Blouse Sleeves and Uniforms

Yesterday my husband and I were watching an Army movie and my husband scoffed at the "dookie rolls" (a dookie roll being, of course, a poorly rolled sleeve that is round and bunched up instead of square and smooth).

I could not resist asking to be taught so my husband went upstairs and got his MarPat blouse of old and taught me how to roll a proper sleeve.

He did the right sleeve, I did the left. I'm pretty proud to say that my sleeve looked better than his!

Then, of course, my son was very curious as to what this new item of clothing was. He has never seen his Daddy in uniform. A sight that no human should have to go without seeing because my husband is one FINE looking individual in uniform. Well, he fine out of uniform but there's just something about that man in uniform.

I promise to stop drooling now.

At any rate, I now know how to roll a proper sleeve.

Mission accomplished.

And, speaking of uniforms, I'm going to have to pull out my little ruler and rehearse aligning chevrons properly on the collars of the blouse.

Back when my husband was still in I took great pride in the care of his uniforms. I would launder them, careful to remove the chevrons, take them out of the drier still ever so slightly damp and lay them flat so that they dried with crisp creases. Then, ever so carefully I would align the chevrons and put them back on. I also can't say how battered my poor fingers were after sewing name-tapes on by hand (NOT an easy task).

So, here's a note for any wannabes, wives or new Marines out there. Call your local dry-cleaners, tailors and seamstress shops and ask if they can/will put on the name-tapes. They can do it in about thirty seconds, while you wait and charge next to nothing (I paid $2 for both the trousers and the blouse tapes to be put on).

Just a tip.

EAS Song

I'm not sure what's funnier, the song or the fact that I actually understand almost all of what he is saying and I'm not even a Marine... yet.

Training Through Injuries

In April I hurt my knees. Basically I overused them. Not only were they swelling and felt hot to the touch but a random bruise started forming over my left knee and it was then I decided to go and see a doctor.

I went to doctor of sports medicine and after a quick evaluation she told me I have perfectly healthy knees.

Phew.

She said that normally she would only recommend rest and a gentler exercise program but after hearing of my plans to leave for Marine Corps Boot Camp this fall she prescribed physical therapy to get me to a place where I can do all that the Marine Corps requires of me.

My first visit was almost two hours long and had to be one of the longest physical evaluations of my legs ever done.

The result: Yes, my knees are healthy, the therapist said. But.. they are weak. Also, according to my therapist, I am extremely flexible and to counter the flexibility I need strength, more so than average so that something doesn't get strained by being bent farther than it should.

For two weeks now I've been in physical therapy for my knees and my therapist has practically had to put a leash on me to keep me from running or doing too much and going too fast for my healing and strengthening process.

She assures me she will let me run when my knees are ready but I'm chomping at the bit and keep asking her if it's time for me to hit the trails.

So, to keep me from going nuts with anticipation she gave me permission to hit the pool as hard and as fast as I want.

Bless her heart.

I get to the pool and I don't even bother easing into anything. Immediately I dive in and swim as fast and as hard as I can to the other side where I do five-ten dips on the edge of the pool (a dip being a kind of push up on the side of the pool with your waist still in the water). Back I go to the other side of the pool where I get out and do ten-twenty squats.

I dive back in and off I go to the other side of the pool for more dips and then back again for another variation of leg exercises from water running (not as easy as you would think) or a variation or leg lifts and extensions using the water for resistance.

I keep my pace fast to keep my heart at a rate it would be at during running and I am happy to say that the exercise is starting to pay off.

My flexed-arm hang has started to improve and my therapist says the low impact exercise is doing great things for my legs and knees.

She still won't let me run but promises that after our next meeting (tomorrow) she will try to come up with a gradual running plan that will allow me to get back on the trail provided I promise to listen to my body (and my knees) and stop or slow down when I feel pain.

I have promised.

I've been worried that my lack of running will hurt my IST but those who know me have assured me that as long as I work on my strength training and keep it up in the pool that once I hit the trails again it will be a very short time before I'm blasting through the miles at a good clip.

I'm enjoying getting fit again and feeling the strength in my body continue to grow.

Before You Enlist

I was doing more research on the military in general and came across a post by a former Marine trying to convince a wannabe not to join the Marines.

The young man was saying how he wanted to join the Marines because the uniforms were cool and he could play with guns and he'd get respect and earn the title and yada, yada, yada.

The Marine said he had joined for the same reasons and after Boot Camp the blinders came off and he saw the real Marine Corps. The drama, the politics, the mindless repetition, the BS. He couldn't wait for his contract to be up.

He shared a link called BeforeYouEnlist.org and I clicked on it.

While I was at MEPS I had to flinch at the preconceptions of what poolees thought the Marines are like or are going to be like. No, I'm not a Marine yet but I have spent the last eleven years intimately close to more Marines than I could try to count. Their experiences and lives have touched my own in a very personal way. So personally, in fact, that I married a Marine. I have seen a Marine off to war and welcomed him home again. I have gone through separations. I have dealt with so much political crap, mistakes and irritations that it's a wonder I would ever consider the military myself. I have held my husband as he shook in the wake of a flashback. I have heard the stories and seen the lives of real Marines first hand.

It's not always glorious. It's not always cool. It's often ugly, terrifying, depressing, lonely, tiring and even damaging. There are Marine wives I know who have never welcomed their Marines back home alive. There are marriages that have been destroyed through the separations. There are legs, hands and eyes missing because of combat. There are mental scars.

To this day my husband tells me he can still smell burning bodies at times.

This is the part that the recruiters don't tell you. This is the part they try to hide. This is the part that this site (beforeyouenlist.org) tries to show.

But it's important to note that while it's not always good, it's also not always bad, either.

If it were all bad there wouldn't ever be reenlistments and there are plenty of Marines who live to be Marines. There is something good there that brings out the best in some and they thrive under the brutality of it all to emerge as fine, good men.

So many Marines I have known (the good ones, at least) are men among men. They are stronger, prouder, more confident, surer, more skilled, faster thinking, smarter, than so many other guys I have met.

My husband, the best man I know, is a Marine.

Is there a bad side that the military tries to hide? Certainly!

Does it mean that it's all bad? Certainly not!

I do agree that anyone enlisting should be fully informed. I also think that the kids who run off thinking that the military is going to be some big video game are in for a huge surprise.

I think the video on the site is one that should be watched and considered and while it does smack of a slightly anti-military message, someone joining for the right reasons should be able to watch it and soberly trek forward with their enlistment without pause.

Flexed-Arm Hang Secrets (As Revealed By a Female Marine)

A female Marine once told me that the secret to the flexed-arm hang is singing the Marine Corps hymn.

I thought she was crazy but then she explained.

She said that if you count you will only psych yourself out, but if you hang on for dear life and sing the Marine Corps hymn and can make it through all three verses without stopping that you will max out your time for the hang.

I have taken her advice and just tonight I did 69 seconds on the flexed-arm hang. Only one second short of max. I also only got through two verses of the hymn.

Maybe it's just the motivation of singing the hymn. Maybe it's the mental distraction as you desperately try to remember the second and third verses while hanging on for dear life.

Either way, 69 seconds ain't bad.

Is It Worth It?

Remember when I said I was going to go forward with more confidence in myself and my decision?

Yeah, I lied.

But it was unintentional so it's okay.

If it makes you feel any better I am trying to do what I said it was I was going to do. That is, I'm really trying to have confidence in myself and my decision. BUT.. every now and then I get this overwhelming sense of, "WHAT, IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, AM I DOING?!"

I got a really strong wash of this last night when putting my son down to bed. He has learned the joy of hugs and kisses and sometimes he decides he would like to kiss me or his Daddy and hug us for fifteen minutes straight before he's really ready to go to bed.

This doesn't bother me, of course. I adore it. It is precious and endearing and something I wish he would never stop doing.

And it hits me.

I won't be able to get a kiss from him for months. Or a hug. Or a laugh. Or a smile. Or a snuggle. Or a giggle. I won't even get a dirty diaper, which may sound like a good thing now but after three months of going without I would probably happily change a hundred dirty diapers a day just to be near my boy.

So, is leaving my son and my home and my husband and everything I love to become a US Marine worth it?

Boy I wish I had that answer.

I can hear the nay-sayers now who would say something like, "If you don't know for 100% sure then you have no place in the Marine Corps." Ooh-Rah. Chest-thump. Hub-bub.

Let me just say that a mother who runs off to do anything from learning how to sew or to save the world from nuclear war and doesn't ask herself if it's worth it or not is not any kind of mother I would put up for a woman-of-the-year award. This is a decision that should give you sleepless nights and make you wonder if it's right or not. It's a big decision.

And I guess I won't know the answer to my own question until it's all over.

After I put my son down to sleep last night I came downstairs and sat on the couch considering this very carefully.

As I did I was Googling some information on the Marine Corps and came across a blog I had written many years ago when my husband was still in the service himself.

My mother had asked me if it was worth it to marry a man a who was going to be gone for long periods of time and may even die for his country. I has written this in reply:

"Yes, it’s worth it. And yes, I am ready. I look at my husband now, the prospect of him going back to war looms over our heads, not with a heavy weight but with a sort of anticipation. I don’t look at it as a dreaded thing, but as a necessary thing. This is what he does. He’s a Marine. It’s in his job description. For me, it is my job to wait, to love, to anticipate, to cherish, to fill each one of our days with joy, love and kindness so that if we should have to say goodbye to one another I have no regrets. Should he be faced with something horrible, he can look back on his days with me and find them all to be splendid days. That he can know that I love him and am proud of him; that I understand that this could happen, and I had said all I needed to say, done all I needed to do, loved him all he needed to be loved to feel fulfilled. I look at him every morning, and I know, it’s worth it."

I was so certain then and I had not been wrong. Now the tables are turned and I'm forced to look for that same certainty. Is it worth it? Is leaving, serving, worth it? When, how do I know?

Crunches: My Nemesis

According to the Marine Corps a crunch for me is literally a sit-up. I have a long torso and no matter how far down I try to hold my arms, in order for them to touch my thighs (the official Corps version of a crunch) I have to do a complete sit-up.

I had mentioned in my blog about my IST at MEPS that I only did 42 crunches despite my best efforts and despite knowing that I have done and can do more.

I was baffled.

My husband thought it might be a form issue and that we could play around with my body position while doing crunches and we decided to do that tonight.

I've been horribly sick this last week or so and that cold that I thought was a cold turned out to be a sinus infection that has kept me darned-near bed-ridden.

Today, feeling a little better, I decided I would try my first real exercise since I've sworn in.

Still coughing and weezing I got down on the floor and cranked out 59 sit-ups/crunches.

I was so darned irritated I could have spit.

My husband and I played around with my body position for a few minutes and I think we finally figured out the problem.

The advice that I have heard repeated so often is that one should scoot the butt closest to the ankles so that your arms are as close to your thighs as possible. The reasoning behind this is that the distance between your arms and your thighs will be shorter and therefor you won't have to raise your body off the ground as far to do a complete crunch.

However, a well-established technique to mastering sit-ups/crunches is to come half way up using the abdominal muscles and use the muscles of the thighs to pull the body the rest of the way up. This takes half of the strain off the abdominal muscles and allows you to do far more sit-ups or crunches than by using the abdomen alone.

Here is what I have discovered.

The closer you scoot the butt to the ankles the less your thigh muscles will be able to assist in the crunch and you are limiting all of your efforts to your abdomen alone and your number of crunches will drop.

Don't believe me? Get a chair, and lie on the floor beside it, putting your lower legs on the seat of the chair so that your upper legs are perpendicular to the floor start your crunches. You will notice that your leg muscles are almost useless to your crunches. See how many you can do compared to how many you can do when your feet are on the ground and your thighs can assist in your sit-up.

And therein was my problem. I was so "scootched" in that my legs couldn't help me and my crunch count plummeted.

The secret to the crunch is not just getting your butt as close to the ankles as possible but finding a happy medium between getting your butt close enough to your ankles to shorten the crunch but also back far enough to where your legs can still assist.

I intend to keep playing with my positioning as well as working on my crunches in general to where I can maximize my abdomen and my legs and get a good crunch count in.

Electrician?

If able to choose my MOS (or job) from every available MOS in the US Marine Corps, electrician would not be my first pick but I don't think it would be my last either.

To get me sworn in and the ball rolling they had to give me something and put me somewhere and as of right now I'm slated to be an 1141, electrician.

Upon seeing this I made that curious little, "huh" sound one makes when they are surprised but not unpleasantly so.

As I said before, I wanted an MOS that could translate into a civilian work force and something that I could fall back on if I needed to do so. I don't think I would have picked being an electrician if given the opportunity but seeing it made me start to think about it.

An electrician is a good job skill to have. Lord knows our whole house could use some serious rewiring and it's not as though I'll ever be in a place that doesn't have or want electricity.

I've also always been curious about electricity and find the field to be fascinating. It was with the help of my husband and his understanding of electrical properties, circuits, etc, that got me a good enough score on the ASVAB to even allow me the opportunity to become an electrician so I'm not going to write it off just yet.

I've decided I will go back and look at what else is available for me and see if there is anything I think I would like better but if all I have available to me when I leave is electrician, 1141, then I think I'll go ahead and take it and see where it leads me.

Moms At War

Thank God for Facebook. Mainly because if you are a "fan" of the right things you get useful articles, videos and links of interest delivered right to your "wall."

I am a fan of Parris Island, MCRD. Aside from pictures from recruit training and digital copies of "The Boot" I also get links to articles wherein Parris Island or someone on Parris Island has been featured.

Yesterday I was alerted to an article called, "Moms at War Part 1" wherein a female First Sergeant of Drill Instructors with a sixteen year-old daughter and a five-month-old son was interviewed.

The second part of the article series was discussing fathers who stay home while mothers are deployed and the last part was an interview with some Army officers and what their thoughts are on mothers who serve.

There was one more article talking about what can be learned from Mothers who serve and that was also a very good article.

I felt they were all very timely considering the fact that I am a mother who has joined the Armed Services. Though I have been sure of my decision on most accounts there have been a number of doubts as I think about my future in the Marine Corps.

Let's be honest here. Deciding to join the Marine Corps when you are single is a big enough decision. Deciding to do it with a husband is even harder. Deciding to do it with a husband and a child... well, you can see why my most common response is, "You're crazy!"

And, yes. Sometimes I do feel crazy. After all, there's only so many times that you can hear how insane you are before you start wondering if there is any validity to the accusations.

Notwithstanding, here I am, going forward until there's a clear reason not to.

In the last article I read about lessons of motherhood from moms that service it said, "After speaking with two women who found a balance between life at home and a life at war, I’ve learned that having a child change my life forever, but I’ll still have to live my life. Working and following my dreams will set an amazing example for my daughter."

I have to live my life. I have to do what I have to do and this is something I feel I have to do. Am I deceiving myself? I don't know and no one else knows either.

I have attempted to be wise about this decision. I have gotten counsel and I have sought the opinions of those I trust and who I know have my best interests at heart. I did not seek out the people who I knew would agree with me and I didn't stop short after a simple, "yes" from one or two key sources. This has been one of the biggest decisions of my life and I have gotten the most conflicting advice.

On one hand I have people telling me to go for it. On the other hand I have people telling me not to. A lot of people tell me that I'm crazy and so many more tell me they are proud of me and my decision.

I told my mother that this is one of those times when you want to ask God to stop with all of the subtle guidance stuff and just bring down that flashing neon sign that says, "YES" or "NO."

The bottom line is that I will not get that heavenly sign. I will get no definitive answer from elsewhere giving me the exact "yes" or "no" that I am looking for.

Ultimately I can only trust myself. I can only do what's right for me and my family. And sometimes, when you aren't getting a clear and screaming "no" it means you're getting a "yes."

Moms at War Part 1

Moms at War Part 2

Moms at War Part 3

Lessons from Moms at War

Checking In

I am dying of an unspeakable and tragic disease known only as "The Common Cold." Between bouts of coughing my lungs out I am sneezing and sniffling and when I try to speak it's like someone put my voice in a blender and then poured lemon juice on top. Let's say nothing about what I look like.

I'm supposed to check in with my recruiter (well, he's not my recruiter but he's the local recruiter who I do functions with so I don't have to drive over an hour to see my recruiter who was moved.. confusing, I know) every week. My husband thinks it's silly that a married, twenty-five year-old, wife and mother has to check in weekly like a child but I say that rules are rules and I follow the rules. After all, I'm not looking for any favors or special treatment.

So, this morning, after breakfast I called my recruiter and waited for his answer.

He picked up the phone and after giving the raspy version of my name I said, "You asked me to check in with you on Tuesday so that's why I'm calling."

He said, "You sound horrible."

I said, "I feel horrible."

"Well, go back to bed and get some rest. Come to our Thursday PT if you feeling better." He laughed.

I must sound that good. "Thanks, Staff Sergeant. I'll try."

Then I took his advice literally and curled up next to my son for a semblance of a nap.

I really would prefer not to feel like my life force is being sucked out of my nose and I hope this is over soon.