It's Friday, I'm in Love

with the memory of living room forts. Remember? Somehow, cobbling together an extremely precarious structure from couch cushions, pillows, throw blankets and various chatchkes as weights was pretty much the most fun you could have in your own living room (well, as a child anyway). The best part was when your mom would let you sleep in it or at least let it stay up over night. Scratch that, the best part was jumping on it to destroy it.

Spring meant that you could take fort making outside. We had a large pile of bricks left over from when our house was built that was employed every year in some sort of dangerous structure. How I am not more brain damaged, I don't know.

Spring also meant I made L-Ma play this wretched game with me I lovingly called "Pioneers." I am from Oklahoma, you see, and on April 22 each year we celebrate a little thing called 89er Day. This parade commemorates when a bunch of people stole land from American Indians. Manifest Destiny y'all! Remember that cinematic tour de force Far and Away starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman? Yeah, it's like that. It's not quite as fashionable to celebrate this "holiday" now as it was when I was in elementary school. Then we had square dancing and a mini land run. Of course, all of this had to be done in costume. Hence my need to make myself and L-Ma don "prairie dresses" complete with bonnets and wander around my backyard doing fun things like "the wash" and digging up dirt to build our sod house. To this day, she has not forgiven me for this. Ask her.

Related links:

2007 Norman 89er Day
Oklahoma Land Openings 1889-2007
How to Build a Fort

Soundtrack of your weekend. (I am not doing the legwork for you. If you don't trust me now, you never will.):

Forever Lost - The Magic Numbers
Trouble With Dreams - Eels
To Be Alone With You - Sufjan Stevens
Parentheses - The Blow (This chick is awesome!)
Hey Boy - The Blow
Your Ex-Lover is Dead - Stars
Lloyd, I'm Ready to be Heartbroken - Camera Obscura
The Power Is On - The Go! Team (run! jump! kick! yeah!)
Junior Kickstart - The Go! Team
Forgotten Words - Klaxons
Kingdom of Doom - The Good, The Bad, and The Queen
We've Got A Big Mess On Our Hands - The Academy Is
Sewn - The Feeling (Vh1 worthy whining, but I like it)
Perfect Situation - Weezer
Delilah - Plain White T's (guilty pleasure of the moment)
Imitosis - Andrew Bird
North American Scum - LCD Soundsystem

This is what my fort would look like now: