I wish it had been on the edge.

Since this was a previously opened puzzle, we were careful to count the pieces before we started, but something went wrong anyway. There were three of us working on it. One of us must have brushed it off to the floor then kicked or tracked it elsewhere in the house. Maybe the cat played with it and made a field goal underneath the china hutch.

As in life, planning and preparation are important, but they don't guarantee success. As Gilda Radner used to say, "It's always something."

So, I kept working on the puzzle anyway, hopeful that the piece would turn up. That hope has now vanished. I've looked everywhere in the room and adjoining spaces and it hasn't come out from hiding. I plan to finish the puzzle anyway. It would be a waste not to. I just have to get my momentum going again.

My husband received this puzzle as a birthday present seven years ago. It's a piece of fantasy/adventure artwork featuring three stocky swordsmen (dwarves, actually) in a deep, dark, icy cavern, raiding a treasure chest. A menacing dragon, the loot's angry owner, looms behind to make sure they don't get away with any of it.

I remember us working on this once before, but we didn't get far. With so many shades of purple, variations of blue and subtle shifts in layers of ice, it was a bit overwhelming. So, on a shelf it went.

This past Christmas season I decided that jigsaw puzzles would be a great family project. I put a puzzle caddy on my wish list and scouted around for all the puzzles hidden in various closets and cupboards in the house. The caddy arrived with Santa, as did some other puzzles of different sizes and difficulty levels. In late January, at one of our Tuesday evening family nights, I suggested that we should start one.

Why did I select this particular puzzle? I suppose simply to get it out of the way. It'd been around so long. As they say: first in, first out. First come, first served. I now wish we'd started with the most recent acquisition and worked our way backward.

After looking for so long at the adventurers, I've developed some ideas about them. I imagine that they'd planned and plotted their entry into the dragon's lair, taking into consideration all dangers and possible dead ends. They probably had a map, or had already made one or

more unsuccessful forays into the deep, labyrinthine caves. Now, they've found what they were after, but I don't think standing around admiring it was part of their plan. Neither was getting caught by the dragon.

It's always something.

Sometimes we're our own worst enemy. By failing to follow our plans or forgetting to follow through on our promises, we set the stage for failure. Other times, we find out (too late) that the strategy we thought was foolproof is, instead, flawed. Perhaps a key fact was

overlooked or an important piece of information was missing.

At first I didn't believe the missing puzzle piece was really missing. I figured we'd just sorted it wrong and it would turn up. By the time I discovered for certain that it was lost, I was hooked. The other family members had enjoyed the puzzle night, but I was obsessed and kept going for several days. An hour here, a dozen pieces there. The caddy was useful in spiriting the whole thing away when we needed to eat, but whenever I could, I just left the top open and slid it to the far end of the table.

Having a missing piece takes some of the fun out of the puzzle, but I'm determined to finish all I can of it. So what if there's a big hole right where part of the dragon's mouth should be? He sure looks less menacing that way. I'm sure the adventurers won't mind a few missing dragon teeth.

Maybe they'll be able to escape from him after all!