CXXXII. Nos Falta una Pieza del Rompecabezas

We Are Missing a Piece of the Puzzle

We started out with the straight-edged pieces, including the ones with The
New Yorker title, and all the purple-edged ones. Look at that jumble we
would look through over the next week.

For days recently, we slowly searched through a gradually depleting jumble of colored cardboard bits to complete a one thousand piece jigsaw puzzle. It pictured a Brooklynesque street corner in the late thirties, with a lively ethnic feel: the Irish cop on the corner, Cohen popping his braces in front of the haberdashery. Commerce and bustle on the street below, home economics in the rooms above. We loved the intricate harmony of this colorful tableau that had enlivened the cover of New Yorker magazine in mid-November of 1939.

As rompecabezas-heads ourselves, we each had a specialty in filling its 24 by 18 inch negative space. She excelled in matching the shape of a piece to the contours of the area it would fill; I worked more using clues from the color and pattern of the picture. She was much better with featureless spaces like skies. We worked both in tandem and each on our own. The project occupied over half of our warped, wooden 6-person dining table. We covered the uncompleted work each night with a plastic sheet to protect it from sprinkles of rain coming though the skylight.

It wasn't until the final hour of bringing this whole thing together that we began to entertain the possibility that something might be missing. There was an empty space near the lower right corner, just below a woman shopping from a cart of what looked like oranges, perhaps imported by train up the Atlantic coast from the Sunshine State. This virtually two-dimensional piece had at least one spade-shaped protrusion. Try as we might, we couldn't find it.

You can see where the missing piece would go, what might be
pictured on it, and its unusual three-spades shape.

When we still had 15 to 20 pieces from completion, it became something of a tired joke: He: "I don't see it; it seems like it has to have on it some round oranges and part of a dark-colored board." She: "I don't see it either but if we've learned anything it's that going by the picture can be tricky, and sometimes so can even matching the shape." So we talked ourselves through the growing realization that--yes--in fact we were victims of the cliche that's also a metaphor: we were missing a piece of the puzzle. 

As a happy ending to this story of effort not rewarded as we had anticipated, Matt at the New York Puzzle Company is graciously sending us our choice of another rompecabezas (literally, "breaking heads").

CXXXI. Las Hormigas

The Ants

This morning between the sink and the kitchen trash, I angrily smashed an ant scooting across our counter. They get in through a crack in the metal molding around those windows that give out to a good view.  

I see the same ants outside every time I walk across a line of them on the slate-covered pathway to the laundry and workshop. I place my feet carefully there; in what should be their natural habitat, ants seem admirably cooperative and industrious. 

That same admiration does not hold inside, though. The ants' presence in the kitchen waxes and wanes, but lately has increased to past the point of aggravation. Their miniscule blackish bodies seem to come alive and increase in number the longer I stare at them swarming over the deep cerulean counter. Freaky.

And I should mention that we keep a very clean place.

About the only other pest upon which I purposefully impress my top-of-the-food-chain prerogative is a cockroach, which admittedly can be a little bit intimidating the way the dart out at you and scramble frantically for a dark corner, hopefully not up your pants.

On the other hand, it's nothing but fun clearing a path in the patio to walk through a swarm of bobos (similar to what we used to call no see'ums the way they get in your eyes and ears). To do the job I use one of those electrified racquets that give a satisfying sizzle and pop when it hits a critter, along with the thrill of a mini-fireburst as the tiny being incinerates. Afterwards, for a split second, I feel thoughtless and sadistic but that mostly passes.