Today I want to take a minute to give a shoutout to two important friends in my life – both of whom I absolutely love and am grateful to have in my life. Gina, my first and forever best friend. We have known one other since the first day of kindergarten, and suffice it to say that was a LONG damn time ago! And more recently the friendship I have created with my good friend Stacey who lives about 1.5 hours away from me.

Gina and I grew up together, were inseparable, and remained best buddies even after I moved away after the 5th grade. Throughout our younger years we were mainly pen pals with the rare phone call allowed once or twice a year — cuz damn, long distance calling was hellciously expensive in the 80’s! We saw each other in person a very small handful of times well into adulthood with sometimes as long as 10 years in between visits.

Throughout the years with all the time we spent together and apart, not once did we discover until maybe 10 years ago that we both loved doing jigsaw puzzles.

Since that time, we have enjoyed chatting about puzzles and texting each other pics of our completed works. Our love for each other and the therapeutic nature of puzzling has helped us work through some rough times throughout the years.

We have had the pleasure of puzzling together only once so far, but it was so much fun. We will be seeing each other again next month when Gina and her son come out to FL for my youngest son’s bar mitzvah. I’ve already got a fun puzzle picked out for us to tackle. It will be a lot of fun and I cannot wait.

In chatting with my puzzle pal Stacey recently, we discovered that we have been texting and corresponding for about nine years now! I couldn’t believe it has really been that long…and even more amazingly, we have never once met in person! Our friendship has been exclusively via text and emails (in the early days) for each of those nine years.

We have talked about anything, everything and nothing over the years. We have supported one another through the loss of both of our sweet momma’s, the hell of COVID, the frightening political landscape we face in our nation, and of course, first and foremost, we have supported each other’s love of puzzling.

Over the years, we have swapped many a puzzle, gifts, and we are always eager to show one another puzzle hauls we have recently bought new or thrifted. We are both major enablers when it comes to convincing one another to buy a particular puzzle for one reason or other and have put serious dents in our pocketbooks on more than one or ten occasions, but honestly though — I wouldn’t have it any other way!

We have pretty similar tastes most of the time and a mutual love of Aimee Stewart artwork and puzzles with lots of words to spell. Whenever I see a puzzle online or in a store I pretty much immediately know whether or not it is an image Stacey would love. If it’s got a lot of buildings or anything Christmasy with a Santa, decorated tree, toys, or snowmen I know it will make Stacey want to throw up in her mouth. LOL Yet those are some of the images I love the most. We have just enough differences in our puzzle tastes to keep things fun and interesting.

Later this year, Stacey and I have plans to meet up in person for the first time. Of course, I will have a fun puzzle picked out for us to do while she is here too. Can’t wait!

All of this to say that I am grateful to both of my bestest puzzle buddies and look forward to many more years of puzzle swaps and fun, lively discussions! Much love to you both!