Are we puzzle people now?

A busy weekend ended by going to the Packer game in Green Bay. I traveled over with some family and friends to watch the game. My wife Kaitlyn was at home as she had to work Sunday. I got a call during the game from Kaitlyn saying she went home sick from work.

She works in the urgent care department of the Marshfield hospital so I’m sure she sees her fair share of germs and sickness from her workplace.

It was perfect weather for a December game, however, the game could have gone better. It took us an hour or so to get out of Green Bay and by the time I got home, I was drained.

Sunday night, I watched some more football and endured the Sunday scaries as I knew I had a busy week of news coverage coming up this week. I went to bed feeling fine and woke up on Monday morning feeling not so fine.

Covid had struck our house again. Kaitlyn was in her worst day of symptoms as my sickness was just beginning. The coughing, sniffling, headaches and other symptoms took their toll throughout the next couple days.

When I wasn’t working on writing for this week’s paper, I was either sleeping or catching up on TV shows that I hadn’t had the time to get to. Monday night, after being cooped up in the house all day, Kaitlyn grabbed a box out of our storage area in our basement. She brought out a puzzle that my parents had gifted to us for Christmas in 2021. It was a puzzle with pictures of our three cats as the picture we were tasked to create.

At first, I thought, “Yeah right. I’m not doing a puzzle.” We had friends who sent us a Snapchat of them putting together a puzzle and I made a sarcastic barb at them for participating in an activity that was reserved for an older generation.

That mindset quickly evaporated. After watching Kaitlyn struggle to get anywhere for a bit, I thought I could insert my brain into the mix to help build out the puzzle.

It didn’t take long and I was finding edges, identifying color groups and piecing together what looked like Penelope’s face. The 520-piece puzzle was coming along nicely and after a couple hours of working on it, we were probably halfway done.

Time flew by as we worked on the puzzle. Finding pieces that fit with others was extremely satisfying and any thought of making fun of our friends for putting together puzzles was nullified. It goes to show that perspective is everything and the saying, “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it,” still rings true. As we put one of the last pieces in the puzzle late Tuesday night, I turned to Kaitlyn and asked, “Are we puzzle people now?” She nodded and grabbed her phone to look online and see if there were any local stores that sold puzzles. It looks like we have a new hobby.

Speeding

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