Please forgive me, but I need to vent somewhere, and a simpathetic audience seems to be the best place to do it.
I was digging through one of my cupboards in my house that my mom has thrown a couple kits in, looking for a new project to work on while the primer on my current project dries. What did I see? well, two model boxes, crushed under 20 lbs of crap. That didn't bug me too much, since the only thing that was hurt was the boxes, and I was planning on dumping the one anyway. Then I saw the thing that broke my heart. My fully rigged Roman Warship was a smashed by all the aforementioned crap.
Last year my sister and II built Academy's Roman Warship and she showed it at my local county fair through 4-H. We both worked on the construction of it, and I was the lucky one to do the extensive rigging that took me at least 8 hours (while showing her how to do it) and we agreed that after the fair, it would become exclusively my model. Well, I was shocked that it actually was the Grand Champion piece. I could never do that when I was in 4-H, so I was quite proud that she could.
So, there was some extremely minor damage in transit from the fair, one or two oars fell off. Nothing big. Needless to say, the model I saw today was in a considerably different state. Most of the oars were out. The main sail was no longer attached to the mast. The rigging that held the mast in place was flopping around. The front sail was no longer attached. The thing was a mess. All that time down the drain. And of course, I have no pictures of the way it looked finished.
I have told my family time and time again that I don't like working on my models because I am sick of them getting trashed. This is yet another example of that. I also remember specifically telling them I wanted this one kept safe and in pristine condition, not jammed back in a cupboard with a bunch of things piled on top of it.
Needless to say, I am considering putting a stop to building any more models even though I really don't want to. I have so much spare time now that I could pound through a bunch of kits, but why bother if the are all going suffer the same fate at the hands of an apathetic family. They just don't understand how important this hobby is to me, despite my repeated conversations on the topic. Not only do I enjoy it, but it is good for my fine motor skills as well. I have muscular dystrophy and am in a wheelchair, so building models isn't exactly easy, and it isn't getting easier....
Oh well, griping about it won't fix the ship (and I'm not exactly sure I can rescue it either). I truely envy you all that have a room devoted to modeling and keeping those models safe.
Thanks for listening to my rant.
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