How to overanalyze a puzzle

Yesterday evening, if you were happening to eavesdrop on our conversation, you would've heard this:

Mickey: I need half a kid.

Trevor: If I see it floating around my sky I'll let you know.

Mickey: How about a dog's butt?

Trevor: White or brown?

Mickey: Never mind! Where's the woman selling popcorn?

Trevor: Again, she's not on my sky.

Mickey: I need balloons and a guy queing for cotton candy.

Trevor: What is the hot dog doing on the floor?

Before you call us weird and random you should know that we were working on a brand new puzzle. Well, brand new to us since we bought it from the library sale for 1$ (take that, Amazon, with your 34$ puzzles).

While I was volunteering for the library this week I managed to find two beautiful puzzles that were donated for their next book sale. Since I just happened to have money in my pocket (you know, not that I was planning to buy more puzzles or anything) I paid and took them home with me. You see, in Europe we would call them second hand but Americans are so good at marketing that everything that is resold is called pre-loved. Gotta love a good euphemism.

The first puzzle that we did was a summer fair scene from small town America, painted by New England wildlife artist Persis Clayton Weirs. You have your charming merry-go-round, the Ferris wheel, cotton candy and lemonade stands and even a band playing in the background. A tea room, a bookstore and the town hall complete the picture. 

As we were putting the pieces together we started making up stories about the tiny people populating the town.

Take, for example, the couple standing on the brick bridge, next to the lemonade stand. Blondie's name is Julia and she went to school for Architecture but now she's working as a productivity expert. Her husband plays the mandolin in a heavy metal band. His name is James but friends call him Yogi. He secretly envies Morgan Freeman (for reasons undisclosed). 

Obviously we had to limit ourselves to a few character descriptions, otherwise we wouldn't have finished the puzzle. When we were done we noticed that the previous owners pre-loved it so much that they kept/lost a piece of the sky. 

But look, hayrides and fireworks! That seems very very safe.

The 3$ puzzle is a Christmas vignette from a general store (from a print by Lee Stroncek). There is a woman inspecting fabric while a child is waiting patiently on a crate and another child is looking at an awesome sled hanging from the ceiling. You know it's an old store because a) it's spelled olde, b) the apples cost 5 cents a pound and c) nobody is questioning the liability of the store owner hanging ice skates and various heavy merchandise from the ceiling (in other words, no bump in insurance payments allows him to sell the 5c apples). 

 We haven't started on this one yet, but when we're done with both of them we're planning to frame them and hang them on the wall. We're suckers for puzzle art, we even have a tutorial for how to frame puzzles here.

The weekenders (or How to judge a city by its cover)

Last weekend we decided to take an impromptu trip to New York City. It was fun and interesting and Trevor and I had some insightful conversations, like so:

[in the subway station]

Trevor: Wanna sit down?

Mickey: Sure, I'm burning my jeans when we get back anyway.

[or on the subway]

Mickey: That guy is talking to himself, that woman is chewing her own hair and this chick is putting on makeup. I feel so homesick!

[or in Times Square]

Trevor: Look, there's Mario! And Mickey Mouse!

Mickey: And Spiderman! And Batman!

Trevor: And the cowboy from Toy Story!

Mickey: And Hello Kitty, I never knew she had such big boobs.

But seriously, this trip was great and I'm happy I got to see two of my friends while I was there. We drove to New York via Allentown through pouring rain. We had sushi and rubbed against strangers in Times Square and Fifth Avenue. We got chased out of Central Park by a thunderstorm and I was looked down upon by the Empire State Building (and pigeons).

 

New York will always be the city where we saw kids on a leash and dogs in a stroller.

The sign on the cab next to the Disney billboard seems almost as weird as the giant button and needle in the Fashion District. 

I can't wait to go back in the fall and do a tour of the art museums and galleries.

New Yorkers are apparently fearless in regards to Mother Nature. We had checked the weather before going to the city, and knew that it would rain later in the afternoon. As we walked about Central Perk Park, the clouds rolled in and the thunder began to rumble. I was raised that when you hear thunder, you go immediately inside. You definitely don't stand in a park next to trees. Now I realize that New York is full of tall buildings that will absorb most of the lightning, but I'm no fan of torrential downpours either. So as we were making our way (quickly) out of the park, the New Yorkers were laughing at the thunder (literally) and walking INTO the park. We found cover by the subway station the moment the skies opened up. Then we spent the next 10 minutes watching the the brave locals come bolting out of the park, through traffic, to get to the subway.  The subway was full of wet people for rest of the day (and I thought it smelled bad on a sunny day).

We then drove back to the most beautiful sunset that America has treated me to so far.

How to celebrate Mother's Day

I really like Americans. God bless them, they're festive!

When I came here in February they were getting ready to celebrate St. Patrick's Day (March 17th), even though the majority of people in our town is neither Irish nor Catholic. We were driving by the local Irish restaurant and we saw a girl ready to praise the saint. She was wearing shorts and fishnet tights ... in February. She was that pious.

Then came Cinco de Mayo, but the frenzy started in mid-April. It's a good reason to go out and get drunk even if you're not ... you guessed it ... of Mexican descent.

But do you know who likes celebrating even more than people who get wasted every chance they get? Retail. It amazes me what we get in the mail and what we see in stores around all of these days. Take, for example, the Mother's Day catalog that we got from Sears the other day.

This made me think of my mom and of how much I miss her. So I wanted to buy her a present for Mother's Day. The first thing that caught my eye on the front page was this beauty:

Wow, a Craftsman 21-HP lawn tractor with 46-in deck for my mom! She'll love it! But then I thought my mom's lawn is not that big and the dogs chew most of it anyway.

So I turned the page and there it was - THE PERFECT PRESENT.

Diamond jewelry for only 1999.99. Not bad! On the other hand, who buys diamond jewelry encased in 10k gold?! Pff, that's absurd, my mom deserved better than 10k gold.

I was beginning to get disheartened, but I kept browsing the brochure and found this bad boy:

I was almost reconsidering buying this amazing Craftsman rear wheel propelled mower when I realized "what if mom wants a front wheel propelled mower?". So I put this idea on the back burner in case nothing better came along.

But Good Lord something did!

I could buy her a 2999.99 Kenmore fridge. I don't know why I hadn't thought of that before. Then Trevor pointed out that we'd have to ship it about 4000 miles and that would cost me more than the fridge itself. Luckily at the same time I realized that we celebrate Mother's Day on March 8th in Europe and my mom doesn't need anything from the Sears catalog to know how much I love her.

But one of these days I will get myself a gas-guzzling lawn mower to go with my organic garden and lawn. It just makes so much sense.

How to become an artist in 2 minutes or less

This past weekend our town celebrated Community Day. Small town Pennsylvania community day is all about fun, food and music - a real slice of Americana. All the local churches serve free food and organize activities on the lawn. Small businesses reach out to the community and showcase what they've got to offer. So the pie shop, coffee house, flowers shop, art studio, art galleries, ballet school and yoga studios all came together on what seemed to be an episode of Gilmore Girls (minus the fast talking).

While Trevor sang with the band, I got recruited into helping with children's spin art. I was the worst possible kind of volunteer since I had no idea what spin art was. So before manning the booth I had to learn what I was supposed to be showing others.

The spin art machine looks much like a metal box the size of a microwave. It has a plastic lid with a hole through which children can squeeze paint on a paper the size of a postcard. The machine spins the paper very fast and the blotches get dispersed into whimsical patterns. If it sounds messy it's because it is. It didn't take long for me to destroy a pair of jeans and turn myself into a watercolor monster.

 

Spin art machine

My primary job was to label paper bags with the kids' names, so they could pick up their spin art after it dried. Let me tell you, kids today have unusually cool names with even weirder spellings. My unfamiliarity with nuveaux American names, coupled with loud music, kids' inability to spell, and their lack of teeth and/or mouths full of food made for some embarrassing blunders. I guess little  Sequioa and Ailleanna will have to get used to having their names misspelled. It builds character and it's a great ice breaker. Been there, done that, that's why I go by Mickey.

Some of the spin art left out to dry

At the end of the day when we were wrapping up the booth, both Trevor and I did some spin art. We're thinking all our walls are bare but our hearts are full of good intentions so the squishing and peeking through a plastic hole commenced. These amazingly intricate designs will be framed and one day, when we're old and famous, our grandchildren will have permission to sell them on Ebay.

The art on the bottom row is all mine and probably the closest I'll ever get to being an artist. The top orangey design is Trevor's. Should I be scared at the intensity of the colors? Quick, I need some pop psychology to analyze that and find out who I really married! 

This is a very well-executed design by a little girl named Grace. I accidentally took it home at the end of the day because Grace apparently forgot to pick it up. It is, by far, our best piece.

Another one of the churches was running an activity called "plant the seed and watch it grow" so I planted wildflowers and Trevor planted a gourd.

How to connect with nature in your back yard

1. Take a city girl (born and bred).

2. Transplant her to charming small town America. Add in a dimpled musician for really good incentive.

3. Have her peek out the window one morning while drinking her coffee.

4. Throw in a squirrel prancing around on the fence.

5. Girl jumps up and down like a maniac, screaming: "It's my first squirrel here!".

6. The name Sir Walnut McFluffyButt is coined (for the squirrel, not the girl).

7. Girl patrols around the yard with a camera in her pocket for the next 2 months.

Thus was the story of how Mickey and American wildlife got acquainted.

This morning Trevor was having a staring contest with Walnut (or one of his relatives) without realizing that the dear Sir was happily munching on my freshly planted gladiola bulbs. Fierce beasts!

How to apply for a fiancee visa: Part 5

It's been a while since we wrote anything despite having nothing to do except move continents (insert imagery of Mickey pulling continents together by a rope wrapped comically around them). But here is what we had to go through between our last post and the actual arrival in the United States. For a recap, see this post.

European Hoop 1 - The National Visa Center sent our approval to the consulate in a timely manner and we didn't have to make much dreaded phone calls.

European Hoop 2 - The Medical Interview

The branch of medical providers that the US Embassy uses for their medical exams is the same one that is used for pediatric services.

Imagine me and my friend (who kindly accepted to share with me this "amazing" experience) stepping into a building full of screaming kids at 8:30 in the morning. Ok, maybe I was the one crying the loudest but the sniffles were all theirs. I didn't do the fainting, but it was close.

"Needle time" was so nerve wracking that the nurse (a nurse that usually works with children, mind you) was snickering at my arm jerking. So I turned to the adult equivalent of "I want my mom!" which was "Can my friend come in?". When my friend came in she joined in the nurse's giggles and my remaining pride was taken with the blood sample.

European Hoop 3 - The Visa Interview

This was probably the decisive part of the process and in retrospect it seems like it was the easiest part. The interview was scheduled for early February and the U.S. Embassy is located somewhere outside the city in the middle of an open field. For security reasons everybody has to wait outside the embassy's gates until the time of the appointment, so imagine Mickey (and 8 or 9 other people) shaking in the brisk February air under a bus stop-like shack across the street from the actual building. This whole set up leaves you with the choice to either shiver in the cold or tremble with anxiety about being late.

The interview went quickly and the Consular Officer politely asked me about ten questions, all of them about our relationship. She then said that she had issued me the visa and I should have it delivered by the end of the week. The hard part was that I was the last one on their list so they called me last to give the paperwork, to pay the fee, for biometrics (fingerprints) and for the interview. I was feeling so anxious and all the waiting certainly didn't help. All in all I was inside an hour and a half with the last 10 minutes being the actual interview.

Trevor (coaching me before the interview): Remember, when they ask you questions answer seriously. No jokes!

I managed to go through the interview without any jokes, which is not easy for someone who uses humor to diffuse anxiety.

Mickey waiting for her interview

How to mail things to Europe

As much as long periods of waiting are frustrating, those short periods of waiting right when the end is sooooo close can be equally frustrating.

Now that our petition is approved, the medicals are done, passport photos taken, all that remains is for a few documents to arrive from the US.

We watched excitedly (via shipment tracking) as our petition was sent from the National Visa Center and arrived in the US Embassy only 3 days later.

We assumed (like our many postcards already sent and received) that First-class mail via the USPS would be sufficient to send my documents to Mickey. We were wrong.

After sending one package "first-class" we realized we had one more document, so I sent a second package 2 days later using Priority mail. It has arrived. The first package has stillll not arrived. Imagine running a race and you get to the last hurdle only to have someone hold up a sign that says you must stop and wait for a snail to cross in front of you before you can continue. That's what this feels like.

I'm pretty sure this is what the USPS does with "first-class" mail:

How to prove a bona fide relationship

Now that our Petition for Alien Fiancee has been approved, Mickey gets to take her turn at filling out paperwork and appearing for an interview with a U.S. Consular Officer. The primary function of this interview is for her to convince the Officer that our relationship is bone fide, which Mickey always reminds me is correctly pronounced bone-ah FEED-ey not the Americanized bone-uh fahyd.

As you may or may not be aware, government paperwork is no simple task (reminder: it's tax season). In fact, it's so bad, Congress passed an entire ACT devoted to the problem (which itself was 32 pages and later amended with another 23). Since this is the second set of forms we will have to submit to the U.S. government (with at least 3 more sets coming) it only seems fair that we should take the opportunity to turn the tables a little.

So if they want proof of a legitimate relationship, we have plenty of emails, pictures, phone records, online chat logs, and of course this blog to show for it. Your move USCIS.

I hope you enjoy the new look of our stick figures. Mickey is too cute not to draw her a little better.