At every opportunity, I avail myself of the free meals, er, educational opportunities offered to the MS community by various organizations and pharmaceutical companies. (The MS Cure Fund calendar is an invaluable resource for this pursuit.) Usually, I’m already aware of 99.9% of the information presented by the speakers. After all, there’s only so much that can be talked about the disease and even less that is known.
Yet these presentations are nearly always worthwhile. First there’s the free food. (I had a great steak at the last one.) Then there’s the swag. (I got a new umbrella with my steak.) I already discussed this freebie phenomenon in my post about living in the era of free stuff.
But I never walk away from one of these events without picking up at least one nugget of new and helpful information. At the aforementioned Steak and Umbrella event, sponsored by… um, some drug or other, here’s the valuable bit of wisdom I gleaned:
Jigsaw puzzles help with cognition.
It’s always great news when I find out something I already love is good for my health. This goes right up there with the news that cinnamon helps fight MS. And I love jigsaw puzzles. The only problem is, I’m alone in my obsession. Thus I spend entire evenings by myself, hunched over a poorly lit table* trying to match obscure and bizarre shapes, each with 1/1000 (for one of the easy ones) of an obscure and bizarre larger image.
So forget the drugs and brain games. Help me figure out where this red piece shaped like a little person goes in my puzzle entitled, “Little Red Riding Hood’s Hood.” (That’s an actual solid red puzzle from hell.)
Selfie of me buried in puzzle pieces.
*Note: While jigsaw puzzles might be good for cognition, they are most definitely not good for the back.
Limping in the Light 
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