Thank goodness that's done

Yesterday was a momentous occasion. I finally finished this.

Had I but known it would take me weeks to finally get this thing put together, I would have never begun. You'll remember that I started assembly at the beginning of my two week long spring break, thinking surely that would be enough time to put it together. Well, here we are at week three of summer break...

I've also spent far too much time staring at this invisible horse because now I have several quibbles, which were it still being sold might cause me to write a letter. But it's not, so I'm not. 

Quibble #1 - I don't care whether it was designed for children or not, but couldn't they have added the urogenital system? There's a lot of empty space in the back end of that horse. It just seems as though if you're going to go to the bother of making spleens, which won't be seen (more on that later), you could finish the job of what's inside.

Quibble #2 - The way they have designed it, it looks for all the world as if the bones in each leg end in a hoof. Yet the hooves are not bone, they are keratin. And there are actually bones, not in the shape of a hoof, which are inside. The ones that can become inflamed in cases of laminitis. It would be super helpful to be able to show that instead of explaining why hooves are not made out of bone. Again. (I teach a lot of young children and spend a lot of time talking about this.)

Quibble #3 - According to the directions, if you put it together as suggested, you can take off half the clear outer horse and the left half of the skeleton in order to view the internal organs in there. That sounded as though it would be useful and interesting, so I did. But... the way the clear outer horse is designed, you can't actually do this because each leg is encased in its own plastic skin and there is no way to take the legs out of their clear plastic skin. It is a definite design flaw. I'm sure I could've come up with some sort of work around, but by that point, I was done. I slapped that glue on, clamped the whole thing together, and decided it wasn't that important. (Even if I spent far too much time carefully painting internal organs which will now never see the light of day.) Since I'm pretty sure no child ever actually assembled their gift, it probably never actually mattered.

And now, with all of the model pieces and supplies off my studio table, I can now start the process of cleaning up.

This is what this area has looked like since spring break. Actually this looks a little better than it has because I moved some things in order to get a picture. It's been driving me a little nuts and is not a space I can comfortably work in. I spend a chunk of today starting to dig out and it felt good. It is now organized enough that I can go back to my spinning wheel instead of avoiding this room except for the occasional Zoom meeting. You'll notice I pointed the tablet away from the mess so no one can see the disaster that I spend my time looking at.

The horse is now in its box and moved out to the barn so I can use it for my horse classes, and I can safely say that I will never attempt to put together another model in my life.