A cute baby and an ugly GRE practice test

I realize that writing "EMMA POST ALREADY!" made it seem like I had a lot of interesting things to say -- I don't. I just like to post stuff. But here's a picture of me being felt up by a cute baby:

He's my friend Monica's friend's son. Phew. Let's re-parse that. I've been friends with Monica since fifth grade - we were best friends all through Middle School, and she moved to Virginia after 8th grade.  There, she became bff with a girl named Kathleen, who got married a couple of years ago now and has a 13-month-old baby boy named Nathan.

Nathan is the one climbing on me in the picture. He. Is. Adorable. He is fluent in baby-talk (he looks very earnestly at you and says "da da da da da da!!!!")

I only see Monica every one or two years, but every time we get along like no time has passed, which is a beautiful thing. There are signs of changing times, though - we used to dress up dolls together, ask our crushes to dance, giggle about it afterwards. During our sleepovers, we invented fantasy stories. Now, Monica and her boyfriend are planning to get married, her sister is leaving for Japan (marine service), her brother (who I remember as a temper tantrum-throwing toddler) is now a baritone, and our sleepover conversations are no longer...PG. Or even PG-13, really. Let's just say that our purity test scores are lower today than they were in Middle School.

In the evening, Kathleen tried to hang out with us but was too worn out from chasing after her son all day. It was a weird snap forward to what life is going to be like -- and definitely made me appreciate that I'm in a time of life when I can really focus on myself, as selfish as that sounds.

Anyway.

Yesterday, we watched Argo (which was terrifying), made edible cookie dough (which was delicious), cooked a lot of food (thank you LMF for my culinary skills!) and brought it all to the park for a picnic. And relaxed. Me relaxing:

This morning, Monica and her mom went to church, and I sat in their living room for three hours doing a practice GRE. It was a miserable, humbling experience (have I learned any physics, ever? clearly the answer is no) but definitely made me appreciate how much I need to study this summer.

I have to run - Monica and I are meeting up with our other best friend from Middle School, who I haven't seen since sixth grade. Her name is Cassie, and you will probably hear more about her later / tomorrow. Miss you all!