What's My Age Again? by Blink 1-ATE-2

Listening to my daily fix of emotional Bon Iver melodies, I am feeling a little more 22. When I listen to Taylor Swift, though, I ironically feel smaller and younger. For those who want a quick, tasty little treat of what this feels like, read below:

Thank you for this, Mom.

Ingredients:

• 1 pink Minnie Mouse Tervis cup. The ones w/ the sippy lids.
• 1 response from (literally) all of your friends about your upcoming audition for a women & teen health center photo shoot: "are you the baby or the mom?"
• 1 attempt at a voiceover side for a 20's-something girl at a bar that you fail
• 1 attempt at a voiceover side for the character of a "Little Boy" that you nail
• 7+ shows that you watched that you were proud to report to your VO teacher:
    Rugrats in Pairs 
     - 
    Phineas & Ferb
     - 
  
    Bubble Guppies (so freaking good. but also a little scandalous, no?)   - 
  
    Team Umizoomi   - 
  
    Max & Ruby (OK, honestly, all they do-- every time-- is make cakes and wait for grandma to come. Am I right?!)   - 
  
    Mike the Knight
  
     -   Many clips from Sprout TV online
  (whether any of these were via babysitting or fun is irrelevant)
• 1 "artist-for-a-day"-type employee who asks you if you and the girl you babysit for are sisters
• 10 min. late to your PT appointment because you were hastily printing cover letters & resumes to send in the mail TODAY that you didn't get up early enough to print, only to realize, as soon as you get on the train, that do you NOT have them... Elementary, Anna. Elementary. 

Instructions:
Maybe spending 5 hours a day with a 5-year-old has had its effects on you. Or maybe you're reverting to childish tendencies because you are alone, generally according to the outside eye unproductive, and now, some may call, a "real adult". Or maybe you're Benjamin Button-ing this. Regardless, carrying around a Pink Minnie Mouse cup in East Harlem is just not acceptable. Seriously. I'm all for individualism, but let's reevaluate here: First of all, that's just dumb. Second of all, there are some things that need to change now that you are graduated and an official NYC resident. You need to set up a bank account, change your USPS address, find a doctor, transfer your prescriptions, and walk a little straighter. Do these things. It will make you(r parents) feel much better.

ALTHOUGH, you do not have a full-time job, salary, or consistent schedule; your income is based solely on babysitting; you spent all day Friday with an awesome 11-year-old who knows more about getting around Park Ave. then you ever will and took you to lunch, that craft place, and to get ice cream; and watching cartoons is part of your homework for class. So. Yes. You are allowed to enjoy certain... childish privileges-- like... not working every day, and... thinking that writing a blog is a viable and productive use of your time... right?

Don't disagree with me.

Anyways, put these ingredients together in a 4" watermelon fondant cake (like my 11-year-old and I made) 

and reap the benefits of being AGE AMBIGUOUS! And enjoy your audition in a few weeks for the role of a child. 

Acceptance a la mode

Ingredients:

• 1 hour stuck in traffic on the Deegan "Express"way, believing that it'd be "just OK" to drive in rush hour traffic to get to the Target that's actually only 2 train stops away. *You neeeeeeed to take the car.
• 1 conversation with the Home Depot manager who informs you that your current window locks are illegal
• 30 min searching for a "unique" restaurant to please your dad in the over-stimulating, crowded, & stressful wonderland known as Times Square, as you hold out one last time for your FindMeGF(gluten free) app to actually send you to the right location (aka breakdown #1) (ps Maps sucks)
• Apprx. 45 utterances of the word "hate", which is just unattractive 
• $20.50 for a cab ride home from your babysitting job because you are stuck (you say) in East Harlem, know of no trains in the area that can get you anywhere useful-- hearing only taxis, that strange technological city hum, and an extremely loud albeit talented church reggae band--  and, after all of the previous ingredients and ones in babysitting land not aforementioned, need to get home (aka breakdown #2)
• 2 days spent not going anywhere = 1 Saturday purposefully never leaving your apartment + 1 Sunday locking yourself in your friend's place to use their editing software. 
  The latter part of this ingredient is necessary to yield you this recipe's secret set of ingredients:
• 35 minutes waiting for the A train from 11:45 to 12:20am, throughout which you spy:

                      1 rat
                      2 homeless people
                      1 man who keeps pacing in front of you
                      2 versions of every other letter of train pass by
                      2 MTA works in the tracks surveying the track area with flashlights as if searching for a dead body
                      5-8 cargo loads of trash bags on the late night trash subway
                      1 full, full, full A train!

But all of this should bring you the following when you enter the full, full train:

• 3 important songs in succession:
  Totally F$#%ed from Spring Awakening, a Mumford and Sons song with the lyrics "you've got a chip on your shoulder", and Breathe from In the Heights. **Listen to *Totally F$#%ed twice in a row because it means so much to you right now and mentally profess that "this is the song of our generation! yah!"**
• 1 "Poetry in Motion" MTA poster that draws your eye: about how "roasted chicken and red wine" every now and then is worth having to live on coffee and bread-- written by a one and only NORTHWESTERN PROFESSOR from the English department that you use to work in!! Northwestern! There! Professor! Right on the train, right next to your face! It must be **fate!

• Laughter at all of it. 

Instructions:
It may take your dad seeing you upset, your friends assuming you'll move back to Chicago, or too many nights in a row noticing the A train really is a despicable option past 9:30pm. However, at some point, putting all of the above ingredients with a little a la mode (that's ice cream, for all of you who don't know me at all) (or have never read a menu) is going to smack you across the face with a big 'ol "whammy!, sweetie, you're in New York! You're in New York City and you're not leavin' for at least a year, so you might as well say 'whammy' instead-a 'hate' and turn that frown upside down, or else it's gonna be a long haul for all-a us!"

In the wise words of some angsty teens, namely Jon Groff and Lea Michele (does anyone actually know any of the other names of the cast off the top of their head?), "there's a moment you know  you're f#@*%d... but the thing that makes you really jump is that the weirdest s*#t is still to come." Hey. At least there are some truly horrible things that haven't happened to you yet. Guess what? It can STILL get worse! This song reminds us that: You know, sometimes you just gotta still believe that you're young and have a man to stick it to. Because sticking it to the man makes life easier. So, live in the city, smell the trash, and then completely try to erase the fact that you just smelled the trash  with your PocketBac lavender scented hand sanitizer-- without being ashamed of it. You're not gonna ride in a car. You're not gonna get home soon. Any time, any day. And you're going to smell trash everywhere. Heck, maybe you'll even befriend an underground rat. But you know what? At least you have someone to do it for: Jon and Lea. 



**In further research, I have discovered that Tracy K. Smith is NOT in fact a professor at Northwestern. This is funny, to say the least. This also seems quite inevitable. Let us all take this moment to appreciate how great this mistake is.
                      

Clothing Casserole

Ingredients:

• 1 shirt on your person as you travel an hour in 90-degree heat and humidity to a film shoot (the sweatier the better)
• 2 pairs of nice shoes... that are still in Ohio. Make sure you then wear your Keds to all auditions.
• 1 "casually professional" job-interview outfit worn to your active physical therapy appointment, where they promptly ask you, "do you need somewhere to change?", to which you confidently & matter-of-factly reply, "No, this is unfortunately what I'm wearing today", which the kind receptionist doesn't know how to reply to
• 10 minutes that you JUST missed getting seen at an EPA (Equity Principle Audition, aka a cattle call) after they called the first 10 names on the non-Equity list, of which you were SIXTH. There's an essential order in which these 10 min. must be obtained:

1. Wake up with just enough time to not realize that you were wearing dark navy underwear under a pale peach dress (if this has now gotten too personal for you, please understand this is for the common good)
2. Look around you at the audition. Notice that your choice of Keds was indeed not a good idea.
3. Take the audition monitor's "go shopping at Forever 21! they have a sale!" advice when she releases all the non-Eqs until 2pm (when lunch is over)
4. Spend 12pm-1pm searching in Forever 21 for not nly appropriate audition footwear but also, hey, why not an audition dress, seeing as you (secretly) borrowed your roommate's at 6:15 that morning! While you're there, realize...
5. REALIZE that ANYONE can see your UNDERWEAR through your dress! HOW DID YOU MISS THAT?? 
6. After 4 rounds of dressing room fun (lolz) & the alarming realization that you no longer want all of the dresses in all of the stores (is it because I'm now 22 in a Forever 21?? are we truly not 21 in our hearts forever?????), decide to just buy a new pair of underwear. Now you can,
7. Go back to the audition and change! 
8. Walk upstairs to the waiting room to meet a nice, clean 2:00 pm in the face, where you find that... that... the monitor called the names at:
9. 1:45.
10. [INSERT LEARN THE HARD WAY LESSON HERE]
11. Wait 2 more hours and be very grateful you were still seen.

Instructions:

Now, it's important to note that not all of these ingredients will be available if you DO YOU LAUNDRY. This week's lesson is DO YOUR LAUNDRY. 

Here's a thought: we don't do our laundry because it's inconvenient. It takes time, it takes gathering quarters, it takes lugging all of your dirty clothes and those huge, huge bottles of soap down stairs and the street to a laundromat, ew! Why not not wait until doing your laundry equals feelings of annoyance and desperation? Why not avoid the inevitable psychology of "I have to do it, so I don't want to do it?" There's gonna be a day/night where you're sitting around, perhaps between breakfast and lunch or after you finish a huge email project, and you could either clean your room, watch a Netflix documentary, bake, or search for hours on Backstage.com. Instead of deciding which one of these non-time-sensitive things you can do for hours, why not pick another mindless activity that will benefit you in the long run? One that prevents future sweaty endeavors, awkward physical therapy sessions, and just plain wrong audition-wear? Do yourself a solid and treat your clothes as they should be treated-- not as inconvenient chores, but as options for a colorful, comfortable appearance. 

(...that'll be the day...)

* Brought to you by Downy fabric softener, the high upgrade from the box of dryer sheets that I used for 4 years *