Burning Up

"I only want to do 500-piece puzzles!" Heidi told me after we finished one in just a couple of hours. 

"They are fast and fun," I agreed and went to the bookshelf. "How about this one?" I held up a puzzle of Christmas cats.

"Where did that come from?" Heidi asked.

"We've had it over here for years," I shrugged. "I probably bought it on clearance or something."

As we emptied the bag and started turning over the pieces, Heidi sighed in dismay. "They are all the same!" she pointed to the box. 

I'd never noticed, but the puzzle had identical images of five different cats randomly scattered across it. Plus, there was a lot of white space. 

"I don't think I'm going to like this one," Heidi shook her head.

Even so, we persisted. It was a little challenging, but we put the second-to-last piece in just after midnight on the first day of the new year. "Where's the last piece?" I wondered out loud. 

We had somehow lost a piece of the puzzle in the eight hours it had been on the table, and despite searching thoroughly, it has not turned up. Added to that irritation is the fact that this is the second puzzle of the last three we have completed, where one of the pieces has gone inexplicably missing. The first was our advent puzzle, which we burned in the fireplace once we came to terms with the reality that it would NEVER be complete.

I'm afraid those cute cats may meet a similar fate because, as we are unfortunately well aware,  no one wants to do a puzzle with missing pieces. In fact, I'm kind of skeptical about doing any puzzles at all for a while.

Take that, Universe.