invisible bearsharks and what-not

So have I mentioned that there's a five-year-old living in my house these days? No? Well, perhaps that would help explain my lack of blog-time lately. You probably already know that four-year-olds are my absolute favorite group of people on earth. Picture a graph depicting a normal-distribution curve (come on- you know you took stats in college, you can do it!). Four-year-olds are right at the peak of that curve. Therefore, you can correctly deduce that three and five year olds are also pretty high on my love-list. So living with a five-year-old is pretty freakin fantastic, if you're me. (Note: on my normal curve graph, there are also peaks at age birth, 1, and 2. I love all babies/kids...until about age 7. Then it plummets. Sorry, 7 year olds. PS I also realize it is not a normal curve anymore. Just deal with it.)

So anyway. Yeah. We have some friends living with us right now, and their daughter Zoe has quickly become one of the highlights of my days. Mainly because she is hilarious, smart, and creative...and because she reminds me of myself at her age. It's like living with a five-year-old, picky-eater version of myself. Very enlightening. And entertaining.

This afternoon, after I had let her download new games to play on my phone, let her walk the dog with me, AND given her the bag of all of my dance shoes and ballet skirts and let her play ballerina, she declared me to be the "most fun friend EVER!!!!!" So basically I'm winning at life.

After dinner, she begged me to play with her in the hammock, an activity I introduced her to last week. Our backyard is actually pretty dangerous, since it is overrun with bears, sharks, snakes, and their most dastardly bastard offspring-- the invisible bearshark. But Zoe felt like it was worth the risk of being eaten by all of those things just to play in the hammock for awhile. Upon hearing that the bears were once again coming to eat her up, she sat straight up, made the meanest, most fear-inducing face you've ever seen, and scared ALL those bearsharks back into the woods when she screamed "Don't MESS with me, I am SCARY!!! I am an EIGHT. YEAR. OLD. BIKER!!!!!!!!!"

Her mom and I died laughing, picturing the wrath of an eight-year-old biker gang. Realizing that maybe she hadn't picked the scariest thing ever, Zoe amended her claim: "ACTUALLY, bearsharks, I am NINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

So between fighting off bearsharks and doing complicated dog-human year math conversions in my head (seriously, this is how these conversations go: "So, how old is Lola in people years?" "Four." "And how old is that in dog years?" "28." "Okay, so...well, if I were a poodle, how old would I be?" ".......umm..." "I mean, if I were 7 in people years, but I was a white poodle, and I walked and barked like this [demonstrates walking and barking] how old would I be in dog years?" "Uhh...about 49?" "OK, but if I was a poodle and I was 38 in dog years, how many people years would that be?"....and so on and so forth), you can see how I barely have time for anything else. And that's pretty fantastic.

PS. Remember the neighbors' roses I was so jealous of? Well, we went on a walk the other night and Zoe had a chance to smell them. She declared them to smell "nasty like garbage," so I guess I'm over my rose jealousy, now.