Time to treecable! Wait, what?

My family isn’t big on games. My brother plays video games, but that is about it. We have a few board games that haven’t been touched for over a decade, and at least one puzzle that has never been put together. It’s just not our thing.

In the past year or two, I started doing the occasional sudoku puzzle and will try my hand at a crossword puzzle, now and then.

Over time, a backlog of the puzzles built up on my kitchen table. That wouldn’t normally be a huge deal, except I was expecting company over the holidays and wanted multiple people to be able to actually eat at the table. Cue me trying to complete my backlog of puzzles.

I took a bunch of the puzzles to my parents’ house to do over the weekend. I found an “easy” sudoku in the stack to show my mom how to complete the puzzles. It was fun.

Since my mom was doing puzzles with me anyway, I pulled out a puzzle book that came from the Arbor Day Foundation. My boyfriend, Brett, and I had started the puzzles on a camping trip, but were stumped on a few of them.

My mom agreed to help finish up the book and we had the internet to assist.

I was under the impression that the puzzle and activity book was for children. It was definitely meant for adults. When my parents and I couldn’t figure out the last word in the crossword puzzle, we had to look it up online. Our online-assisted guess was correct, so we all learned something new.

Then, we moved on to the half-finished word unscramble. My mom and I quickly realized that all the words were Arbor Day-themed (think words like leaves, pine cone and holiday).

There were a few words my mom and I were stuck on. One of them, I decided, must be treecable, because what else could it be? The word tree was in it, which fit the theme. Sometimes, when you transplant large trees, you need to tie them up with something so they don’t fall, like a few ropes or a treecable.

My mom and I moved on to other words, but we both kept coming back to treecable and a few of our other answers, because they just seemed wrong.

As my dad put it, “You guys better look at that treecable one again.”

My mom and I just couldn’t come up with any other word, or words (the book was evil and had a few that were two words together), that would use those letters. We did eventually “find” the other answers.

When we were sure of our answers, except for the treecable one, we looked at the answer key.

Turns out, treecable isn’t a word. Unscrambled, it spelled the word celebrate. I couldn’t get a grip and we all laughed at that for quite a while. On the bright side, we did get the other answers correct. Treecable should be a word. It makes sense, after all.

I was able to get my kitchen table cleaned off enough to eat at, while Brett was up for the holidays, though those puzzles made it difficult.

For those who remember my bets on what Brett would forget at my place when his visit to Wisconsin was done, I was wrong. He did not forget his towel and toiletry bag, as I predicted. Brett forgot his wrapping paper, which he tried to pawn off as, “I left it for you to use.” Not a big deal.

However, that book of mine that he accidently took home with him last time, but promised to bring back this time? He remembered to bring it to Wisconsin. I mentioned it a few times, but he never took the book out of his bag. Brett accidentally took my book with him to Nebraska, again.

At least it was something unimportant. I much prefer him taking my book, over him forgetting his only winter coat on the back of my kitchen chair.

Our late Thanksgiving/early Christmas was good.

For those who plan to treecable, I mean celebrate, over the holidays, be safe and have fun.

Merry Christmas, from my family, to yours.