Forts are for nerds.

I don't think I'll ever outgrow building forts out of sheets. I hope I never outgrow it, anyway. My love of forts is 28-years-old and still going strong. I remember spending hours in my room as a kid pulling chairs around my bed and then meticulously stretching bed sheets over them and attaching them with rubber bands in any way that I could. When I lived in apartments, I would generally make forts out of the dining room table and a futon. I would drag the table closer to the living room and build away. It was nice to be able to be in the fort and look out the "doorway" to watch movies on the tv. But, now that I live in my own house, I've kind of gone back to making forts in the bedrooms, like when I was a kiddo. The difference is really in the sturdiness of the forts I built as a kid and the ones I build now. My kid forts could last for days and days. Really, until the sheets got yanked too much and the rubber bands popped off, or until my mom forced me to take it down. The rubber bands were the real trick. My parents seemed to have a never-ending stockpile of rubber bands. I think it had to do with the fact that they subscribed to the newspaper. I don't subscribe to the newspaper, therefore I don't get rubber bands. (I'm not willing to buy rubber bands for fort-making, either. Part of the fun of fort-building is honing your creativity and resourcefulness...I think buying supplies to build a fort is sort of cheating.) Still, my lack of rubber bands is not a huge deal, seeing as I tend to have a shortage of chairs, as well. I have one chair that goes into my grown-up fort making nowadays. It works pretty well, but my forts now don't last nearly as long as my kid forts did. My adult forts tend to last an evening or so. Maybe more if I fall asleep in one. Maybe less if the cat destroys it. 


Tonight was a fort-building night. I usually build them when I have bad days because it's sort of an escape from the bad stuff. Nothing is ever very bad when you're in a sheet fort. But, I haven't had a bad day in a long time, I just felt like building a fort tonight and reading my book in it. It only lasted a short while because Beatrix got it within a couple of hours. But, a couple of hours of fort-time in will probably keep me happy for months. Plus, I nearly finished the book I'm reading. Reading in forts is one of my favorite things to do. I plug in strings of Christmas lights and it feels really wonderful to be a "grown-up" in a sheet-fort that glows while settling in to read a book that you're hooked on. I would love to create some sort of permanent fort in my house; someplace that I could go and be my nerdy fort-building self without worrying when the whole place will collapse under the weight of a jumping Beatrix. But, then I wonder whether having a permanent fort will take away most of the fun? None of the forts are ever the same, and I think that's part of the cool factor of it.  Hmm. Oh well, enough chitter chatter. I took a few pictures of the fort and I turned them into paintings because I wanted to mess with the artsy part of a photo-editing site I'm experimenting with. As to whether or not I'll use the site...I think the jury is out, still.


No matter. Happy fort-building, everyone!

Part of the exterior of the fort: Blankets, a chair, a table, a floor pillow and Christmas lights.

Interior.

The reader in her fort.

The Destroyer plotting her attack.