Upstairs, downstairs.

If you've ever watched someone really play gin rummi then you have some inkling of what it is to design a lot of scenery all at one time. First of all, you have to understand the constraints. My workshop is about 12'x10'. It's tiny. I do most of my work on a card table and the space on my desk. I have little 1x1 1/2x trays that I move around with my various projects on them. I am able to paint in the living room, which I do while I'm watching my son. I store most of my materials in my attic, which is about four times the size of my workroom, but I can't go up there when my son is sleeping. So, when my son is sleeping, I can't go into the attic, and when he's awake, I watch him 50% of the time. Meanwhile, anything that involves a hot knife, resin pouring, spray painting, or baking, is done on my back porch. Mine is a second story apartment. Meanwhile, as it is impossible to store certain materials upstairs because of my son and his sleeping (well, he's 9 months old so cut him some slack), I store the materials that are vital to my trade in the basement or, as is the case now, I let them collect in my anchorite cell hampering my every movement.

Did I mention that I'm claustrophobic?

On any given day, I run up and down probably twenty flights of stairs. Not bad for an aesthmatic I'd say. Meanwhile listen to this:

River
2 sets of city ruins
2 sets of ice craters
2 sets of glaciers
1 set of road
2 sets of brick walls
2 longhouses
death world
ice wals
2 spires
ice hill
Jungle
Pine forest

This is my list of stuff that I'm currently working on and that are close enough to completion as to require only one or two more tweeks. That's 19 things! And most of those things contain multiple parts. I've counted 'Death World' as one thing, but clearly it isn't one thing. It's 13 plates!

So, the question then becomes, how in the hell do I do it. Good question. The trick to this is, strangely enough, performing like tasks. I look a the list and I try to determine from what I see how many of these products are going to require me to cut styrofoam. Great. That means downstairs. Okay, what else can I do downstairs?

Today I cast road pieces and sanded them flat on the ends (that's downstairs work). I spray painted them (also downstairs). I put "ground" on the river bank (not technically downstairs, but the basement is becoming the place where I put down large ammounts of things that need plaster of paris or hydrocal--the basement has a sink, but it lacks a drain...go figure). I also put flock on the walls, the same flock needed on the river banks, so it was...downstiars, that's right. And then I went upstairs, and while my child played in his play pen and we watched "Reading Between The Lions," I painted glaciers so that they would be really white and not blue.

And then, out of nowhere, I made the pine forest, which might have been a mistake as I think people are getting a little tired of the ice world stuff. Yes, it may be time to move on.

My point is that this is reminiscent of the game Gin Rummi where people move cards around to make their stuff. I find that I'll start the day with two projects and then quickly, while I'm waiting for the hydrocal to dry, I'll find myself making a hill, and well, as long as I have to spray paint a hill, I might as well cast some rock walls real quick, and there's no sense casting just some rock walls, why not cast some gothic bas relief plates so that I can make a bunker, and now I'm gluing, so I might as well... It can be days before I get back to the original thing.

Aye.