Eventually you just learn to think of it as 1 big minor scale;
A B C D E F F# G G# A
You can even slip in the D# from the blues scale.
To me, Melodic minor never sound that cool used by itself as a diatonic tonal center,,, I guess that's why all those classical guys always combined it with the relative minor with that ascending/descending thing. I tend to only use Melodic minor as "altered" scales over dominants.