One Puzzle, Two Ways

I was reading Dakers' journal this morning, and this picture brought to mind a puzzle we bought in Florence many years ago. It has been raining off and on all day and having gotten wet walking the dog, and wet again putting the groceries into bags in the back of the car*, I was in no mood to go out again..The puzzle seemed a good blip subject. as we always thought it a work of art as well as a puzzle.

 It was some kind of serendipity that I found it in the bottom of a chest we used as a coffee table/footrest in our television room. In our furniture shift to make room for the yellow chairs the two ottomans in the living room  replaced the chest, and the chest was going to a friend whose house burned down. Fortunately she looked inside before she took the chest away.

We put the puzzle on the old beat up round oak coffee table that we had in our living room for many years. Many epic parties happened sitting on the floor around that old table. Fondue parties, games of 'War' and 'Pictionary, Yahtzee and Jango and a grasshopper party inspired by a grasshopper pie I made for dessert. (After a lovely dinner and plenty of Barossa Valley wine we got at Safeway for either $3 or$5 a bottle , somebody had the brilliant idea of running out to the store and buying the ingredients for grasshoppers...creme de menthe, creme de cocoa and cream....guaranteed hangover, not to mention one guest who fell asleep under the table and crept out at dawn the next morning). When they got older, but not old enough, the kids had  illicit beer pong and quarters games at that table. .

But I digress...the kids invented a new way of doing the puzzle.as seen in the bottom picture.. The rules were many and complicated. I have forgotten most of them and I'm sure I  broke many of them today , but my motivation was different. It still took me forever to get them to balance....

What started out as a possible blip wound up being quite a trip down memory lane. I could put that puzzle on our cement coffee table here, but I don't think we know very many people who could sit on the floor anymore.. You can sit wherever you want, dear reader, for this challenge. Which puzzle piece from the top picture didn't make it into the bottom picture because it fell behind the credenza....

*I haven't been to the grocery store in almost exactly a year. It was a job I was very happy to leave to John although it did involve complex list making and written instructions. I found it quite daunting. Once we are fully vaccinated (two weeks after the second shot) the rules will relax a bit, but will we have to learn how to live our lives again?