Uncle William's Solitaire

I've been wanting to share this two-deck solitaire for a while, just because it's a good way to relax at the end of the day. I learned it from my best friend, Cathy (accidentally called her my cousin in the video below!) who learned it from her cousin, the daughter of Cathy's great-uncle William. Uncle William was a physician, and every night he would play this game, perhaps to unwind -- his daughter remembers falling asleep to the sound of the cards slapping the table. 

Unlike the solitaire games played on computer/online that take the tedium of laying the cards out of our hands, here it's part of the fun -- getting the right numbered card on the right pile is its own pleasure and reward (you may notice that I miss a six of clubs on the six pile in the video -- I was moving fast for the sake of the video being shorter, and that six didn't register!) 

Uncle William's Solitaire is probably the neatest solitaire I know, and I'm not sure how well-known it might be -- perhaps Cathy and her family are the only people on earth who know how to play it. I've shared it with a few in my family, and now I share it with you, just because I don't want it to be lost in the mists of antiquity. It's rare that all the cards come up in the right order for all eight suits, but it does happen, I promise.

Find yourself two decks of cards, and play for yourself. It's a great way to relax, but be warned... it can be addictive!

Life is like a jigsaw puzzle

During our family's very busy Christmas week, as we attended different gatherings, took a trip to Lethbridge to see Lee's parents, celebrated a 24th birthday, and wished for warmer weather, what I really wanted to do (besides what I was doing) was to put on my pink fuzzy jammies, make some tea, and set a jigsaw puzzle. It's an indulgence I allow myself every Christmas, one of those ME time things that fit with the 2018 Word of the Year, now that I think about it.

Sunday night

I had to wait until January 2nd to get at it this year, and it was worth the wait. This year's puzzle was of a painting of an Italian restaurant corner. It was a brain buster, the kind where you can't even set the edge pieces because they're shaped so strangely that you simply can't separate them all from the inner pieces. And I was never quite sure of the shape of a piece (or pieces) to fill a space until I'd set the ones around it. I'm not sure I would have finished the puzzle without Suzanna's help.

Puzzling is not a steady pastime for me -- it's a once a year thing because it's so time intensive, and my attention span flags due to many competing interests during Christmas break. For the first week, I felt like I was doing well to set ten pieces a day... after all the sorting of similar colours, there was lots of just sitting and looking, trying a piece in a spot, trying a different piece, then picking up the first one, turning it sideways or upside down, and discovering that perhaps it actually did fit in the first place. It was progressing so slowly that I was tempted to put it back in the box after a few days. But then Suzanna set all the tables, and we were committed. Even so, it wasn't until Sunday night that I began to feel like we had it licked!

Last night

At the same time as it's brain-taxing, I find puzzling completely relaxing. My mind is on the puzzle pieces, yes, but there is also room for reflection, conversation or background music. And there's gotta be something addictive about setting a puzzle piece in the right place. Last night I sat at the table saying to myself, "I should go to bed, but I just have to find one piece to fill that space there," "oh, and one more there," "and this one should be really obvious," until it was almost midnight! I wonder what part of the brain lights up when pieces fit. I suspect someone has already done an interesting MRI study!

When you think about it, setting a puzzle is a rather silly way to spend several hours of this one amazing life I've been given. There's nothing permanent to show for it. But maybe that's part of the point. We human beings have a way of thinking that our lives and our possessions will always be there, even though the Psalmist says:

Our days on earth are like grass;
like wildflowers, we bloom and die.
The wind blows, and we are gone --
as though we had never been here. (Psalm 103: 15-16, New Living Translation)

And I might add, we are like a puzzle that is set, dismantled, and gone!

Setting a puzzle isn't a bad metaphor for life. It takes a while to sort things out, to put things in place, and to get things right. Pieces don't always go where we expect them to, and occasionally, one goes missing. Some pieces set together long before we understand how they fit into the whole. But if we keep at it, eventually we see our big picture, imperfect though it is.

All done!

My one puzzle of 2018 is finished. Suzanna and I gave each other a high five as she put in the last piece this afternoon, and we felt that sense of satisfaction that comes from completing a challenge, even though it was a rather frivolous one. I am very aware that there are many people in this world who simply don't have the luxury of time to set a puzzle like this one, and I thought of them, too, and offered a little prayer for them to have a bit of ME time too.

Now I can take down the card table, put the living room back in order and get on with the usual January activities -- work for L'Arche board and school council meetings coming up soon, a pile of books that I should read, an afghan that needs to be finished, ordering seeds -- and planning this year's garden!

New Year's fun

How many engineers does it take to open a champagne bottle?

Well, last night, it was both the ones I had on hand. We spent the evening with my husband's brother's family, and toasted in the New Year with a little bottle of champagne that didn't want to open very easily. A couple of minutes after we counted down to the New Year, Churchill Square's fireworks display appeared through the trees, so we turned out all our lights and stood in the living room to watch and listen to the reverberations. It was a lovely way to welcome 2012.

Today's fun was a beautiful walk around Fort Edmonton Park on the River Loop trail. We parked at Fort Ed and headed for the river, and the 3.5 km loop took us perhaps an hour... with a little side trip to my favourite footbridge.

Our long winter shadows... and our girls on the trail.

The Fort Edmonton Bridge

It was a perfect afternoon for a stroll, and I have to say that I loved getting some fresh air and exercise after all the food and indoor activity we've indulged in lately!

As I sit here moodling, I'm hearing a strange, buzzy little sound, like my daughter's tiny, wind-up penguin toy puttering around the living room floor... but it's our two Christmas Break guests, digging under their paper shavings. My youngest daughter brought them to stay for two weeks because her teacher has gone to tropical climes to get married, and someone needed to look after the critters. We can't remember their actual, class-voted names, so we call them French Fry and Chocolate. I'm not too crazy about them, so this is a good way to let my girls enjoy gerbils without having to keep them forever. Being nocturnal creatures, they tend to get noisier at night, so we've been doing our best to keep them awake during the day. At the moment, they're making more noise than my darling husband, who is gently snoring on the couch.

I love these lazy holiday afternoons. I hope you're enjoying a few, too. Happy New Year!