We love puzzles in our family. Actually, I take that back. The kids and I love puzzles, and John just tolerates our love of them. It doesn't matter if it's a word puzzle or a "Brain Box" puzzle, a Rubik's cube or a logic problem, or a traditional cardboard puzzle. We love them. If you've ever visited our home, you've seen that our formal dining room table is regularly covered in some half-finished puzzle (yeah, that's how much we use our FORMAL dining room...) Different members of the family jive on different ones. When Mark was young, we owned every Batman puzzle under the sky. Before we left Germany, we very appropriately finished a 1000-piece puzzle of Neuschwanstein castle. All of the kids love the puzzle balls, although Johannah regularly claims the puzzle ball ornaments at Christmas. I was all over the pasta puzzle when we first moved here (I blame the steroids), Ethan was passionate about the world flag puzzle (no surprise there) and of late, Glo has single-handedly been working on a new 750-piece puzzle that I bought: One Hundred Cats and a Fish.
As of last night, she was six pieces short. In other words, she had finished the entire thing and there were no pieces left. This isn't an unusual occurrence, especially with Glo. Being that she's not quite fully grown, she reaches across the table for pieces and her arm or body will catch a piece on the way back and fall to the ground. Too, when Jake our cat hasn't been given the attention that he feels he deserves, he will jump up on the table and sit directly in front of whoever is there. As a consequence, when he is impatiently removed by any of us, a couple of pieces inevitably stick to him and fall to the ground also. This wouldn't be too much of a problem except that the table sits on a dark red and black Persian rug. This baby is beautiful with fantastic designs and such. However, for finding a puzzle piece, it's a nightmare. Either the pieces blend in perfectly with the rug, or they get tangled up in the fringe. Just this morning, while putting on my shoes, I looked at the rug and saw a piece, glinting in the sun, even though I had scoured the rug the night before. Puzzled (!) I wondered if somehow the missing pieces had ended up in the vacuum cleaner, seeing as I vacuum several times a week.
I saw my mission and chose to accept it (cue Mission Impossible music).
Today, after I got the kids off to school, I opened our beloved Miele canister vacuum. The bags for the thing are cloth (not paper) and cost a small fortune. However, the price is worth it, because this animal does the job. I grabbed my kitchen tongs, and began pulling the contents out over our kitchen trash can. Man, I never realized how much dust and cat litter and hair and GOO that we vacuum up. I soon realized that I needed to take this job outside. Within seconds, one piece was found. A minute more, another. Finally, I had found three of the missing five pieces. Woot!
As I headed back to the kitchen, I thought to myself, "I wonder if there was a piece that I missed when I first started pulling." Afterall, at that point, I was still pretty sensitive to the grossness of it all and one could have easily slipped by. So, I took a deep breath and grabbed the initial GOO out of the trash can WITH MY BARE HANDS!!
(As a side note, whenever we are looking for something in the vacuum, John takes the job of going through the GOO. I have always admired his courage in doing so to which he inevitably replies, "I do a lot worse stuff than all of this at my job." Kudos to John.)
As luck would have it, I found one more piece. Four of the five recovered by me, vacuum bag diver, Aris. Glo will be thrilled when she comes home. Of course, I can't imagine where that final piece is, but I'm hoping that it will show up sometime, somewhere.
Now, I'm off to the kitchen. I need to disinfect the tongs, or they will never see another day of egg roll-flipping again.
Not at all related to puzzles, but I was just thinking about your delicious egg rolls yesterday. To be more specific, thinking that you really need to teach me how to make them, or send me the recipe sometime soon. I'm glad you found (most of) the puzzle pieces, I salute your bravery in sorting through vacuum cleaner goo!
ReplyDeleteI am so glad you invited me to view your blog! It's so fun to read what you write! I didn't know you guys were that big of puzzle buffs. Way to go finding most of the missing pieces.
ReplyDeleteSarah,
ReplyDeleteTell you what. You buy the cabbage, carrots, chicken and soy sauce. I'm guessing with the large contingent of Asian military wives, your commissary even has the right shells (if not, let me know, and I'll bring them). We'll have an egg roll FIESTA in December. Wait, I don't think Jared will eat them! :-)
thanks so much Mommy for doing that dirty work for me! I found where the pieces go. It was so much fun doing that puzzle I loved it! What am I going to work on now I wonder! I mean I don't have any other puzzles to do I've done all the other ones in our house so what am I going to do now? But Mommy I'm so thankful for what you did I love you so much for that! Love you guys bey.
ReplyDeleteGood Job Mommy Aris. Yes, vacuum bag hunting is an art. Where to spread the dust, which chunks of goo to part and which to disavow, what is worth touch dead bugs and who knows what that chunk of hard brown stuff is? I am glad Mommy Aris has joined the few, the proud, the vacuum bag scroungers. I first started scrounging after I think we vacuumed up Aris's first wedding ring. Unfortunately, we did not vacuum bag scrounge at that time and the 350 dollar momento is in a dump in Deutschland somewhere.
ReplyDeleteI'm not feeling too badly about losing the $350 ring since I got a new, oops, TWO new rings out of the loss :-)
ReplyDeleteOkay, I'm just going to put this out here, but I have posted two times in the past three days, and EVERY SINGLE TIME it refuses to post! It;s very frustrating. But anyways, I absolutely love puzzles. And I distinctly remember that Neuschwanstein puzzle. We had already shipped all our stuff back to the U.S., and the music room, where our piano had been, was completely empty. Also, the top third of that puzzle was blue sky. I spent literally three hours getting that part of the puzzle together, and I felt so successful when it was finally accomplished. I'm pretty sure it's still in our toy closet, with the puzzle pieces separated into individual baggies with 50 pieces in each, just so that if we ever want to put it together again, we don't have to put the blue sky together without some help.
ReplyDeleteIf the site refuses to post, immediately try again. It always refuses me the first time--don't know why. Maybe the computer genie wants to ensure that your post is quality???
ReplyDeleteYep, the puzzle is still in baggies. Remember kneeling on the tile floor to put it together? My knees ached for days!
Good times, good times!! :-)