The One Where I Hit My Head on a Rock

It is 1:30 a.m. and I need a break from mixing songs. I just spent a half hour in my car over at the lake. Why? Because it has a nice Bose sound system (the car, not the lake), and I wanted to hear a burn of the whole CD to check for problems. Did I find problems? YES. It is kind of an eye-opening... or maybe ear-opening experience. So I have a list of things to work on for every song. But I need a short break, so I am going to throw two random thoughts out there.

The first one is that when I am tired I do strange and sometimes not-so-good things. For instance, I just hit my head on a rock hard enough that it is bleeding through my hair. Yes, a rock. We have a pillar on the way into our house, right by the front door, that is paved in rocks, which have sharp edges that stick out. I bent over to pick something up in the dark just now, and misjudged where the edge of the pillar was, and just about knocked myself out when I stood up again. I don’t think that is something I would do if I was caught up on sleep.

Next random thought: I have some favorite moments on this new CD. Not just songs... yes, I have favorite songs too. But there are some “moments” that are pretty much amazing. There is one in the duet that Rachel and Kevin sing called “What Would You Say” where they are singing in full voice, and Rachel’s vocals carry out and Kevin does this kind of “flip” on the end of his, that just gets me. Another one was a surprise that happened just yesterday. “Santa’s Really There” is a song I have been dreading because I wasn’t sure what I could possibly do to give it the cool jazzy sound it needed. And then yesterday a Marine named Charlie Arbalaez showed up on my doorstep with his saxophone. He gave this song so much attitude. When I am listening to it I almost feel like I can play sax, or like I AM playing it. And there are two or three “moments” in that song where no matter how tired or down I am feeling (and believe me there have been plenty of both this weekend!) I find myself smiling... almost laughing, because it is so fun, what Charlie did with it. Away in a Manger... this one has two “moments.” The first one is the vocals on a key change. It makes me smile every time I hear it (I decline to mention why at this moment), and the second is right after the key change, where the song almost starts sounding like Riverdance, thanks to some awesome post-production by Kevin Anthony.

The last “moment” that comes to mind right now is in the song “That’s My King.” This one got a rescue from the Marines as well. Bob Siletzky (I think Sergeant Bob Siletzky) from the San Diego Marine Band lent his trumpet skills to this one. I am kind of proud of the arranging I did on this one, with the trumpets. Garry knew since the middle of summer that he wanted horns for it, and so I have been coming up with this arrangement in my head, and to hear it with real trumpet... wow. But the moment. Okay, so the moment comes right before the last chorus. Garry sings from the point of view of a man in Bethlehem the night the Savior is born, and he spends that night searching for the baby, but without ever finding him. Right before the last chorus, the music builds as he sings, “Though I didn’t get to see the babe, or hold him in my arms, I can marvel at the gift he freely gives...” and for me that may be the best moment of the whole CD. There are times when I am listening to a live music performance and when the sound is so big that it just seems to live in me, rather than being something at a distance, then I feel this swell of emotion. That is what happens every time I get to that moment in the song. And believe me when I tell you I have listened to this song probably sixty times just this weekend alone... and it still works, every single time. Or maybe I just got hit in the head by a rock. Oh, yeah.

Well, it is now 1:47. Fifteen minutes’ break, over. Time to finish this thing. I know this sounds crazy but I have to make all the changes I wrote down, burn another CD and then go sit in my car and listen again. Edit, burn, listen, repeat.... and repeat. I am so tired, but we are going to make our deadline tomorrow! That means you will have CDs to buy a week before Thanksgiving! And I think I can safely say that it is going to be good enough that you might have a few “moments” of your own when you listen. Thanks everyone, for being so supportive as we have attempted to do this crazy task of writing, recording and producing a CD this year, and the crazier stunt of putting on concerts as well. It has been a wild ride.

The Dystopian One

I know, I know. I said I would post “in a couple of days”… and here we are a couple of weeks out. I am going to play a little catch-up with a post or two. First of all, I promised a post about Dystopia. It is not, in fact, the medical term for blurry vision. It is actually a genre of literature that happens to be one of my favorites.

Dystopia is, in literature, an often futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian. Some examples would be Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury or Brave New World by Huxley, or one of my favorites: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Recently it seems like dystopia has found young adult lit, and my favorites are the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins (love love love), and a new favorite, Matched by Ally Condie. Runners up would probably be the Pretties and Uglies series by Scott Westerfield, and the Maze Runner by James Dashner.

And I had to throw this final photo in here. The last Marine left alive. World in chaos. No, just kidding. It is Ethan of course, and I told him that I could work a picture of him into my dystopian post. I don’t think he believed me, but BAM. If you have any more suggestions for great dystopian books, you can let me know. I am a sucker for a good post-apocalyptic storyline. If it has zombies, so much the better.

The One With the 6:00 a.m. Wakeup Call

Casey went to Big Bear Friday night. Big Bear got six new feet of snow that day. Chains required, roads closed. Probably not the best idea, but he and his friends were determined. I went to bed that night thinking of him, and also of Ethan, flying in from Virginia to his new station at MCRD San Diego. Suddenly my eyes flew open. The phone was ringing. It was dark. That is never good news, right? Check the clock: 6:00 a.m. I jumped out of bed and flew down the stairs to just miss the last ring of the phone. My mind, which had been occupied by weird dreams only seconds before, began to quickly generate scenarios, none of them good.

Caller ID: Ethan. “Mom, I’m in the barracks in San Diego.” Mmm, okay...? I just found out I don’t have to check in until Sunday night. Can you and Dad come and get me? Mmm, okay.

I climbed back under my down blanket and thought, just a couple more hours of sleep, and then we can go get Ethan. Two minutes later... let’s just go now. We drove down the coast for an hour and twenty minutes. After four straight days of drowning in rain, the skies were bluer than normal, and the hills greener. Everything freshly washed and glistening. Lance Corporal in the back seat. All well with the world.

Apparently Casey had texted Dillon at 2:00 that morning to let him know they finally made it up the hill in the snow Dillon didn’t think it was important enough to tell me that until Sunday on the way home from church. Fortunately, I am not a worrier.

The One With the Lance Corporal and the Half Birthday

So tomorrow is Ethan’s half birthday. What did you do on the day you were 18 and a half? Well, Ethan is being promoted to Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps. Wish I had a better photo, but, well… he is in Virginia and I am in Cali. So this will have to do.

Ethan is stationed at the Naval Amphibious Base, Little Creek, located in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He attends the Navy School of Music, also referred to as the Armed Services School of Music. I wish Ethan could tell you about what he does there, because I am sure to get it wrong. But I am going to try, since his life is definitely more interesting than anything going on around my house.

His music education there consists of three parts: ear training, theory and mastery of his instrument, which is the French horn. He is a McDaniel, and therefore rocks everyone at the ear training part. The theory he has also flown through, since it is an academic venture that he tackles at the computer, and although he has never had theory, it mostly consists of principles he already grasps, but didn’t know the names for. The sticky part is the mastery of the French horn. He trains side-by-side with musicians with greatly varying experience, including many who are college graduates in music. Ethan has never even had private lessons, and although he is extremely musical, just being musical does not give him the technique he needs. He has to practice a minimum of ten hours a week, and sometimes much more in order to improve as rapidly as he wants.

It is Ethan’s plan to graduate from the music school in January. At that time he will be assigned to a Marine Band. There are twelve Marine Bands. I believe that one is in Japan, one in Hawaii, and the rest are in the continental U.S. Ethan will have the opportunity to submit his top three choices of location. In the meantime, he fills his days with P.T., marching practice, and hours and hours of French horn practice.

If anyone would like to drop him a note, he would love it, and so would I. He may be a Lance Corporal, but he is still an 18 and a half-year-old clear across the country from home. Here is his address:

School of Music, Marine Detachment
LCpl Ethan McDaniel
1420 Gator Blvd.
Norfolk, VA 23521

The One With the Marine Graduation

This has been a fascinating week. It has been three months since Ethan left for the MCRD in San Diego. We arrived at MCRD Thursday morning for family day. The MPs made us all get out and stand in front of the car while they went through the car, including under the hood, and looked through each of our bags, and had dogs sniff all over the place. We passed the inspection and soon we were wandering through the Marine Command Museum on the base, along with a few hundred others who were waiting to see their new Marines. After being yelled at by some drill instructors for awhile, we were directed to stand in the parking lot to await our first glimpse of our Marines… just returning from the Moto (motivational) Run. Ethan’s platoon is that first one you can see running in.



The Marines were released for their first Liberty in thirteen weeks. We were warned to help them keep their uniforms spotless, not to remove their uniforms (apparently there were girlfriends in the crowd), and not to leave the base. So we enjoyed Liberty on the base for about five hours. It was strange to see Ethan, who is now Private First Class, in his new uniform, with a very different bearing. He is rightfully very proud of his accomplishment. The first thing we did was go to a luncheon on the base, sponsored by the church he has been attending. There were ten new Marines from his company that were all LDS, and they attended with their families. The highlight of that luncheon was the cutting of the cake with a Marine saber, by one of the church leaders there, who had been a Marine for over 40 years. The tradition was that he fed a bite of the cake to the oldest “new Marine,” who in this case was a 26-year-old private, and he in turn fed a bite to the youngest, who was Ethan (he turned 18 during basic training). If they pronounced it edible, then everyone else could partake.




We went from there to meet Ethan’s drill instructors. Do they look scary? They should. They told us some very interesting things about Ethan and what he did to serve during basic training. He was the company scribe, and was in charge of many of the day-to-day operations of the company. Ethan told us as we walked away that they had never told him any of that (it was too complimentary, apparently) and that that was the first time he had seen them smile. I found that observation interesting, since I never detected anything that resembled a smile. Like I said, scary.



Skippy took the next four photos. It is interesting to see things from his perspective. The red and yellow emblem above the chest pocket denotes military service in time of war. The hand positioning behind the back was something that Skippy worked to perfect all weekend.






The cherry on top was meeting a member of the San Diego Marine Corp. Band, who very kindly gave us a 30-minute tour of the band building and answered every question Ethan had about his upcoming experience in music school. The nice young Marine happened to be the Drum Major the next day for graduation:



Graduation was a very imposing sight with all the new Marines in their “Bravo” uniforms, made even more so by the amazing sky that morning:



The badge on his chest is for being a “Rifle Sharpshooter.” (As always, you can click on any of the photos to view them at full size)



Yesterday was Ethan’s first day of actual “Boot Leave.” He has ten days. It has been interesting, as the stories come out little by little of what it was actually like. Ethan told us what he thought was the hardest thing about bootcamp. He said he loved the Obstacle Course. He didn’t mind the food. Even the legendary “Crucible” was just fine. He said he actually ran up the last hill. But the hardest thing of all was not swearing. It is so much a part of the culture, that it was a constant and ongoing struggle to maintain clean language. There were items of clothing and gear that were called after profanity. He had to either refrain from referring to them, or point! I have to say… this is a unique path that he has chosen.

The One Where You Can Actually Tell Them Apart

Hmm... seems like this may turn into Video Week.

This week Ethan faces his final challenge of United States Marine Corps. Recruit Training, which is called the Crucible. After that 72-hour test, he will be a Marine. Today they posted this video. It is just footage from their platoon photo shoot, but the photographer runs by each of the recruits, and this time it is easy to pick Ethan out. Cambria says, “Oh yeah, he is the one with the serious expression and the big ears!” I’m sure Ethan will appreciate that recognition. It doesn’t exactly narrow it down. He is actually on the third row down, and as they pan from the right, he is the eighth one in; seventh when they pan from the left. (Yeah, the one with the serious expression and the big ears.)

The One Where They All Look the Same to Me; or Vic On Her Soapbox

So Ethan is in his 9th week of Basic Training. We get letters a couple of times a week. Usually on little tiny notebook paper… random thoughts, etc. I have have had missionaries out in the field continuously for so long, now, that I don’t really think about this time as being particularly long. Yes, I worry about him when I hear that he has had pneumonia for two weeks. Or that he had his wisdom teeth out during one of the harder weeks. Or that he has a foot injury that might keep him from graduating on time. But all in all, I just try to write him frequently and pray for him to be strong enough to do it.

But today I went onto the message boards at a website for the families of recruits, and found that many of them (the mothers, that is) are following every single move these men make at Basic Training. They know, practically to the hour, what they are doing on any given day. They are already ordering banners and T-shirts for graduation, and planning rallies, and all sorts of things that completely baffle my brain.

This is not a new story for me. It goes back to when I was a new missionary mom. I signed up to be on an e-mail group for the missionary moms of my son’s mission. While I gained some valuable information every now and again, I also began to be annoyed, and even concerned by many of the e-mails. While it was helpful to know that a particular day was a national holiday in Argentina, and I should not expect my weekly e-mail that day, I found that many of the moms wanted to share other things. They wanted to take up a petition to send to the mission president complaining about his mail policy. Or they wanted to commiserate about how traumatic it was to drop their sons off at the Missionary Training Center. (Some changed the M.T.C. acronym to say “Mothers Torture Chamber!”) Some of the moms were hoping for sightings of their sons by church members in the area. One mother told how she had taken to crying herself to sleep in her missing son’s bedroom! WHAT? When I suggested to one of those (how can I put this kindly?) less-than-stable mothers that one way I cope with the loss of sending a son out was to provide service to the missionaries stationed in my own area (you know, like letting them live with me?), I was informed in a very public group e-mail that I could not understand what she was going through, and needed to mind my own business.

I realized some time ago that while it is not always easy to send my boys off, that they were bravely going to provide a service that no one else could perform, and that they were called to do so, and in the long run that had very little to do with me, and everything to do with the boy and his personal relationship with God. It occurred to me that every time I even considered complaining, I should remember the mother whose son was not well enough to serve. The one whose son had unresolved moral issues that made it impossible for him to go. The heartbreaking challenges of those boys who wanted and tried to go, but had health or emotional issues that forced them home early. The mother whose son chose worldly pursuits over church or military service... or, heaven forbid...last year, a boy Casey’s age was killed in a car accident while he was preparing to serve. And even beyond those circumstances, there is the fact that when these boys return home, they are no longer boys, but rather men, and they are not mine to keep anymore… if they ever were. I removed myself from those e-mail lists a long time ago, and have never looked back.

Often I have observed that my stoicism is interpreted as a lack of caring. Let me just be clear here. Just because I don’t share Casey’s mission exploits or Ethan’s derring-do in every other post, or to every person I meet, does not mean that I am one iota less proud of them, or love them one teensy bit less than the other moms love their boys. I am, in fact, trying to do my boys a favor, by giving them the gift of independence, rather than tying them down with the thought that their mother is home languishing in grief because of their absence. Am I making any sense here, people? You will have to give me your opinions on this subject, because it is one that I have faced for the last few years.

Which rant (sorry about the soapbox) leads me back to the story about Ethan. One of the Recruit moms hid on the base after a graduation at MCRD last week… behind the bleachers set up for graduation… in order to snap a few pictures of Ethan’s platoon. All I am saying is, that is probably not something I would have considered. But since she did, and shared the photos, I get to post a couple here for you to enjoy. I have been puzzling over them for two days, now… because I can’t tell which one is Ethan. While eliminating a couple of recruits for obvious ethnic reasons, I seriously can’t tell the rest of them apart!

The One Where He Was Annoyingly Independent

Since “Glass” left for MCRD, I thought it would be fitting to tell some of my best Ethan stories. Ethan was an interesting baby. He had eczema head to toe...tubes in his ears, casts on his feet, and shingles twice before he was a year old. He had to wear the casts for almost a year. They went from his toes almost up to his knees, and the orthopedist would change them every six weeks. He would lie in his crib and bash them against the bars of the crib until the plaster became soft and pliable.

He was annoyingly independent from a very young age. One early evening when the sun was still out, he asked if we could go to the park. He was three, and had just started preschool. I told him it was almost nighttime, and he said he would go play in his room. Not ten minutes later, there was a knock at the door. It was Miss Cindy, his preschool teacher. She had Ethan by the hand. She said she saw him playing by himself at the park. The park was only a couple of blocks away, but he had to cross a pretty big street to get there.

When Ethan was four, he was run over by a mini-van. It was noon, and Ethan was riding his Big Wheel out front. I was inside with Dillon, who was only two, and I had the front door open so I could hear Ethan playing. Being the middle of the day, there were only a handful of people home on the street. Suddenly I heard a scream and a screech. The scream was my neighbor, who had observed a mini-van backing over Ethan, and the screech was the mini-van stopping abruptly with a crunch. The lady who backed over him was in hysterics. She was a young mother of three little girls…a school teacher who came home for lunch to see her daughters. She was backing out of her driveway, and stopped to check her makeup in her rearview mirror. Ethan had stopped to wait for her to back out, but when she stopped, he thought that meant it was okay for him to go. So he did, and then she did…right on top of him and the Big Wheel.

Ethan was talking to us. I asked him if he was okay. He cheerfully replied, yup, I’m okay. He said he wasn’t hurt, but he was stuck and couldn’t come out. We couldn’t see him or touch him in any way, so the paramedics came within about five minutes to lift the van off of Ethan. I was not crying. Ethan told me he was fine, and I believed him. The mini-van driver kept telling me, “I killed your baby!” and was crying hysterically. They lifted up the van, and out Ethan came, without a single scratch, despite the fact that the big wheel was completely mangled beyond recognition, and Ethan had been tangled in it to the point that he was unable to move until they freed him. The paramedics could not believe it.

Ethan has disappeared on me many more times over the years, even up into junior high school, when once I almost called the police because he never came home from school for hours and hours. He had gone to a band concert for another school without telling me. He ended up doing that to me so many times that I actually got used to it. He was always so surprised to find I had worried. I was fine, mom.

I’m not gonna lie…there is part of me that is relieved that it is someone else’s turn to worry about where he is all the time.

The One Where She Got Hacked In Retaliation

So, my mom thinks that I can be overly dramatic. She's right. She also thinks that I don't have the competitive drive to win that she does. Not so at all. Also, her password was incredibly easy to break, hahaha.

So this is retaliation.

If you're reading this, go to the link below and help me win my mom's crazy little competition.

Also, if any of you are wondering if this really is my mom pretending to be me, it's me. Ethan. Glass. Whatever. Anyways, I'm changing her password as we speak. When I get to the MCRD (Marine Corps Recruiting Depot) then maybe I will write her with her password. Unless I forget.

glassmannequin.blogspot.com

Ugh... LAME. I can't get blogger to not allow my mom to retrieve/make a new password. Short of deleting my own blog, that is, and that would be throwing in the towel in a whole different way. Then again, that would be something she'd do. Sacrificing her blog so mine would wither and die... Hmm... Not worth it. Oh well... I suppose I'll have to be satisfied knowing that I have four times as many followers as she does... *sigh*

And while I'm complaining, I might as well point out that I've sung for my mom so many times I can't remember but does she ever record me? No. Apparently I'm good enough to thunk out a new song with on the piano, but these other shmucks have to learn a song I already know and my mom records them and plays them in the car 80 thousand times and then makes fun of me because I'm putting in lower harmonies when, OF COURSE, they would sound better in a higher, girlier voice. Geethanks, mom. Man, I've got to work on that gratitude thing... I'll clean the kitchen now to show her I'm not spiteful.