LOOK AT MY FEET THEY LIKE GLOW IN THE DARK. (this is a frame from a video of me struggling hardcore with some guard work)

This morning, again, was very hard to get started. I spent quite a while just laying in bed wishing it were cold enough to wear a hoodie to band, but it’s august so of course that’s not the case.

We did a bit of extra running this morning and i felt so in shape and wonderful. And my man deodorant smelled chocolatey and wonderful. And everything was beautiful. And stretching felt great.

We didn’t do any dancey things this morning and instead got right into flag work, and the morning actually went rather quickly as we spent a long time running and doing stretching/strenghtening. So that was very splendid.

We learned about half of our closer before lunch and it’s intense but not too tricky so i’m feeling pretty confident.

Went to Rachael’s for lunch as i’m sick of spending money on eating out, and it was pretty chill. But her cat would not nap with me ):

After lunch, Mr Tucker gave us popsicles as a reward for working so hard on re-writing all our drill. And then we spent like an hour and a half just taping show flags and sitting around doing nothing. And worked on some new flag work indoors with Amy, then went outside for like thirty minutes. I and the two girls next to me, were having some serious struggles with moving and doing our  new work, and we couldn’t go with the band as intended because they were a bit too far ahead of us.

Today actually went pretty quickly and smoothly (:

So this morning the guard got to skip conditioning so the band could learn their circle drill. We sang happy birthday to two girls whose birthday was today. And as we took our lap, the band ran near us, coming out of the fog in white t-shirts and it was a bit frightening but whatever.

After our lap, our drum major conducted the whole band and guard in singing happy birthday once more and it was probably the most angelic sound in the whole world ;D

We learned the second half of our third movement with drill, and our former director/drill writer was still there today. Also our actual director was gone, because he was getting surgery in his nose :3 The drill for the third movement is really really lovely. We make hearts and question marks and broken hearts and all kinds of cute shit.

For lunch, pretty much the whole guard went over to one of the birthday girls’ houses and we had sandwiches and weird orange jello shit and cake and it was actually quite a lot of fun (:

After lunch we went inside for a little while and worked on doing really long jazz runs which was pretty neat, even though the inside of the school smelled really really disgusting. But then we were made to go outside and just wound up doing more dancey things.

At 3:30 the band came out and we started doing some visual rehearsal stuff and the day just seemed to stretch on forever. For me, anyway. But some parts were pretty fun. And at the end we did a full partial run-through, through the three movements we actually know. And nobody died (:

OH AND ALSO.

As i tried to leave after band, ALEJANDRO WOULD NOT START UP. Like the engine didn’t even try to turn over ): And i got really scared and just started yelling at the world and almost cried and finally was able to open my hood cos i thought the car was telling me to “Check Engine.” Cos really it was like “Check (picture)” and i didn’t really know what that picture was of. So like four people tried to help me, and i called my padre, and then Mr. Tucker came over and helped us not die while we jumped it AND THEN IT WORKED and life was so good (: And after i got to Rachael’s house, i realized that while i had most certainly NOT  left my lights/wipers/dome light on…i had left my air blowing all day. Oops.

(P.S. i know that sounds stupid because the air isn’t supposed to blow if the keys aren’t in. But mine does. Don’t hate.)

I really did not want to go to band this morning. I was awoken around midnight by a prank call; and again at 1 and 4 am because i had to vomit. When i woke up to get ready, my lymph nodes were swollen and i just felt so miserable. But i went anyway, because we had to really work our drill today and i didn’t want to miss it.

Conditioning was mighty intense and for a long while i felt like i would vomit again, but i got past it. After that i only felt very exhausted. The morning was pretty productive but not too remarkable, other than I’m really coming to get along quite well with two girls i didn’t know very well before this year, because we have a bunch of drill sets near each other and just chat a lot while someone works with the other side of the field.

I was disappointed, though, because i had intended to fill in my dot-book last night but i just fell asleep instead. 

We got drill for our third movement, which is 8 total sets and only 6 moving. But apparently that’s only about half of it, which is still quite short so that’s a relief- and exciting, because that drill is very very lovely.

For lunch I just went over to Rachael’s because she wanted pizza rolls and i just wanted a nap. First, we went to Walgreen’s to get some ice cream and My Guard Twin joined us (she’s really cool. I was casually friends with her, and she started twirling her junior year just like me and she’s a senior now. She’s very silly and great.) We had nachos and pizza rolls and ice cream and went back and that was all rather splendid.

This afternoon seemed mighty hot for a few periods of time, and mighty long which i think was just because we had such a long lunch and short afternoon yesterday.

When we went over with the band at 4, everything was going quite smoothly and Mr. Tucker asked me why My Guard Twin and i switched places awkwardly in a set, and i made a face telling him, “I don’t know, I  didn’t write it!” And all the girls around me were like, “Ooohh!” because I’d told him off or whatever, but i didn’t really think anything of it. Because that’s just how Mr. Tucker and I talk to each other. I tell him I’m good at something and he rolls his eyes at me. He tells me to do something and I flip out refusing, as i’m doing it anyway. He asks me a question and doesn’t even expect serious answers. That’s just how it is with he and me.

At like 4:26 Mr. Hench had us set for a run-through of all that we knew, which was odd because usually we set for those at like 4:58 and yeah. So we did that and he called us in, and told us to sit down.

And Mr. Tucker started talking to us. And we knew this was serious business. He told us he didn’t know how to say it but that he would anyway—that he and his wife, Amy, our guard instructor, were moving to Virginia. That they were leaving us, and he was going to teach another band. And my god, i cried. A bunch of people cried. A lot of guard girls stayed quite a bit after talking with Amy, and Rachael and I stayed like a whole hour, talking to Mr. Tucker as well. I wanted to throw up and i could not stop crying. 

Because even though I didn’t really know Amy before this year, i’ve grown so attached to her and i really look up to her. She is so lovely and confident and talented. And it’s sad that just as i’ve gotten to know and love her, she’s leaving in just a few weeks.

I don’t even know where to begin with Mr. Tucker. Like I said, he and I had that goofy relationship; and that wasn’t for effect. I really was thinking that earlier in the day, and that’s what makes this feel so crazy. Because he was a huge part of the reason I didn’t quit band after my brother died and our other director was being a huge jerk to me. He was a huge part of the reason i joined marching band, which i LOVE, which is how i got to be good friends with Megan who is so important to me. If Mr. Tucker hadn’t been a part of my life, I really wouldn’t be who i am. I don’t know what i would do without band. I don’t know how i would spend my time if i weren’t marching. Hell, i don’t even know if i would have made it through my second semester of freshman year if I didn’t have him around to help me out and motivate me and push me to be a better musician and laugh at me and be sarcastic with me. Yes, i had friends and other role models to help me through that time, but no one like him. And that affection is pretty much two-fold, because during that same year, I had a shit director. He was mean. He was snarky. He was really just quite rude to me. He was the man who got mad at me for going to my brother’s funeral instead of a band clinic. He was the man who pressured me to the thought of quitting band. He was the man who almost stole music from my life, and i really resent that. As much disdain i have for that director, is pretty much how much i love Mr. Tucker. And that’s a fuck-ton.

He just found out about the new job on Tuesday, so the school has only just put up a listing for his job. As for the guard, we’re going to have our director’s sister work with us for a while cos she does this stuff, too. But after that we’re not sure.

I trust the new people will be fine. But that doesn’t change how much I’ll miss the Tuckers. I am happy for them, i really am. I was excited for them, while we all sat on the ground sweaty and hot and gross, before i ever got sad that they were leaving me. I just need to work through being sad first, and let the glee shine through.

Conditioning was extra-long this morning, because some people weren’t participating. It’s getting a lot easier, though. For me, at least, and probably for a lot of other people as well. I’m able to get my breathing back to normal quite quickly and it’s not as miserable running. We did a relay-sprint activity thing at the end, and it was actually quite fun. It was challenging, but fun. And I think having small teams and little ‘competitions’ like that helps us work like a better team as a whole band. So that’s very good.

It was rather humid and oppressive this morning, so everyone was kind of dreading the afternoon. When we got started on flag basics it was a bit blustery, which some of the new kids had some trouble with but i found to be a good challenge. 

Lunch was pretty fun, as we went to Taco Bell and we saw the Google Maps car driving around with the street-cams on top! We kind of freaked out. And were a bit loud like we tend to be, sometimes, and a lot of older folks were ‘eavesdropping’ on our conversations, but some of them seemed rather amused so that was neat (:

After lunch, we spent like half an hour standing around not really doing anything and being dramatic and fussy because the school’s dance team was practicing in the commons. We ended up, finally, just going over kind of near them which i thought to be kind of rude but it all ended up working out okay. I was kind of frustrated though, because i got really excited by the fact that some of the new work we started learning was pretty easy, but then some parts were really tricky and we went rather quickly and i felt like i wasn’t understanding or absorbing any of it. So that was kind of stressful, but i tried not to let it get to me. After an hour or two of that, we went out on the field to learn/practice drill. And since the band was having music practice, we took the good practice field with the field markers and actual lines and hashes. Once more, there was a lot of negativity and bossiness floating around which really, really irritated me. But i kept it to myself so as not to add to the problem. At least, i tried quite hard to. I think i succeeded… AFter about half an hour, the band came out and we had to go back to the not-as-good practice field and SO MANY girls were just freaking out! And i’m standing there like, “Hello?! We practice on this field ALL THE TIME. Get over it! It doesn’t matter if we were there first, we’re all a part of the same activity.” And it almost got to being too much. I was really compelled to tell a few people off but i knew it wouldn’t really help…

We learned a lot today. But it was a lot of hard work, and there were a lot of bumps on the road. 

(monday, august 1)

Conditioning was average, once more.

There was a lot of negativity going around though, especially from the upper-classmen.

And that was really frustrating. There’s no need for that kind of attitude on the field,

and it sets a really terrible example for the little ones.

As the morning went on, i felt really really ill and wasn’t sure why. We went for ghetto-pizza at lunch, and i had to be forced to eat a whole slice and a “Crazy Bread” and i felt like i was going to vomit it right back up.

The afternoon got quite better, though. 

Overall, not a too-remarkable day. It felt quite like a Monday, which is saddening but understandable.

So i wound up running a little bit late, and then getting really distracted in the back room, so i didn’t get any of that extra practice done that i’d wanted to do. 

My little unicorn was gone, and that made me really sad and i quite missed him ):

Conditioning was average today. Not the best we’ve had, but not the worst.

It was really hot but still really dewy in the morning, so it wasn’t very fun at all. All we really did was across-the-fields and flag work.

We went to Rachael’s house for lunch, with the girl who has gone to lunch with us every day(who has a name, i’ve just never used it yet. It’s Alia), and Old Person and Melida, and that was a lot of fun. We had nachos and cheese roll-ups and Rachael finished the tater-tot-caserole-thing her mom had asked her to finish. And I ate like 6 carrots, so i felt that justified a small piece of cake. They canceled each other out.

After lunch we worked on drill a lot with Mr. T, our assistant director, and it was really fun even though it was so dreadfully hot. Some of the band kids had had a water fight over lunch break, so Mr. T picked up one of the guns and kept shooting at us with it which was pretty fun. While we spent like forty minutes working on a 22 count move with the back two rows, i just laid down on the ground and laughed with Ashley at pretty much everything, and someone told me i’d had a really bad sunburn on my shoulders, and that it looked purple…? But i asked Ashley and she said it didn’t. And I think the reason i was so red was more something to do with the sunscreen i’d been using than the actual sun, because i had hardly put any sunscreen on my legs and they weren’t getting red at all. I’m gonna see about getting a different brand and hope that helps. 

We finally learned the whole opener! Drill-wise, anyway. And Ashley and I had a really really tough time with three of our 10 count moves and were just making things up but we ended up pretty much getting it. At the very end of the day, we did a run-through of all that we had learned, and it was….okay. Ha. Obviously it wasn’t very GOOD, but no one died! And in my last moving set, apparently I have to teleport through a drummer, who happens to be my former-section leader’s boyfriend. So i guess that’ll be cool. If we ever figure out how to teleport through each other /:

After practice, Rachael and I ate candy and pop-tarts at my house and went swimming at the lake, even though she really didn’t want to go and said she just wanted to go to the pool, but then we would have had to wait an hour and a half and the pool is BORING. She ended up really liking the lake and it was perfectly hot out and the water was perfectly cool and we had a really fun time and just laughed about everything and i think her mood really improved (: AND WE SAW THIS GUY, with a really bad sunburn on his back, and his very-upper chest, where a t-shirt wouldn’t cover; but his belly and chest were like a normal tan, AND HIS LEGS WERE SKINNY AND SOOO WHITE WE ARE TALKING LIKE LORD VOLDEMORT-WHITE. And i really want to know how he got those tan lines…

And then we got Taco Bell, and Rachael slept over and we watched Scott Pilgrim Vs The World and yeah. It was pretty cool times.

Today! Was a good day (: even though it rained again last night and got the inside of my car wet. Again. Perhaps someday I’ll learn :3

Conditioning was a really good level of difficulty, I thought. It was easy enough that I could do it all properly without cheating but hard enough to actually be worth something. I think I’m about the average/middle level of fitness in our band so I imagine most people felt similarly to the way I did. And I got to run sprints next to Cow, my clarinet friend (:

It was really a huge let down to not have drill charts right early in the day. But we spent a lot of time doing across-the-fields and dancing and I felt like I was doing pretty well and the vets and section leaders kept complimenting me a lot, so I was feeling really good about that all morning. And the freshman unicorn was still being friendly and we attacked and tickled each other and it was a lot of fun. I think he’s probably my favourite little one.

AND FINALLY. About half an hour before lunch, we got our drill charts! But our drill writer had goofed up and not included three people so I was really afraid I’d be someone who didn’t get drill :3 but I did! And I got number 22 which is pretty cool I guess and we got through about 5 pages before break and it was really great (:

The same four of us went out to lunch together again, at Bugs-n-Guts Milky Way and it was really fun again. I really love the little pod we’ve made (:

After lunch we learned up to about page 10, and all my sets are right up front, around the 50, and next to Ashley, who started twirling her Junior year just like me and we always make each other laugh a whole bunch. And our assistant director was being really goofy and fun today while he worked with us. We started adding flag work from 6 and on. And the first time we marched with the work… I ROCKED IT. I made my spot perfectly and did the flag work almost flawlessly and I felt so confident and amazing and it was magical :3 

We spent the last 40 minutes or so with the band and it was kind of scary and once we got there we realised we hadn’t ran the first 5 sets nearly enough because we have dance there, but it hasn’t been written yet. So we pretty much faked that. And there’s an awkward part right at the end of where we have practiced flag with drill where there is some brass REALLY close on both sides of us and it’s scary. I’m not sure what we will do with that… But the Senior unicorn and I and a few others are gonna show up early and work really hard on our first 5 sets tomorrow morning.

Overall, a very great day (:

Which was yesterday. yeah.

Conditioning was really really intense. The new thing we did was jogging in-step (which feels like boot camp or something!) and doing breathing for certain counts. Primarily we worked on in-for-4, out-for-4, because it was a little tricky. And the drum-line and guard were supposed to participate even though they can breathe whenever. And almost none of them did! And yeah, it was hard. Even for the the winds and brass, and for me even though I’m more used to marching clarinet than flag. Because especially the guard, likes to go on and on about how they work so much harder than the band and that makes them better. But they won’t even BREATHE with the band when told to do so, the very simplest of tasks! It just really frustrated me. Especially since as of yet, the guard has taken breaks much more frequently and for much longer than the band ever does. We also have a bit of a discipline problem, and that’s annoying because I KNOW how difficult it is for the band to receive instructions when the guard is twirling when they ought not be. As of yet, really the only thing harder about guard than band is that you have a background on your instrument, whereas most people never twirl before high school, and on a similar note the band gets their music before the guard gets their work. So. I dunno.

It was pretty good- we finally broke the flag work down so I could actually do it. I claimed one of our unicorns as my Freshman and he was much nicer than at auditions and new member camp! It kinda seemed like he had a thing for my friend Rachael. So the three of us and another girl went to Dairy Queen for lunch and we were very loud and goofy and it was so fun. And our unicorn is diabetic, so he tested his blood and what not and showed the other girl and me his needles and stuff and she got really freaked out but I let him test mine and I got really freaked out and nervous, preparing for it to hurt. But it was just a tiny poke and I was like “oh…” and it left a cute little dot on my finger! And then the unicorn turns to me and yells “YOU ARE REALLY HIGH!” So overall that was very very fun (:

In the afternoon we worked on a lot more flag work and it was all pretty dandy…until I dropped a 45 on my face and it made me really dizzy and sleepy and I Thought I might be concussed, but I was able to drive just fine and didn’t not-wake-up so I guess I’m safe (:

Rachael and I went swimming and watched Juno and went to bed pretty early (:

DAY ONE.

Did Conditioning with the band. It was intense and i loved it and i can’t wait until guard has to do it everyday. We are gonna be so beast by the time competitions start.

Also i wore my running shoes but they have gotten puffy and too tight and my feet were KILLING by the end of the day. I could hardly even walk. And it was really really frustrating trying to skim over our drill while our choreographer was in town because the Vets kept only helping each other and leaving the newbs to COMPLETELY die and suck hardcore. But over-all it was pretty good :3

DAY TWO.

OUR GUARD GOT ALL NEW FLAGS FOR THIS SEASON.

OH GOD YES.

So that was very exciting and we taped those and it was a grand ol’ time.

Our choreographer left this afternoon, and i was feeling a lot more confident in the stuff we worked through today. As in, i could actually do more than 30 percent of it; more like 80 percent which i guess is really quite good for a new member. So i was really proud of that. And we got to use swing flags so that was exciting and lovely.

Some of the girls were being lame and hid in a storage closet when our assistant director was gonna come work on marching with us. Except they were being really loud and not sneaky, and i actually wanted to march because i’m confident in my ability to do that, and our guard REALLY NEEDS TO WORK ON THEIR TECHNIQUE. And staying in time. Especially since we have like a thousand new members. But it kept getting pushed back and i was quite frustrated. But we did march, and i rocked it. And we did across-the-floors, and i felt i did quite well, even at the new stuff (: So overall it was a very very good day and even though i’m mighty tired because i stayed out late last night, i’m really looking forward to tomorrow, even though we have to go outside finally.