Good Job, Women

         March is Women's History Month. What do Women do to celebrate? Write "I love all of the women in my life" as their Facebook status? Clean the house? Make dinner? Wear a dress? 

         I am doing none of those things. I ate Chik-Fil-A* for dinner after class this evening. I am wearing the farthest thing from a dress. I am certainly not cleaning or doing laundry.  I'm drinking coffee at 10 and blogging. Cue coffee rant!

       When did I become such a coffee drinker? There must've been a moment at some point in the last two months where I became okay with almost black coffee. When I first started drinking coffee I was one of those "I don't even want to taste the coffee in this glorified hot chocolate" people. Now? Give me plain coffee with some Sugar in the Raw and I'm good. Cream? PAH. I literally almost laughed in the face of the Starbucks barista this evening when he asked me if I wanted room for cream in my coffee. What? Who does that?

       I overheard a lot of conversations this evening that did not please me. In fact, they made me downright sad. The first was as I was walking out of the art building at my college. It's not a community college anymore, but believe me, it still behaves like one. And the people that roll throughout the art department are scary. Now, in the hallways of this building there are a plethora of giant cork boards and the teachers make it a habit to display their class' projects on these boards. It's also not uncommon to have the class in the halls critiquing each others' work. This is the scene where I found myself this evening. There was a class at the very end of the hall critiquing one particular piece. I'm assuming this piece was slightly religious because the words the man were using to describe the piece peaked my attention. As I walked toward them I listened in. Unfortunately, I have a terrible auditory memory, so I do not remember what the man was saying, but I do remember what the next woman said that made me terribly sad. She said "So that basically means live it up and then ask for forgiveness later, right?" No. NO. People really believe that. PEOPLE REALLY BELIEVE THAT. Not only did I feel sadness, but I felt the overwhelming sadness from God's own heart. He loves His children so much and they are so blinded that they have ignored Him completely and live however they want. How can a person really believe that they can just "ask for forgiveness later" when we are not promised tomorrow nor do we know the day or the hour of Jesus' return? "Later" may never come. 

        The second conversation I heard was one less spiritual and much more pathetic. I went to Starbucks this evening, because I'm a crazy coffee lady, and as I was waiting in line two rather crude and puerile young ladies walked in the line behind me. Unfortunately, the service at the counter was terrible and all three baristas pretty much ignored the fact that there was a line for a good two minutes. Normally, this wouldn't have bothered me too much, but due to the fact that these young "ladies" were behind me made it almost unbearable. I really don't enjoy cussing, especially when it's flippant. I believe there are much more colorful words that can be used in one's vocabulary (like flippant!). Not only were these girls doing their best sailor impressions, their conversation was also terrible and, for lack of a better word, stupid. I could be nice and say "uneducated" but I'm not going to do that. Aside from being rude to each other, I saw no benefit in the words that were coming out of their mouths. They weren't saying anything productive or important, just spewing words as they entered their brain. As I was walking out, they were arguing over whether Uruguay was a country or a city. I literally said "WOW" as I walked through the doors back to my car.  

       Now, in case you thought that whole speech was rather unforgiving, I'll have you know I spilled hot coffee on myself as I was getting into my car. That brought me down off of my high horse real quick-like. 

       Most bloggers would probably have posted something about women in their life that inspire them/said something cool that they want to frame over their toilet/raised them and taught them how to "be a woman", but I apparently decided to complain about strange women that disappointed me tonight. Whatevs. 

       There is one thing I decided on as my mind wandered about this post on my drive to class this evening. I am a combination of many different women. See chart below. 

I'm only going to offer a short explanation into this chart, so pay attention:

1. The Raptor- This week someone called me a "sneaky sneakster" and I have been known to compare my cunning to that of this animal. 

2. That chick- This chick kicked butt and was super smart. Enough said. 

3. Diane Keaton- She wears exactly what she wants, and is completely happy doing it. Who else could pull off a tuxedo?

4. Katharine Hepburn- She's everything a strong beautiful woman ought to be.

5. Tina Fey- I want to go to there.

6. Gladys Zink- My grandmother and the coolest one at that. 

I hope you enjoyed this random woman post. I leave you with this gem:

(Don't watch this if you don't like SNL/lack a sense of humor/can't handle a little almost-cussing)

A Song on Women's Herstory
(Thanks to my friend, Karla over at Casual Bedlam for reminding me of an old favorite)

*I always feel compelled to spell Chik-Fil-A exactly how they spell it. Even though it's so darn annoying to type.

The Gladys Project

Hello again! 

Let's begin. 

I wanted to share a project today that I am in the beginning stages of and I am very excited about! This project came about last August, when my grandmother, Gladys Zink, passed away. Her death wasn't necessarily a shock, she was old, and had a couple of episodes that she just couldn't come back from. Although it was sad, and she is definitely missed, she also inspired me to start doing so many things I had been putting off for so long (i.e. bake an apple pie from scratch). Although pie is delicious, the main takeaway was this: She liked taking fun photos. 

I always knew my grandmother was a fun person. Let's be honest, she was probably the best grandmother out there. Not only did she love the Lord, and have a sense of humor, but she genuinely cared about all of us enough to always be honest to us. That's real love, y'all. But I only ever knew her as a grandmother. Yeah, I had maybe heard a couple of stories from her about when she was growing up (in West Virginia during the depression), but I had never heard the stories of when she was a single lady on the prowl. Or stories from when my dad was growing up. All of these stories, and fabulous photos surfaced at Gladys' memorial service. (There was much crying, but a lot of it stemmed from laughter)

The day before her memorial, at the viewing (which are always awkward BTW) I got to see so many photos of this beautiful, strong, bold, young lady who was in love with her man and her Jesus. Most of the photos I had never seen, and they were wonderful. I probably saw the slideshow of her photos three times straight through when it hit me: She was awesome. These pictures were awesome. I take pictures. She has lots of beautiful granddaughters. Why don't we recreate some of them?

Since that epiphanic moment, I have been scheming in my head, thinking of how to get it done. I know I want the new photos to stay as close to the originals as I can. For me, this requires some ingenuity to take the photo in the proper location, and having the right techniques to edit them in the antique style. I also want to find clothes & hats that are similar to what Gladys was wearing in the picture. Most of these details will take me a while to work out. For now, I've settled for test shoots. 

Over Thanksgiving, part of my family came over to our house and I took pictures of my Aunt Abby (Gladys youngest daughter) and her family. While I had a camera in my hands, I grabbed my cousin, Jessica, and tried out my first shot. 

Here is the original picture of Gladys, standing in front of a tree, hiking her skirt up to her knees. 

This is honestly one of my favorite photos of her. I don't know where they were, why she was standing up against a tree, or why she felt the need to hike her skirt up, nevertheless I love every aspect of it. 

With Jessica's photo, I placed her in front of our old oak tree in our backyard. Luckily, she showed up wearing a dress with fringe on the bottom (she didn't know I would be doing this that day), and her signature cowboy boots just add a bit of her personality to the shot. 

What do you think? We want to try again and style Jess's hair up, and find a slightly longer dress so you don't see as much of her leg. 

I'm really happy with the results, especially the Marilyn Monroe vibe in her face. 

Next, I will be attempting this photo using me as the model: 

I love the  the three leaf-clover broach she is wearing & the lovely look on her face. After this photo was taken she probably stood up and made a fart noise then blamed it on the photographer, that was her just her style. 

Thanks for coming. Thanks for reading. I'd love some feedback; if you've got anything to say, please leave a comment!