Do You Like What You See?

To fellow babysitters, actors, and quarter-life crisis participants!

Do you like what you have been reading so far? Well, Sensibly Libsy would love to hear your thoughts, so please comment below whichever blog posts speak to you, interest you, or just make you laugh! 

Also, I would love for you to become a follower! You can become a follower through your Facebook, Twitter, or Google accounts, and I know that all of you have at least one of those!

Check back often and continue to see what Sensibly Libsy has been up to! You may have shared a similar experience... 

 

Making It Werque

  When actors are unemployed, the most popular piece of advice that parents, teachers, and Broadway stars give them is, "Take class." Which is great advice, of course, but such a catch-22. I mean, you take the classes so that you can book the Bway job so that you can make the money on which to live. But if you don't have the Bway job and just have a regular job that makes way less money on which you are "supposed" to live, how do you then afford the classes to book the Bway job? You catch my drift here, fellow Actorias? The answer almost always to that question is, "You just have to make it work."

  OK.

  I took this "making it work" thing to heart, or should I say, to the streets, by signing up for a new kind of class outside of my comfort zone that incorporates dance, cardio, posture improvement, and a literal ass-kicking: The Stiletto Work Out. I've decided to bring out my inner sex goddess by not only participating in this class, but also the studio's handful of other sexy fitness classes for one month.

  Well, let me tell you that the Stiletto Work Out was a WERQUE out, honey! We were doin' all kinds of squats and kicks and bends and pops that are typically only performed by the lovely employees at Lace on 45th street. Only we did these moves with a five-pound dumbbell in each hand, and let me just say that my legs will be looking fierce just in time for unitard season. I decided that one sexy class just wasn't enough to satiate me, so I also took the following class entitled Sexy Yoga. I'll sum it up with a single quote from the instructor:

  "Try to touch your head to your crack."

  When I awoke this morning, I was not surprised to find that I was in fact paralyzed from the forehead down. I decided I would treat myself to a massage at a new spa that I discovered on my walk home last night from my sexy classes. The sign on the front door read, "75 minute massage - $50.00" Done and done. 

  I arrived at the spa to be greeted by no one at the reception desk. Luckily, the Asian man smoking outside while chatting on the phone was the receptionist and rushed in after me to ask me why I was there. (Phew, I was worried for a second) I told him I had a 3:00 appointment for a 75-minute full body massage, but clearly he could not understand one word I said as he just stared at me blankly. He quickly hurried to the back to find an English-speaking employee who then led me back to a tiny, dimly-lit room blocked off only by a small curtain.

  I assumed I should get down to my skivvies and lay face down on the table underneath the towel provided. Before I was completely covered, the male receptionist who doubled as a masseuse barged in and blurted out, "You ready?" Um, OK, I guess so. I'm pretty sure you just saw my thong, but whatevies. 

  Well, throughout the course of our next 75 magical minutes together he saw more than just my thong. The first thing he did was peel back the towel to reveal my back, however the towel went WAY lower than I expected it to and revealed more than just my back. Pretty sure that half my ass was in full view for the entirety of my back massage, as my sensitive cheeks felt a draft.

  But the amazing thing was that I did not care! It was the best massage I had ever received! This guy knew his stuff, and every inch of my back, arms, legs, and booty was in sheer "hurts so good" bliss. He maneuvered my arms and legs in to some very strange positions and treated each one of my toes like it was paying for its own full body massage. Most massages end the with the masseuse patting down your body to increase blood circulation, but this guy was not exactly the patting kind. He was full-on smacking me! I was in total awe of the full abandonment in which this man massaged me and hit me like he was tenderizing meat. It was amazing.

  After basically stealing this massage with a swipe of my credit card, another receptionist handed me a stack of discount cards to give to my friends for them to use on their first visit. She told me the name of my masseuse so that they could ask for him specifically. 

  His name was Mr. Ho.

  

Pippin is a Sagittarian

  So, the quarter-life crisis is now in full swing. NHB. No Holding Back. It's that time in every young person's life, well, maybe just my life, that the person looks at their life and says, "What the hell am I doing?" No? You didn't do that? Well, that's just great. Because I do it almost every day. I think, was this the life I was supposed to lead? Is this life maybe too much for me to handle? Or...is it not enough for me to handle? (Raise of the eyebrow...which I can't even do, by the way)

  

  I like the sound of the latter better, which is why I have decided to rename myself Pippin. Or, no, Pippa. I would love for people to take pictures of my ass and tell me that it stole the show at the royal wedding. Anyways, what I'm saying is that in the musical Pippin, the title character is a young boy that is searching for total and utter fulfillment in his life. He is seeking the extraordinary life, where as right now nothing is ever fulfilling enough for him. 

  

  Now I, Pippa, happen to be a Sagittarian, not to be confused with a vegetarian. After some very excruciating research compliments of my Google search bar, I have found that Sagittarians believe that anything they want to achieve is possible and that we loons set our sights on something unachievable. We're described as wanting to be constantly moving from location to location, always wanting to explore the unknown, nothing can hold us down. Basically, we're pointing our sassy crossbow in the direction of our highest aspiration and will do anything to make sure that that arrow goes straight through (insert aspiration here, in my case Broadway's cold and evil heart), successfully slaying the beast and hanging her above my fireplace!

  

  So, I am Pippin. Pippin is me. Therefore, I am Pippa and am currently dating Prince Harry according to InTouch Magazine. Yes, I want Broadway so badly that it literally makes me cry to even think about it. It is my highest aspiration, my unknown, where I've been aiming my crossbow for the past twenty-four years. 

  

  But then I think, what if the arrow lands somewhere else? Somewhere beyond 10th avenue and I can't even find where the damn thing went?! It may have even caught a breeze and crossed the Hudson! That leads me to believe that secretly I may want so much more than just my name in a playbill. Something extraordinary, if you will. I don't know if just one arrow is fulfilling enough for me. I spend so much of my precious time on this Earth with just that one arrow aimed out of my 97th street apartment window and I'm not even sure if I'm aiming it in the right direction!

  The part of this story that scares me the most is that unlike Pippin, I don't have a leading player, someone giving me the costumes and the props to get me to the right places and to meet the right people. But where are the right places and who are the right people? I don't think any of us will ever know the answer to that question, and if you do, you're fierce.

  The part of this story that doesn't scare me at all is that like Pippin, I am extraordinary and I will do extraordinary things. Pippa, the Extraordinary Girl.

"What do you do?"

  "Do you want to come home for a couple of weeks?" That's exactly what my mom asked me in a late night e-mail from her iMac right before she went to bed last night. Her birthday was two days ago and in the card I sent her, I mentioned how hard this past year has been for me and that her and dad have been a great support system.  When the going gets tough, which when you're trying to just touch your pinky toe to the edge of something resembling a Broadway stage, it's never not tough.  So when this happens I tend to escape to the safety of my parents' swanky two-bedroom condo in Atlanta via Airtran Airways, even though the only place for me to sleep there is on a couch.  It isn't exactly an inexpensive or quick way to escape the concrete prison I like refer to as New York City, but if I'm desperate enough, it doesn't seem so bad.

  

  When people ask me "What do you do?", and I give them my autopilot response of "I'm an actress here in the city", the amount of pity and lack of interest in their facial expression accompanied by a vocal response you would use if someone told you they had just gotten their tongue pierced, usually says it all. We'll call this response...the face.  My entire life has been this exact scenario set on repeat, just with different words, but always with the same response.

  

  Them: "What are you majoring in in college?" Me: "Musical theatre." Them: The face.

  Them: "Why are you moving to New York?" Me: "To be on Broadway." Them: The face, exaggerated.

   These questions are then followed with a series of more questions, usually because they are trying to figure out why I am so...what's the word? Dumb? They ask me if I've done anything they might have seen, or if I'm in anything right now, or what I do to actually make money now as well as when this whole extravagant dream of Broadway doesn't actually work out and I'm left with nothing to show for myself, in which case they can happily whisper to themselves, I win!

  

  Which brings me to the survival job.  The job which many young women have already written books about and how it was the most agonizing, yet strangely interesting work they had ever done. The job a million girls would kill for. Babysitting. Yep, it's your classic cliche of young, bright-eyed girl goes to New York to fulfill her lifelong dream of performing on Broadway and instead fills her days pushing fancy, yet confusing, strollers through dog feces and slathering organic, salt-free peanut butter onto fifteen-grain bread, only to find out that that one particular child happens to despise peanut butter.  And bread.  

  

  Working for the most esteemed and successful babysitting agency in New York City has put me in contact with the upper echelon of families in this fast-paced and competitive city. It showed me, literally, how the other half lives and that my entire apartment could equal the size of a master bathroom. Sondheim knew what he was talking about when he said "Hell, I'd even play the maid to be in a show". Too bad he meant play the role of the maid in a show, not scrape by on my hourly wage to save up for that new pair of 3" La Ducas.

  

  I'm turning 25 later this year and for the first time in my short life, I don't know what I want. Perhaps through writing the hilarious anecdotes that are coming soon to a Facebook link near you, I can find that same bright-eyed girl that came here with the Broadway marquee in her sight line. Or maybe I'll find a different girl that's looking for something else completely.