A Puzzle of One Sort or Another

When I was a young mother my first 3 babies were just a year apart and to say the least I was very busy, it seemed like everyday I was feeding a baby, fixing a meal, giving a baby its morning bath, wiping a face or nose, changing a diaper or doing potty training, not to mention all the other activity that goes along with raising small children.  When all the little ones went down for their afternoon nap it was when the laundry was done and the house was picked up and cleaned, not to mention planning the evening meal for when my Sweetheart would return from work.

When the evenings came, it again was the routine of getting the little ones ready for bed, beginning with bath time, then story time, prayers, hugs and kisses and being tucked into bed.

Now these evenings as parents we would take this time to just enjoy the quiet of the moment and relax from all activity of the day.  Some nights my husband would have a meeting to go to or he would have a ball practice with the ward basketball team, something like that and then I would have my free time to just relax and do my thing what ever that was...

It was during this private time that I would enjoy working on a puzzle.  I would take a puzzle out of the box and lay all the pieces right side up, this was very refreshing to me.  I would then gather all the outside edge pieces together and start from there.  But now I had a problem, I could not leave a puzzle on a table with little ones running around during the day, so my Sweetheart came up with a solution.  He went out to the garage and soon was back in with a good size piece of wood just perfect for a puzzle.  I would sit on the floor and work my puzzle and when I was finished for the night I simply would just push the board underneath the couch to be safe and sound till another day.

When I was growing up, I remember my Mother in the evenings would sit on the couch in the front room of our home, always working on the crossword puzzle from that morning's newspaper.  She did this till she was in her nineties.  She would tell me it was important to always do something to keep your mind active.  She was very good at doing this puzzle and always seem to find the correct word for the those little squares, but this was not me.  I have tried many times to figure this puzzle out, but for some reason my mind doesn't like or understand the hints they give you for this correct word that you need that goes into that little square.

When I go to visit my friend Donna on Friday mornings, I find her sweet husband sitting at a desk in their dinning room and he too is working on that mornings crossword puzzle from his newspaper.  I  usually talk with him for a few minutes about this and marvel at how fast he is able to complete this puzzle, when I'm not able to even begin to find the right word for a given hint.

It was probably 15 years ago that my oldest daughter came for a visit, while she was here I saw her working on a puzzle in the evenings.  I asked her what she was doing?  She then told me about this puzzle Sudoku that she enjoys doing, she then showed me how this puzzle worked and soon she had  me started.  Sudoku is a number placing puzzle based on a 9x9 grid with several given numbers.  The object is to place the numbers 1 to 9 in the empty squares so that each row, each column and each 3x3 box contains the same number only once.  I do this puzzle now every night before I go to bed.  It comes in my morning newspaper and sometimes for one reason or another it just might not be there and then I'm lost. I guess you can say I have an addiction, but for me its very relaxing.

Not so long ago my youngest son was over and saw me working on this puzzle, he then asked me what I was doing and when I told him he seemed to be interested and wanted me to show him how it works, he now is doing Sudoku, he seems to enjoy this number puzzle and now has some Sudoku puzzle books that he can enjoy if he has a few minutes of time to just relax.

I wonder if my daughter knows that we are becoming a family of working Sudoku puzzles, thanks to her.  I hope she does as she has given her Mom and her Brother a relaxing way to end their day.

Yes, my mother was right when she told me it was important to always do something to keep your mind active, I might not be able to do the crossword puzzles like she did, but I can do this number puzzle Sudoku and I think it might count as helping to keep ones mind active and besides I'm very good at it too.

Well I must go, its getting late and I still have a puzzle to do...