Friday, December 26, 2014

I always get puzzles for Christmas

When I was little, I always got puzzles for Christmas.  But those puzzles always had a picture on the box that gave a clue as to which piece went where.  Now, seventy-two years later, my puzzles don’t come in boxes and they are harder to fathom.  I got three this Christmas.

The first puzzle is connected with my work as an engineer.  It arrived early and took a couple of months to resolve.  Number one picture is of a factory flow diagram as I found it and number two is my logical solution.




The second puzzle relates to the Burnett family’s affliction to deafness.  My mother’s form of deafness actually added a new term to the medical dictionary.  It is known as “Gladys Deafness”.  In other words: only hearing that you want to hear.  Mine is more specifically related to cell phones.  On Christmas Eve I got a call from Jessica that sounded like: Rog come help catch my pig, it’s in d road!  As I didn’t know Jessica had a pig, I was sure I’d miss-heard.  After countless requests to “say it again” I gave up, only to find – via a follow-on text message - that she does have a pig and it was in the road!

The third puzzle was when I asked Denise what she would like for Christmas.  Her request was for what she claimed I had never given her in twenty-three years of marriage!  This one had me really stumped and I had to ask her to spell it out.  Answer: A Bed-Side Table. 

I don’t have a picture of the pig, but here’s the bed-side table that I made from an assortment of Dominica hardwoods.