Life Is A Puzzle

Every year for Christmas, I spend the last two months of the year crafting "things with meaning" for friends, family, and strangers. I have been doing this for the last three decades, and it helps my mental sanity as much as building lasting friendships around the planet. Today, my wife and I delivered a present to April.

Here is how it came to life: We built some additional rooms to our house and were left with lots of wood scraps. I decided to combine all the ends of 2x4s to form a puzzle piece. I was following the Golden Ratio rule when I realized that I was going to miss four pieces...

So, I adjusted my design aim, and from a perfect circle, I switched to a full puzzle. Painstakingly, I glued each piece and held it all together under the sun to make it one big piece.

Naturally, it was not all flat, and it looked too rough to be lovely, so I flattened the side I was going to decorate and cleaned the back side. I would have taken pictures if not for Lynda (the chicken) stepping over and by my side like I was handling candy on Halloween. I called in Mama Chicken, and they rashly left me alone in the shed.

After removing glue residuals and grinding, I burnt the edges to give a vignette + vintage look to the back side.

I was almost done with the carving when I heard "caw caw" which is our calling for "run, sunset time". During this time of the year, we watch the sunset via Facetime with our daughters and some friends across the planet who have a matching timezone.

In the morning I lasered the "messages" I wanted to pass on with my usual quirky style and then asked my bread winner (also known as the bread lady now) to use her steady and patient hand to shade my typical hawaiian plumerias design.

As usual, and as we always say "together we make one artist". She nailed it.

I then finished the carving part with the "elements" I guessed about April and start the painting process. I had seen pictures of forklifts, groceries promotions and since to me she was the FaceBook lady I had to add some social elements. Finished off with some island touches and at voila'.

and as per institutional memories of "random act of kindness" tradition, a delivery photo.

That's all.

Backstory

If you randomly stumbled upon this page, here is a super brief backstory. Years back, a personal blog post caused a frenzy on the island that were not living on yet. The locals thought I was some kind of billionaire Conquistador; I thought I was going to do some good by creating a non-profit association hiring only locals to teach people people around the world how to live Aloha in their own countries.

Long story short, historical ignorance on my end made me the "bad guy," upset some people and I wouldn't even had a clue of what was happening if it wasn't for April. She approached and educated me over Instagram, provided some context, and made me realize why people were feeling threatened.

At that point, it was easy to pull the plug on what I thought was a good idea for going to be retired Mario and just moved on.

Fast forwarding a few years later, I interacted with April once again for something much more frivolous about a Facebook group she manages and she was so kind in her interactions that made me think "oh such a nice lady" - I am going to make her a present for xmas.

It was upon delivery of the present this morning that I realized that those two nice people were actually ONE good person 😅. I guess that is my own xmas surprise! 🎄

For as most of my Christmas surprises, I had never met the lady before today, so I just used my neuroscience hunches to mix good vibes in the artwork hoping that I would hit the spot with the design. April thought that I did, I am a happy camper. The end.

Next week while Vickie bakes, I am going to make a present for a gentleman that stopped by the road while I was walking my neighboor's dog. I gave all my water to the puppy and there was nothing left for me. He stopped, gave me some of his water from the back of the truck and two bananas. Gotta love our community!!

See you next week and as always, when in doubt, live aloha.