Finished.
I inserted the last piece in the early afternoon yesterday.
Then I let it sit for 24 hours so I can admire my handiwork! Actually, I keep it there to admire the design of the puzzle itself. These puzzles are so bright and wonderful with all the wonderful cover illustrations. Hard to take a picture of all the detail, especially on a dark and rainy day, but you get the idea.
A close-up of one of the book covers.
And another.
This one is my favorite:
Can you imagine all the young boys who wanted this Detective Handbook? Who wanted to learn about “Authentic detective methods for solving mysteries?” I wonder if I can scout out one of these on the Internet? I’d love to have it to add to Don’s collection. It’s sort of like sending in for decoder ring or a special prize on a cereal box. A special detective handbook!
Such a pleasure working on these puzzles (thank you again, Vicki!) I love doing them, I learn about the books, and I inevitably think I don’t have enough pieces (it happened again,) am faced with the empty space where the last piece should go but I’ve used them all and then…discover it on the floor. This happened to me with both puzzles.
It rained all night long – very, very heavy rain, so we have a river flood warning. Today? Rainy, thunderstorms in the afternoon. You can bet I’m pulling out the next puzzle. It will be the perfect thing to do on a rainy, thundery day.
But first, we’re going to the nursery/farm stand. We’re out of fresh vegetables. I’ll see if any of the plants I want/need have come in. We’ll wear masks. We’ll take disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer. And then we’ll come home and wash our hands and all the vegetables and then we’ll wash our hands again and take showers and put on hand sanitizer.
It takes twice as long to do anything these days.
Tomorrow, we pick up our order from the grocery store. We’ll disinfect everything. And then, hopefully, we can lay low for the next week.
Stay safe.
Happy Friday.
My son and his family live near Charleston SC . During a few days of a hurricane warning with everyone home they decided a puzzle would be good to do as a family. They all worked at it off and on for 2-3 days. Got it all done and were missing one piece. My daughter in law was upset thinking they had lost it. My granddaughter went running down the hall. She came back carrying the missing piece. She had decided early on she wanted to put in the last piece so hid it in her bedroom. Had to laugh!
It’s a very satisfying feeling to put in that last puzzle piece isn’t it?
We got 5 1/2 inches of rain in our rain gauge Wednesday.
We have parts of our backyard flooded. In 40+ years in this house we’ve never seen that. Fortunately our house is on higher ground.
As a retired nurse..I am going to give you some advice …don’t use you hand sanitizer when you are at home. Hand washing is as effective, maybe more, than the hand sanitizer. Save the sanitizer for only when out and about and can’t wash hands. It’s too hard to come by these days to use if you don’t need to.
Stay safe and well
Thank you for that advice, Marilyn! We’ll definitely do that. xo Stay safe!
Such a funny story, Janet! Love it. Stay safe!
Congratulations on finishing your puzzle. Looks amazing! I have one to start today that just arrived in the post yesterday. But it’s sunny outside and I think we’ll head out to the veggie patch for a bit and turn the dirt. Then do our work for a few hours, eat some lunch, go pick pussy willows and watch a show. Puzzle time soon after. No rain here today but the weekend is looking like it could have a sprinkle or two.
Hope all goes well today and the rain isn’t too bad later!
X Chy
It’s been raining so hard! Can’t wait for it to be over, Chy. Stay safe!
You’ve finished the puzzle in record time, Claudia! I’m going to start a new one this weekend. I did venture out yesterday and walked ten minutes to the nearest post box but put gloves on before dropping in the box. We’re allowed to go out for one form of exercise per day whilst maintaining the two metres distance. There’s an etiquette developed that if you see someone approaching on the same pavement, one of you steps into the road to allow the other to pass safely, of course being British and ultra polite, sometimes both pedestrians step out, defeating the object !😀
I got a nice surprise in the post yesterday. My friend Carolyn sent me an Alice in Wonderland notecard so that I would receive the special postmark that Royal Mail has done to honour Captain Tom’s 100th birthday. He’s the marvellous elderly gentleman who walked around his garden using his walking frame to raise £1000 and has raised over £30 million for hospital charities.
Happy Friday
Oh, isn’t that wonderful! I’ve been reading about Captain Tom. He’s lovely. Stay safe!
Jigsaw puzzles kept me sane through rough times. All the best!
They’re sure keeping me sane now, Regula!
Love the puzzle. Am on Facetime right now with grandson as he writes essay about book 5…he reads them, along with others…loves them. Day 48 or 49 not sure which…hope my car starts when I go out. I do start it occasionally. Will hope to go if the farmer’s market opens…as of now not happening. Heard that deaths are still happening…almost like living in another world.
Keep writing and encouraging.
Lovely that you’re helping your grandson, Brenda! Stay safe.
You’re puzzles are beautiful! Have a sweet and safe weekend!
Thank you! Stay safe!
I heard someone say that at least rainstorms don’t tempt us to go outside. Send some to Michigan? Georgia?
Yes! Great idea, Roxie. Stay safe!
It’s the one word I use again and again with this constant disinfecting: EXHAUSTING.
A river flood? Wow.
Yes, good to shop with the dark of a early morning and in the rain. I have a friend who shopped on a day like that a few weeks back and she said it was her best experience because just NO ONE was in the store (Whole Foods).
It’s a good feeling after having to venture out, to know you can just avoid that for an entire week or more. A feeling of relief. Because these days, the venturing out is just not fun but instead a worrisome thing. And a hassle.
The puzzles did have a lot of variety and color; fun to see them completed. Just SO speaks to me of childhood! Strange that my husband (same age group) was never into Hardy Boys and he barely knows of Nancy Drew (just the name) … because when my brother and I were growing up, both sets of characters were a BIG deal and we were glued to the TV series’ and I had some hand-me-down Nancy Drews that were prized possessions on my little bedroom bookshelf. I can’t remember if I still have them (I better still have them!); they’ve been packed away for too many years from too many moves; but I actually CAN recall that two of the titles were: Secret of the Old Clock; The Hidden Staircase. I think those are the first two in the series? Mine don’t have vintage covers; I think they were the cheapie hardcovers put out in the WW2 years when paper was thin and there was no embellishment with color art ( …?… just very basic printings). But somehow I’d read so many other ones … aren’t there 50 or 60(?) volumes …?… did we get them at the school library(?) … and these are the words that pop out of my brain as I write this, “Lilac (Lane?); Secret of Shadow Ranch (and Red Gate Farm); Larkspur (Lane?)” … I need to review all the titles again; makes me want to re-read ’em all in my old-ladyhood!
Yep. Lilac Lane. Larkspur Lane. I don’t know how I read them but I did. We didn’t have money to buy books, so I’m thinking I got them from friends. We used to lend each other books a lot because I grew up in a postwar neighborhood of small bungalows and very, very modest incomes. Maybe the library, too, but I can’t remember. I suppose I might have been given a few as presents. But I know I read them!
Yes, today’s journey was rewarding but exhausting. We’re wiped out. Surprisingly, though it was raining there were a fair amount of people there. But everyone seemed very aware of social distancing and masks. I washed everything or used wipes to wipe down the packaging. I disinfected the counters. I bought a lot of plants and waited out the storms to retrieve them from the car. Now they’re on the porch. Hopefully, after picking up groceries tomorrow, we’ll be done for a while. I want to pot my plants and do some work outside, though the ground will be very wet tomorrow, so not much work on the property. The rivers are incredibly high today. Water is rushing and we can hear the river across the road inside our house. Stay safe, Vicki.
That rushing water seems intimidating. Mind-blowing to me, all your rain; wow.
Can’t wait to see your plants! Show us your loot!
After you get your groceries, you’ll be ‘dug in’ for awhile now, but you have this fun prospect of planting and working the garden…just as soon as this rain lets up; it’s lots to look forward to, and looking forward to something is just vital! It’s great you’ve been able to indulge (and stay focused) in some really-healthy indoor hobbies during the stay-at-home rules (and during winter), and now you can switch to some very-healthy OUTdoor hobbies while still respecting the self-isolation in spring (and, oh dear, maybe summer as well, depending on how the Covid-thing goes [most people will still be cautious regardless, true?]).
The blooming yard comes earlier here on the West Coast and I’ve SO been enjoying my backyard view with all the color and vigorously-blooming things of my small world; I’m so grateful I have it. I feel more attuned than ever to the birds, on the fence, in the birdbaths, flying tree to tree (nests!); they’re very busy, their own ‘community’. When I go outside from spending too many hours inside, I feel more alert to smells like earth and greenery. Although I lost the basil, my mints came back after dying in the colder months; the rosemary is going crazy; it’s all so herb-y out there; pinch off the leaves and deeply inhale. In terms of the senses overall, what’s amusing is other cravings, as in food (I scanned an article that says it’s, apparently, stress-related; who knows). I am not a person who goes much for candy or ice cream (my problem is white-flour carbs). But all I can think of in the past few days is how much I want ice cream; I definitely need me some Ben & Jerry’s ‘Cherry Garcia’ and ‘Chunky Monkey’!
I cannot wait to get the porch together and sit out there on the glider and just be. It will be wonderful. A whole other room in which to isolate! Stay safe, Vicki.
Another subject: I had an email from a relative who’s decided to leave his ‘opened-up’ state (he thinks it’s too early) to drive to another (not ‘opened-up’ state, to my understanding) where he has an unoccupied second home (not a rental property) which hasn’t been ‘checked on’ for four months (since Christmas-New Year’s holidays). Once there, he has to quarantine for 14 days which he’s happy to do; wants to be in compliance. It’s a LONG drive (10 hours, 700 miles) and I can’t figure out if he has to buy groceries closer to the border and try to find a way to keep them cold in the car, if he can’t go out to buy anything once he crosses the state line, yet there’s nothing in his frig/freezer (not much anyway) at the vacay house. Maybe once there, he’ll arrange for deliveries.
But he sure wasn’t looking forward to stops along the way, like trying to figure out where he can use a restroom on the road; pumping gas; getting something to eat (and, with all of that, keeping sanitized/safe, too; he has many co-morbidities for the virus). On the one hand, I think he’s feeling a bit guilty about being ‘out there’ because it’s not essential ‘business’ (not like a healthcare worker trying to get to a hospital for their shift, or a trucker delivering goods to a store, etc.), but he was to the point with no real choice because the homeowners’ association was sending him nasty letters about yard maintenance & fines, an issue he needs to clearly get resolved; but he just couldn’t have realized when the whole Covid thing started, that he’d be kept from going between houses for this long.
So, now at least, he’ll get some things in place for the longer-term future (like a gardening service!), since Covid is clearly with us for a long, undetermined time yet. Anyway, it’s not a vacation for him when he can’t go anywhere or do anything outside of his small home there … he really just did NOT want to be doing this … but at least he has his dog with him for company.
Just interesting, when hearing about various scenarios, small & large, what people are dealing with, and how adjustments must be made. (I do hope I read it wrong that cruise ships are going back to sea & touring; man, you wouldn’t catch me on one! I’ve heard enough of what my husband’s friend went thru with being stuck on a ship in a growing epidemic, the guy and his wife and friends who were all on that Diamond Princess boat when it was anchored off Japan and everybody was sick and ‘locked up’ in their cabins, ‘way on the other side of the world from where ‘home’ was; OMG.) This crisis really did come up on us so fast; not a whole lot of time to adequately plan. (Have to say, I felt a spot of envy that my cousin is at least getting a change of scenery with his road trip today; something different to do and see!
I’d read an article, I think it was Bloomberg online, from a couple of weeks ago … about the difficulties truckers are indeed facing on their own long road trips; their routes crisscrossing the USA. They’re men, women; delivering medical supplies, drugs, produce and all sorts of food … the many, many things truckers haul … yet they face continual Covid-related problems on these drives over thousands of miles with trying to, say, get a good-hot meal with all the closures of restaurants/diners (one driver was saying that a person can only eat so many fast-food offerings [would be so unhealthy, right{?}, when it’s already, in some part, a sedentary job, with all that sitting in place as a driver]); being banned from bathrooms at their destinations and along the way; having to resort to using port-a-potties in parking lots which are germ havens or, in a worst-case scenario, peeing behind a tree on a remote stretch of highway, which they don’t of course even want to do. It’s easy to forget that behind the scenes in too many cases, people out there helping THE REST OF US, are not having it easy. They shouldn’t be having to endure these kinds of hardships and risk of contagion.
Second subject: My latest thing going on at home with my increasingly-irritable (understandable!), cooped-up husband is, for the time being: 1) Do not mention Trump’s name in his presence (if he hears that voice on TV, he leaves the room); 2) Do not discuss politics, and, 3) Do not talk about the virus when it comes to dire predictions and doomsday scenarios. So, okay; I get it; he’s reached his limit; has been saying for days that he needs a break. He’s refusing to watch any TV news-oriented programs (I have no idea what he’s looking at on social media). But that’s where THIS household is on May 1. Subject to change I assume; he’ll have to let me know (and I’m sure he will!). He said this is now (Covid) approaching ‘worse’ than the aftermath of 911, if we were too fixated on all the news and headlines back then (as now), day after day after day, of tragedy and death and fear. This, for the moment, is how I need to respect my spouse’s aim for self-preservation; we all have our individual fragilities; obviously he’s attuned to his own and knows when to back off from the triggers for stress, anxiety, depression.
As I oft repeat these days, what a world, what a time.
Well, I’m with your husband. I keep away from headlines and dire predictions as to COVID-19. I know enough. I’m doing what is necessary. And dwelling in fears for the future is not being in the present and cannot help me get through a day. xo
Congratulations on the finished puzzle. We had a heavy rain fall last night. The thunderstorms predicted for today never materialized. The sky has turned blue now.
Marilyn
Same here – no thunderstorms. And it’s a lovely day today! Stay safe, Marilyn.
sorry you’ve received so much rain that you couldn’t do some gardening. hopefully you don’t get more rain for a while and the river has a steep bank.
hope today’s outing went well … quickly and that you found everything you needed. same wish for tomorrow.
i have hand sanitizer in my car and a little more at home (literally a teeny, tiny one-ounce bottle), but i don’t use it at home (i wash my hands instead) … just too hard to come by!
the puzzle looks great! glad you have another one to enjoy.
while we don’t know any details, two people i work with (not co-workers) died in the past 24 hours … one said to have had “severe pneumonia” (but who knows for sure?). i am sad for their families. and my mind is tired of thinking and thinking that i had (a total of) three conversations with those two people last week. hard day.
i worked three hours longer today, too, so am extra-thankful to be home, showered and that it is friday.
hope you all stay safe and well and have something enjoyable to do this weekend.
kathy in iowa
Oh no. I’m sorry to hear that. You did have a hard day, Kathy. Please take care of yourself, both physically and mentally. This is an enormous strain on you. Much love. xo
thanks very much, claudia.
i most definitely am doing that … taking care of myself: i take all possible precautions (practically run through the grocery store, am very clear and loud if someone starts getting too close, wear a mask and gloves, etc.) for my family’s sakes especially and also my own. when i get home, i take a long hot shower, pray and usually cry, then do things that are relaxing or enjoyable until i conk out for the night.
yesterday was a very hard day and i sure wanted some peanut m+m’s, but i am not getting any.
:)
thanks again!
be safe and well, too.
kathy in iowa
meant to add …
i also cut myself plenty of slack and don’t do any chores other than washing the dishes on days i go to work. unless i really, really want to do them. that’s not often right now. :)
kathy in iowa
Good. Just do what you feel is absolutely necessary and nothing else. xo
thanks, claudia. will do. hope you, don and everyone else do the same.
kathy in iowa
I’m so very sorry. You’ve had too many hard days, my friend. Stay safe.
thanks, claudia.
i’ve been home now almost two hours, showered, had an early dinner and am taking it easy so (though i miss my family) i feel better.
hope you and don are on your porch right now, enjoying nice weather, dinner and those pretty flowers you just planted!
stay safe and well, friend!
kathy in iowa
xo
Well done on the puzzle. It really is a wonderful design — those covers, like the Drews — as iconic. I’d leave it up till you had to start the next!
I hope you got everything you needed at the market with a minimum of crowds. I sometimes wonder when I’ll ever get out again.
Have a lovely weekend. I hope your Saturday is as lovely as our Friday has been.
We did. And today we pick up another order and then we’re done for a while. Stay safe.
I loved reading Nancy Drew as a child. I think we must have gotten the books from the library because we rarely bought books. (one of 7 children in rural SC!)
Here’s my story of our outing today. My husband has been doing all the contacts with outside world for past many weeks. 11 year old grandson and I have stayed home except for 3 urgent care visits & that one trip to buy a new phone when my cell phone died. Anyway – today 11 yr old said he NEEDS to go to the store. Why? He hasn’t had any barbecue potato chips since early March and was desperate! So we ventured to a CVS pharmacy, wore our masks, he got several different chips, AND battery powered hair clippers to cut his hair! He said he needed a quarantine haircut. He has beautiful thick dark hair… or should I say HAD! I wish I could show all of you the haircut that he ended up with! The back is shaved off about halfway up his head, the right side has a stripe shaved through it… and the rest is very very short. I would normally have never given him permission to cut his own hair, but at this point, why not? Although I do believe he went a little too far. He agrees, wore a hoodie when we went for our walk this evening. He did thank me for allowing him to cut his hair. (personally I doubt he will ever do this again!)
Ah, you were good to let him do his own haircut. Why not? It will grow and he had an adventure! Stay safe, Jan.
I’m noticing that I have more time to look at detail nowadays, and I really enjoyed looking at the individual covers of the books in your puzzle. They are lovely painted covers and conjure up all sorts of mysterious thoughts when you look at them. That’s what I loved about covers of books that I used to read when I was younger. Nowadays new books have very little in the way of a cover painting. They display one or two items which have some connection to the story line, but do not lead to the sense of satisfaction which you get from a painted scene from the book. Reading is all about picturing things in your mind as you read and that is part of the pleasure of reading.
I agree. These are wonderfully old-fashioned (in the best way) book covers. Stay safe, Robyn!