Building a family room stronghold is no joke.

No, it’s a kindergarten lesson in teamwork, trust, and the art of war. Follow these six steps to construct your domestic defense:

Step 1: Clear and collect. Get the coffee table, throw rugs, and plastic toys out of the way, then begin hunting for materials. Couch cushions are your obvious first targets but pillows, sheets, and sleeping bags will be needed too. And I don’t need to tell you that if your family just got a new fridge delivered, grab that giant cardboard box, because your fort just got a den.

Step 2: Main construction. Some people opt for the sleeping bag carpeting technique. Others move directly into building sturdy walls and laying down a roof. Wall possibilities include turning chairs and couches around, tipping coffee tables sideways, or just piling up cushions. As for the roof, carefully toss a few sheets over your castle walls and hold the corners down firmly with Trivial Pursuit boxes, barbells, or an iron.

Step 3: Add-ons. Now it’s time to ammo up. Your fort needs windows to spot your enemies, a secret back door getaway in case of surprise attacks, and plenty of flashlights to navigate this harsh carpet-burny terrain. Plus, don’t forget a TV with Nintendo in the barracks for those long, lonely nights.

Step 4: Hiding spaces. All forts should include several hiding spaces in case of surprise enemy break-ins. Plan a couple behind false wall cushions or underneath a pile of dirty blankets. These also serve as excellent jail cells, where you can trap your victim, give them noogies, and force them to watch you play Zelda for three hours.

Step 5: Rations. You will need a hidden pile of snacks to get through the day. See if you can make do with a pile of Cheddar Cheese Combos, open Froot Loops boxes, and warm cans of soda. Hey, we’re at war here, people.

Step 6: Finishing touches. Finally, it’s time to add extra perks like a Speak & Spell doorbell, cardboard periscope, or a wide strip of bubble wrap laying outside as an Intruder Alert System.

After that, you’re pretty much done. Your family room fortress is a tall, plush tower of strength, and you can just crawl in and enjoy defending your cozy new confines.

Yes, as long as nobody’s parents buy the pre-packaged Super Fort from the Cranium buzzkills, cushion forts sure do give kids a great burst of creative energy on rainy days. They plan and design and build and ultimately sit back and relax deep in the bowels of their secret sanctuary. For kids, it’s nearly impossible to get away from it all, so the amazing couch cushion fort serves as much more — it’s an army barracks, a bat cave, a weekend at the cottage, and a trip down South, all rolled up in a pile of stained cushions, old blankets, and big ideas in middle of the room.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here

You know what’s cheap? Entertaining kids, man.

Honestly, forget the high-def TVs, lower bowl tickets to the big game, or exotic dream vacations to the other side of the rock. Ditch those in favor of an afternoon playing Tag in the backyard, pillow fighting at slumber parties, or skirting death on the playground, and now we’re talking.

Plus, it seems like a lot of kids figure out how to entertain themselves on the cheap, too. I’m not talking Solitaire on the computer, either. I mean those tiny, weird little head games or counting games or pattern games that you see little kids play. You know what I mean? These days it’s referred to as Acute Juvenile-Onset OC-ADHD, but it used to be that kids were just, you know, kind of strange.

When I was younger, I had a few of my own little games — or tics, if you prefer. I put my fingertips together every time I saw a red car, liked to spin around in circles and walk around dizzily, and was always trying to whistle with blades of grass in my mouth, just for fun.

There’s a lot more, but my favorite was this: when I was about six or seven, I used to look down at my shoes and slowly let a thin strand of spit slip slowly from my mouth, as low as it would go, as slow as it would go. And when that bottom-heavy glob of slippery spit looked like it was nearing the breaking point, I sucked real fast, yanking the Air-Chilled Mouth Dangle up in one soaring, majestic move.

It was an art, really.

Of course, back then I had no idea what I was messing with. To me, I was just playing some safe and harmless Spit Games — sometimes even a little Mouth Triathlon happened when I started blowing spit bubbles and gleeking. But the point is I didn’t yet appreciate the powers of the spit I was so mindlessly tossing around. See, it turns out that spit — or saliva, for those in the biz — deserves some serious props. Props I never considered. Check out what it’s got going on:

1. Wets your appetite. Saliva pours out of a few tiny little glands in your mouth at a rate of about 1-2 liters a day. When you’re eating, the saliva tides rise and lather your food to help work it down the dark cavern of your throat. Think of it as food lube.

2. Get your taste on. Now, for all the powers your mighty tongue has, get this: that poor, pink sucker can’t taste a thing when it’s dry. Now, I know this feels like finding out Superman can’t fly when it’s cold out or Darth Vader is afraid of the dark, but it’s true. Dry tongue = tasteless food. So give it up to saliva for keeping everything moist and delicious in there. Way to go, Tastebud Grease.

3. Break it down. Even though over 99.5% of your saliva is just water, there’s some funny business swimming around in the other 0.5%. Yeah, I’m talking about electrolytes, mucus, antibacterial compounds, and enzymes. What’s all that junk for? Dude, enzymes totally swim up into your food and start wrestling it to bits. They tear starch and fat molecules to smithereens, and give them the what’s what. Sure, the job finishes way down south, but it’s gotta start somewhere.

4. Mouth guards. Even though you only eat every so often, saliva flushes your mouth all day. Well, that’s because our slick friend is busy cleaning house. Yup, the antibacterial compounds chip away at the food stuck in your teeth and the slippery stuff coats and protects your teeth from decay. Not a bad deal.

Now, saliva tends to stay out of your way. You can barely taste it, you forget it’s there, and you don’t have to think about it to get it to work. Brother, it just happens.

It just happens.

It’s just saliva.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, here, and here

Ding!

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

Cola, Diet, RB, or other.

When we were kids, my sister and I carefully pushed those little plastic buttons every time we scored a meal at McDonald’s. We pushed Cola if we had cola, RB if we had root beer, and Other if we were sucking back some McDonald’s orange drink, which was our usual.

Honestly, we thought there was a big Garbage Survey at the end of the day and every customer had to punch their button to send in feedback. We figured some poor McDonald’s employee stuck his arm shoulder-deep in that bag of lettuce scraps drenched in Big Mac sauce, assorted ice-cream cone bottoms, and greasy French Fry containers to pull out all the cup lids. Then we imagined he arranged them in tipsy, drippy piles and counted up how many of each sold that day, quickly tabulating the results on a clipboard and calling them into head office so they knew how many batches to make for tomorrow.

Kids, huh?

Anyway, these days every time I enjoy a fine dine at a fast food joint, I still make sure I take lots of napkins, swivel in my chair, and press those little buttons on the drink cup lid.

There’s just something about the way they give, the way they turn white, and the way they’re permanently transformed for all eternity that just makes me itch for it.

It’s just compulsive. It’s just instinct.

It’s just

AWESOME!

Photo from: here and here

Fresh cut grass smells like twilight in the countryside, a football game about to start at the park, or a sunny Saturday morning in the suburbs. So whether you’re driving down a dusty farm road while the sun sets, stretching before the whistle blows, or putting your lawnmower back in the shed after criss-crossing your lot, well … just stop for a second, flare your nostrils real big, tip your head back real far, and take a big whiff, baby.

Because oh yeah.

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

Mints are mints.

Sure, they can be circle or square, chewy or hard, powdery or smooth, but they’re still mints, man. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But after a fat meal with friends, when your body’s Food-Chomping Engine is revving for some afterburn, there’s nothing sweeter than getting a surprise treat with your bill. Because let’s face it, paying for the meal is no fun. There’s all the who ordered what, all the mental math acrobatics, and all the tipping awkwardness. Plus, all this post-meal hub-bub happens at a cloudy table full of Garlic Breath and Beermouth.

Yeah, we need something to lighten the mood and the stench around here. Something like a handful Andes chocolates, a spoonful of candy-coated fennel seeds, or some good old-fashioned lollipops.

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

Okay, trivia time.

What were the two inventors of Bubble Wrap trying to make instead of packaging material back in 1957 at the Sealed Air Corporation? Take a guess and let’s see what you got (answer below).

For the patient folks, let’s chat for a moment about the different ways to do the deed:

1. Olde Time Classic. Your average pop. Just squeezing it in your hands with a satisfied smile on your face. Nothing flashy here, folks. Just a thumb, some fingers, and lots of satisfying pops.

2. The Big Bang. A trickier move, this one requires delicately wrapping the unpopped bubble wrap into a tight ball or Bubble Cube, and then, in one quick move, just hugging the whole thing against your body really hard. Try to do this before 10pm so you don’t wake the neighbors.

3. Walk This Way. You’ll need a large piece of bubble wrap for this one, likely from a new TV or fridge that got delivered to your house. Just pull the wrap out, lay it down on the floor, take off your socks, and … just walk all over it. Walk back and forth, walk in circles, just don’t stop walking, don’t stop popping. When the pops slow down you may have to inspect it closely for any leftover bubbles. I say jump on those ones.

4. The Virtual Pop. Crank up the sound and get your pop on, people.

5. The Twister. Just hold it in front of you, roll it up like a carpet, and twist your hands in different directions really hard. When you’re done, you’ll have a nice flat well-popped piece in the center of your wrap, and you’ll have to move on to a new section.

6. Mini-Pops. Sometimes you expect to pull out a big, fat mess of bubble wrap and out comes a thin, little sheet of mini-bubbles instead. But sometimes that’s all you get, man. So do a few mini-pops and enjoy it.

My friends, loudly popping bubble wrap is a great joy in life. It’s a satisfying stress relief, a fun surprise, and a rare little moment to act like a kid during a boring day at the office or while unpacking after a hectic move.

So, aren’t you glad they made Bubble Wrap into packing material and not textured wallpaper instead?

AWESOME!

Photos from: here and here

I’m not great at the game myself, so my dream categories would be:

Jeopardy Round

Rhymes with Brown

At The Supermarket

Name That Ocean

Hot Dog Toppings

Halloween Animals

Types of Pants

Double Jeopardy

Served With Fries

Vowels

Adding and Subtracting

Sports Ending With “Ball”

Google Logo Colors

How Many Wheels?

Final Jeopardy

One-letter words

AWESOME!

Photo from: here and here

Peeling apart that static-covered clump of socks is tense.

First you yank them from the dryer and dump the hot haystack on the bed. Then you start pairing up the easy ones — reconnecting brown argyle husbands with brown argyle wives and red-striped brothers with red-striped sisters. It’s free and easy love all around.

But then it happens.

You hit that big pile of white or black leftover socks and matching gets tough. You’re inspecting patterns and heel placements, checking textures and fades, all the while hoping, just hoping, that everything will work out fine.

As you approach the last few socks you do a quick mental count. You’re like a parent inspecting a newborn baby for ten little fingers and ten little toes, only all you’re looking for is whether or not you’ve got an even number of socks left on the bedspread.

If you do, and if they all match up perfectly, then you’re loving it. There are no missing tube socks or disappearing dress socks. Everything is locked and loaded, so you just put them all together, take that basket of well-worn lovers to the dresser, and dump them all in with a big smile on your face.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here and here

I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with U.

If you guessed Uncomfortably Long Car Trip, you got it, baby.

Yes, maybe you’re in a Backseat Squeeze for hours, one leg on each side of the Floor Hump, your bladder clenched tightly, holding on for dear life. Or maybe you’re slouching in shotgun in a blissful Game Boy Cocoon, headphones in your ears, video game system in your lap. Or maybe you’re driving the boat, steering the ship, mind on the road, eyes on the mirrors, just navigating carefully through the dangerous world of steep curves and sharp swerves.

Whatever your situation, it sure does feel good when that tired car finally rolls to a slow stop at a fast-food joint or gas station.

That’s when you pop open the door and just stretch like you’ve never stretched before. Arms out, arms up, way up to the sky, just popping that back and twisting that neck in all directions while saying oooOOO a lot. Maybe squeeze up onto your tippy-toes, and feel the burn rise up your legs, those cold, clenched muscles getting a hot slap wake-up call. Yes, you can feel your hamstrings stretch long, stretch hard, crying out with tears of joy as freedom rings again.

Plus you finally get to pee.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, and here