Relative Something

Despite how it feels to me lately, my role as the only fully ambulatory person on the ranch is not without occasional opportunities to pause and reset my attitude. Last week we were treated to a visit from my sister, Judy, and her husband, Scott. They came bearing a range of gifts, not the least of which was lunch for the day.

They also picked up, much to my surprise, a couple of bags of my new favorite guilty pleasure snack treat [thank you, Carlos], PopCorners (BFY Brands). Cyndie had surreptitiously texted a special request to Judy after our latest grocery order wasn’t able to fulfill that line item on our order. Snack-errific!

It was refreshing to have Judy’s company on my noon trip to feed the horses where she tolerated extra time out in the elements while I made a few trips back and forth to the hay shed to restock the barn stash of bales.

The one treat that is lasting longer than the chocolate-covered pretzels Judy made is the hand-me-over jigsaw puzzles they left for us. A jigsaw puzzle is a gift that keeps on giving. They brought us three options and while eating dinner the other night, Cyndie and I debated which one to do first.

After we finished eating, I decided to just dump out the pieces of the puzzle we settled on. Without getting up from the table, we spread out and flipped up all 2000 pieces and started working on the outer border. Jigsaw puzzling soothes my brain like a Zen meditation. It is bringing order to chaos. There is a specific place for each piece and finding and placing those pieces is a series of mini-rewards set on repeat.

I woke up the next day and all I wanted to do was work on the puzzle some more.

It’s funny, the whole goal is to finish, except I don’t really want to. Going through the steps of finding and placing pieces ends up being more fun than actually completing the entire puzzle.

It’s a mental distraction that is very good for what ails me these days.

.

.