National Puzzle Day 2020

On January 29, 2020January 29, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling4 Comments

It’s National Puzzle Day! Today is the day to celebrate all things puzzle – jigsaw puzzles, crosswords, logic puzzles, sudoku, word searches, etc. I enjoy puzzles of all kinds, but it won’t be a surprise for you to hear that jigsaw puzzles are my favorite. I learned my love of puzzles from my family, so today is a day for me to remember and appreciate my loved ones as well as enjoying some puzzles.

Every year I write a special post on this day, to remember the people who helped me love jigsaw puzzles as much as I do. This year, with my heart still broken from losing my mom, all I can think about is her and how much we enjoyed puzzling together. We’ll never sit together in front of a puzzle board again, and the loss still feels too heavy to bear.

I miss her on many levels, she was my mother after all. But in her later years we became the best of friends, and our shared love of all things jigsaw puzzle was one of the reasons why. We could talk about, look at, shop for, and work on puzzles for hours on end; no one else in our lives felt about puzzles the way we did, and we loved sharing them with each other. She was the first and most important member of my puzzle posse, and I miss her terribly.

My mother encouraged me to assemble the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle, and to start this blog; she was my first follower, my most faithful reader, and always cheered me on. My love of puzzles blossomed mostly because I was always able to share them with her, and they will always be a reminder of her too.

National Puzzle Day will forever be a day for me to remember my mother, and her mother – the two women in my life who taught me to love puzzles of all kinds. I got my start with jigsaw puzzles as a child at my grandmother’s side, and spent countless hours as an adult side by side with my mother assembling them. They were beautiful, kind, loving women, and for me this day is another reason to remember and honor them.

Happy National Puzzle Day my friends!

I miss you Gram, I miss you Mom. 💖

Pretending to be Normal

On August 6, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles6 Comments

I’ve been putting off writing up this post because sadly this is the last puzzle my mother and I assembled together; happily though, I love Suzy Toronto and this puzzle was a joy to put together – I have wonderful memories. I’m planning to reassemble it and hang it on the wall in my puzzle room.

Good quality, lots of words, great fit, fun colors – but it really doesn’t matter, because it was our last puzzle together I will cherish it forever.

In Progress

We started with all the little words, of course – we both enjoyed assembling words in a puzzle – like mother, like daughter. 🙂 Everything was put approximately where it goes and then the harder part began.

These were our two favorite quotes; mine was the hissy fit and mom’s was the sofa. And they both describe each of us perfectly. 😇

Thank you so much Penny for swapping puzzles with me and sending this one. I loved it when mom and I put it together – not knowing it was our last. Now that I do know, I love it even more and it will always have a special place in my heart (and in my puzzle room too). 💖

I miss you mom.

The Puzzle Posse Mourns

On July 18, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling11 Comments

The most amazing, wonderful, sweet, loving and generous woman I’ve ever known is gone and I am heartbroken beyond imagining. Mom passed away on Sunday, July 14, 2019 while my father, my daughter and I held her hands and told her how much she was loved.

I am grateful that she is no longer in pain or suffering in any way, but devastated for my family and all those she loved and cared for. The loss is immeasurable and our sadness is overwhelming.

My regular readers and puzzle friends know how much she meant to me, and how much fun mom and I had puzzling together. She was my black belt thrift store shopper who helped supply us both with the jigsaw puzzles we loved so much, and loved assembling together. I haven’t touched a puzzle piece in almost 2 months, but when I finally do settle back into the normal routine of life, jigsaw puzzles will be tinged with sadness for me – we shared such a love for them that they will always remind me of her and the time we spent over jigsaw puzzles talking, laughing, teasing, cussing, and enjoying being together.

Looking back now, I am so blessed to have given her the Mystery Puzzle Box last Christmas – it allowed us to spend even more time together than we normally did this year – and I will cherish every moment we had. We spent hours and hours over that puzzle enjoying each other’s company, talking about everything and nothing, and having an awesome time; it turns out that even though the Christmas present was for her, what I also gave myself was extra time with mom in the last few months of her life. I am unbelievably grateful we shared those moments together.

In addition, this blog is also like a diary of our puzzle adventures together, and I am able to go back and read through old posts and see the puzzles we assembled and how much fun we were having. How awesome it is to have this record of those times we shared. 💕

I will get back to puzzling, posting, and reviewing in the near future, including a post about our last puzzle together. For the moment though, I am mourning my mother, my children’s favorite grandmother, my best friend, and the most important member of my puzzle posse. I love you to puzzle pieces mom, and my heart will never be put back together completely – a large piece is now missing.

Update #3

On June 25, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling7 Comments

So in the two weeks since my last update much has happened. While Shands Hospital accepted mom as a patient, they didn’t have an available ICU bed. We waited for 2 days while she continued to decline, and then the neurosurgeon brought onto the case told us that he believed she wouldn’t survive the 2 more days we might need to get her to Shands – in fact he wanted her in surgery that night.

2 brain surgeries later, we’re still at our regional hospital and we still don’t have a definitive diagnosis. She was in the surgical ICU for a week, then moved to the neurological progressive care unit. Less than 24 hours later we had a big setback and we’re currently back in the ICU again.

Their latest theory/guess/hunch has yet to be confirmed – the samples they took from her second brain surgery were sent to California for testing. It may be a week or more before we have results from those; so we wait and hope and pray that she starts improving soon.

I wanted to wait for good news to share, and although we had some small victories we also had some big setbacks. Trying to remain positive has become a challenge for me but I’m doing the best I can; Dad, my daughter, and I are at the hospital every single day and it is physically and psychologically exhausting.

Dad has slept at the hospital every night, in her room when they allow it and in the waiting room when they don’t. They’ve been married 53 years and he refuses to leave her side. I have gone home a few nights to sleep, but have spent the majority of the nights sleeping on chairs and couches in the waiting rooms trying to take care of both mom and dad. My daughter comes to the hospital every morning before work, bringing coffee, breakfast, or whatever we need from home – she works all day long and then comes back at night to visit and take care of all of us. I have an amazing family. 💕

As I sit here unable to sleep at almost 2:30 in the morning, I’ve been looking through old posts – so many of them mention my momma and our adventures puzzling together. My post from Mother’s Day last year says it all. I love her to puzzle pieces!💖💖

Happy Mother’s Day!

On May 13, 2018May 13, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Jigsaw Puzzling5 Comments

Things have been crazy this year and I didn’t have a puzzle ready for Mother’s Day. I decided yesterday to try and find a great picture of her and use the Ji Ga Zo program and put together a puzzle of my mom. It isn’t perfect, but I like it, and what better puzzle to show than that of one of my favorite people in the world?

This is my mother’s graduation picture from 1965. Wasn’t she a dish? Hot stuff!

I used this picture in Ji Ga Zo to make a mosaic puzzle of her. If you’d like to know more about the program and how it works, click the link to see my original post about this puzzle game. It took a while to get the picture cropped properly and the contrast right, but she’s worth it. 😎 I wasn’t able to get it all assembled at once, but finished the mosaic this morning. Here she is….

I like to show both pictures together so you can see how close you can actually get with just sepia tones. It isn’t an exact reproduction, but it’s pretty darn close and very entertaining to assemble. It gets better the farther away you are, if you step back from the computer (or hold your phone farther away) it becomes more “clear”. It’s a fun puzzle/game, and mom and I love playing with it and seeing which pictures would make the best puzzles. I think we may be working together to use dad’s graduation picture for a Father’s Day post this year!

My gorgeous momma!

Ji Ga Zo – 300 pieces

My mom is one of the best people I know. She’s flawed, like all of the rest of us; but she’s also kind and loving, smart and well-spoken, funny and silly, open and honest, empathetic and forgiving, and my very best friend. It seems cliche to say that, so many people do – but she truly is. When I’m hormonal and hating the world she’s the only one I want to talk to. When I’m depressed and anxious, she can make me smile and forget my troubles if only for a little while. When I’m tired and getting stupid silly she laughs with me and understands my ridiculous jokes and comments. When I worry about everything (and nothing) she’s always there to listen and just let me know she cares.

She’s also my puzzle dealer, and my favorite person to assemble puzzles with. We have almost a shorthand and work together extremely well. We tease each other, cuss at each other, and give high fives when one of us completes a section or finds that wayward piece. She’s my puzzle posse! Probably 90-95% of the puzzles we assemble come from her thrift store shopping, and as much as it annoys my dad to wade through the piles of puzzles, he knows how happy it makes me and mom and he puts up with it. Most of the time. (He’s pretty damn cool too!)

Being her daughter makes me very proud, and being her friend makes my life better. Happy Mother’s Day mom – I love you to puzzle pieces! ❤