the shapes.

    I have a patchwork quilt puzzle that I like, and I’ve gotten a lot of cat puzzles as gifts, because, you know….cats.

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      1. I got a potato and gruere croissant and a free chai latte at Backstory in the morning. Then I did some shoveling and took a walk and went to my volunteer shift. It was fairy uneventful, but a pleasant day.

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    2. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
      I remember a wooden puzzle of the states. I think it had the little handles on each state. I played with that a lot. But don’t do puzzles very often these days.

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  17. I’m not big on crossword puzzles. I have done them but not recently. There wouldn’t be a place to set one up at my house now. When I have time to kill, like today, I read or crochet. I enjoy just sitting with a cup of coffee and being grateful for the choice to do so too.

    I have a VRBO reservation north of Grand Marais. When I made this reservation I had no idea the weather would continue to throw blizzards at us repeatedly. I thought there would at least be some melting and reliable roads.

    They started predicting this storm on the heels of the last one. I got nervous due to the predicted 50 mph wind off of Lake Superior and the timing of my driving plan. I was planning to leave on Wednesday morning to get to Grand Marais by late afternoon. I didn’t want to drive in an ice storm on Wednesday so I drove up the shore yesterday and I’m now in Tofte, about 30 miles west of Grand Marais, which will greatly shorten my drive tomorrow. The wind is really howling off the lake already and there will be 18 to 23-foot waves today. So I will carefully drive to somewhere I can admire the power of the big lake and maybe take a photo or two.

    Then I’ll come back to this room and read.

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