Pandemic Puzzlin'

Has anyone else been doing a lot of puzzles lately? I always like puzzles, but I tend to go through phases where I do ALL THE PUZZLES and then go months without doing one. Hopefully I don't enter a fallow state when the puzzle is actually spread out on a table. Because that would be terrible.

Which brings me to a funny puzzle story. You know how everyone is doing puzzles because they're trapped at home? My sister's wife decided to go full Dining Room Makeover: Extreme Puzzle Edition. She bought my sister a NINE THOUSAND PIECE PUZZLE.

That puzzle is so big that you can really only do half of it at a time and even then it takes up your whole goddamn house.

This is, like, four months of work.

They're never going to eat on that table again. Also, that is only 4,500 of the pieces.

I spent about an hour thinking that doing a 9,000 piece puzzle would be SO fun and then I actually thought about it and made sure to tell Alex that I'd kill him in his sleep if he got such a thing for me. Fortunately for my sister-in-law, my sister is nicer than me.

I tend to think that 1,000 pieces is the sweet spot, although every once in a while I throw in a 500-piecer for a quick, fun puzzle adventure.

Really any blog post about puzzles being done in a family that has five cats should be called Cats vs. Puzzles.

Spoiler alert: The cats win.

There's a lot of walking on the puzzle, sitting on the puzzle, dropping pieces of the puzzle. One of my cats, Starfire, has constantly sweaty paws, so she will walk across the pieces, which will stick to her feet, causing her to shake them, which flings the pieces across the room. It's maximum entropy.

This is Ruby. Do you see that fucking attitude?

I don't actually have all that many photos of cats lounging on my puzzles because after the first one it ceased to be fucking cute and became fucking infuriating. Especially considering that every puzzle I've completed during this pandemic has had at least one piece missing. Until, that is, Quinn or Alex crawls around on the ground under the table to find it.

He found the one he was looking for, by the way.

We haven't vacuumed that room since March because we don't want to accidentally suck up an essential piece. Even so, we haven't always found them. They vanish into thin air or a cat tucks it carefully under some furniture; one of those things.

I thought that puzzle doing would be a fun family activity when I busted out the first one, a map of Yellowstone that Quinn had long ago agreed to do with me.

You're going to have to trust me that Quinn is holding that cat. He's not a fan of sharing his photo.

He watched me sort out some edges, decided it didn't look fun and permanently bailed. Katie came to the rescue for that one though. She helped me put the Yellowstone puzzle together, even after we ran into some trouble early on.

This was the only time I ended up with MORE pieces than I needed.

Either this puzzle taught her that she hated puzzles, hated me, or that she was only interested in piecing together places she'd actually been, but this was the last I saw her at the puzzle table.

We were victorious though.

Every once in a while Jack will pop by and help me out.

We look at the box. We're not purists.

Jack is really good at puzzles. I have strict rules that no one is allowed to work on the puzzle when I'm not there because I need to see every piece go in. (I know.) I made an exception for one puzzle that I couldn't finish the edge of because all the pieces were exactly the same color. I told Jack he could do that part. I had to go into the office that day and when I got home, he'd finished the border! He's my favorite.

He's also condemned himself to doing the worst part of every puzzle.

Jack might have to help finish the border on my current puzzle, because a big chunk of it is all black.

Alex bought this puzzle for me.

This is significant, because Alex looooooooves this band and I constantly make fun of them. (To be fair, they've grown on me a little, but I will never in a million years admit that to Alex. The party line is that I hate them.)

Alex got really excited one day because he had ordered "something we could do together," and wouldn't tell me anymore until the day he ran into the room where I was working out while shaking this box and telling me how it was the perfect activity for us.

It wasn't like, "I love My Morning Jacket and you love puzzles, so we can both be happy doing this!" It was a lot more like, "You hate MMJ and I hate doing puzzles, so we're both going to be miserable." We were meant for each other.

I have an uneasy feeling that I've finished the easy part.

You may wonder about the frame mat on the end of the table. Originally, Alex ordered some frames that came with an extra mat and because it didn't affect his life, he just left it on the table. However, because cats like to sit on things, sometimes they will sit on that instead of the puzzle pieces, so I left it there as a cat lure. It's only partially effective.

So that's what I've been doing with my time, lest you think I've been doing anything productive. I will leave you with this post that I found on the internet. I have never in my life identified with something more.

Running for Love

I left my house to meet people today. (GASP!)

I've been out of my house in the past few months, but not to meet people. It felt scandalous. Don't worry, we were appropriately distanced and masked. In fact, we met to run 3.1 miles and our different paces kept us out of sight of each other for most of the morning.

If you've been around a while, you could probably guess that I was running with my running pals Lyda and Heather.

Please excuse my giant head in the photo. It is difficult to take a proper socially distanced photo of three people.

It was not just any run, however. We met up to RACE.

Lyda had suggested we run the Run for Love Virtual 5K. The race benefited DC Frontrunners, which is "a running, walking, and social club serving Washington DC's LGBTQ+ community and their friends."

Hey! I'm friends with the DC LGBTQ+ community!

There's still time to run this race if you want. The race window closes on June 21. There's even an option to register for free—although if you do that, you should definitely make a donation.

It felt weird to ready myself for a race start after so long. (Remember that even before COVID-19, I was injured for several months.) I've done a couple other virtual 5Ks, but I did both of those by myself in my neighborhood. This was a big deal—getting up and prepped for a 10am start time! (We did have to push it back a couple of minutes for a last second porta-potty stop though.)

We had a wave start. It was self seeded based on the honor system. Heather went first, I went second, and Lyda went last. I kept track of Heather for about a third of a mile and then she was gooooone. We all have mileage watches, so we were running halfway out then turning around to come back. The first third of a mile was pretty consistently on a significant downhill, so that was nice. (There will be a callback to this important detail later.)

I would like to discuss the weather for a minute. It rained really hard last night. When I went up to bed at 10:30, it occurred to me that I might want to check the weather to see how heavily we were going to be rained on.

Oh noooo.

I took that screenshot today, but it was pretty similar to last night's except last night there were only lightning clouds across the top. I almost texted Heather and Lyda to ask them if we were going to drown in the morning, but then I remembered that it was 10:30 at night and I decided to save my whining for the morning.

When I left the house it was raining. Not a lot, but it was definitely raining. By the time we were ready to race though, it was mostly just drizzling...and humid...oh, and pretty soon the sun did come out to heat things up a little. It was a great combination.

That said, this particular group of running buddies has a historically bad record with running weather, so we were not overly fazed. We're tough. Heather took this photo of me being tough on her way back when she passed me.

You can also see Lyda. She's that tiny orange dot.

Lyda had warned us to run a little past halfway so we wouldn't have to run UP the hill that we ran down at the start (told you there would be a callback). I cleverly checked my watch at the bottom of that hill and then did the math to figure out how much farther I would have to run to avoid said hill.

Heather was not so forward thinking. Yup. She had to run up that last hill. Bummer. I, however, had safely padded my out distance so my back distance left me without that particular challenge. Lyda, close on my heels, followed my lead and also avoided the hill, so I'm pretty much the hero of the Run for Love, Heather/Lyda/Jean edition.

I am happy that I am back running, but 3.1 miles is my current maximum, so I was getting tired for the last stretch. Remember when I used to run miles upon miles? One day I will again. Maybe. I'm building up slowly. I'd rather run shorter distances than hurt myself again. That was awful.

That said, I beat my last virtual 5K race time by a full minute, so I'm getting there!

Lyda had brought after-race snacks, so it was like a real race where you get snack food at the end. We were each provided with a bag of Doritos and a bottle of Diet Coke. (C'mon, you know you wish you raced with us.)

We sat (apart) and talked for a long time after. It was really nice. The run was great. But seeing my friends was even better.

Thanks, friends.

We Are Living in a Nightmare of Our Own Making

Shit, everything is terrible out there, isn't it? I have lots of thoughts—about COVID-19, about Black Lives Matter, about Pride month, about transgender rights, about lots of stuff. You know, the usual.

Everything sucks. But we have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Do the work. Do the learning. Do the donating. Do the protesting. Do the calling and the petitioning and the mailing. Do the voting. Do the talking to people who don't get it. Do the support work if you're an ally. Do the leading if you're a stakeholder. Work for justice.

Take care of yourself. Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Take time to breathe. Get some fresh air. Celebrate the celebrations. (Katie graduated! Jack and Quinn killed distance learning! I functioned as an entire special education support team at my home!)

Look out for each other. Check in on someone who's having a hard time if you have that capacity. Tell someone you love them. Send a text to a friend to let them know you're thinking about them. Give your kid a hug. I was going to say smile at a stranger, but that is hard to do in a mask. Show through your actions that you care about every person you meet. Yeah, even that guy. Uh huh, her too. Yup, them as well. Be kind.

Hang in there.