Deb Linda Ponders Cabins, Lust, and Sheldon Cooper

I have to admit, this week’s topic had me stymied at first. Cabin Fever? What’s that?

Oh, I’m familiar with the concept. Theoretically. I know that some people get antsy when they’re forced to stay indoors for long periods of time. It’s just that (like a lot of writers, I suspect) I’m pretty comfortable staying inside.

 

 

 

I’m with Sheldon Cooper, of television’s The Big Bang Theory: “If outside is so good, why has man spent thousands of years perfecting inside?”

(BTW, isn’t Sheldon wonderful? I just love him. If you haven’t seen TBBT yet, I strongly urge you to give it a try, especially  if you like laughing hysterically. Which, in case you hadn’t noticed, I do. But I digress…)

 

 

 

Anyway, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I do have “cabin fever.” In the same way I have book fever or chocolate fever:

I want a cabin!

I lust for a quiet writer’s retreat in the woods. A rustic cabin to call my own (though, of course, TG is welcome to come along and provide, um, diversion from my intense bouts of wrestling with my muse).

I’m thinking something like this would be nice:

 

Or this:

 

 

Heck, even this would scratch the itch nicely:

 

 

 

Any one of them, really. I’m not all that picky about my cabins. As long as it’s not this rustic…

 

…I can be happy.

Someday, when TG retires, and my books have made a gazillion dollars (pardon me while I laugh hysterically at the notion…please excuse the unladylike guffaws), I’m going to satisfy my fevered lust for a writing cabin. Until then, a girl can dream.

So, do you get cabin fever?

Do you lust for a retreat to call your own? If so, what kind? A cabin, like me, or perhaps a beach house? Or maybe even an urban loft, with access to the excitement of the city? 

What’s your dream getaway hideout?

38 Replies to “Deb Linda Ponders Cabins, Lust, and Sheldon Cooper”

  1. Oh Linda–how did you know!!?? I am OBSESSED with tiny cabins. In fact there is a blog, tinyhouseblog.com that can suck me into its rabbit hole and I’m gone for hours. Gleefully. My husband and I dream of building our tiny house in the woods one day and I’ve got the pile of scrap paper with sketched designs on it in the meantime.

    1. What a cool website! Sounds like you and your husband are a lot like TG and me. Here’s hoping we achieve our “tiny” dreams someday! 🙂

  2. Well, I actually live in a cabin in the woods, so what I lust for is a weathered, cedar-shingled beach house with tacky decor like fishing nets and buoys with the paint peeling off of them. Short of that, I would settle for a way to remove the kids from my peaceful cabin in the woods for a few hours a week. That’d be nice.

    1. You live in a cabin in the woods? Now I have to envy YOU! But in the nice way. 🙂

      A beach house would be nice, too, though I find about a week at the beach per summer is my ideal. I fry in the sun, and I get tired of slathering on the SPF 100 every day.

  3. I’ve lived in lots of cabins in the woods, and they really are delightful. Personally, I don’t care about the abode–I want a river or a lake/pond! With a dock and a canoe. Bliss!

  4. I’d love to have a writer’s retreat/cabin to call my own…eh…but not so little and unabomber-ish as those (although option two looks nice and quaint…not so much option three or four) i’d like something more along the lines of that cabin that Johnny Depp lived in in the movie the Secret Window. That one was awesome…although if I had one like that, would I turn into a multiple personalitied serial killer like old Johnny did? well, i guess you have to take the good with the bad huh? I still want that cabin 🙂

    1. LOL! See, the thing about a nice, small cabin is that you don’t have room for a lot of visitors.

      Of course, I suppose turning all Secret-Window-Johnny-Depp-ish would tend to discourage visitors, too… 😉

  5. ooh, i like this kind of cabin fever and i think i have it. there’s something so awesome and inspiring about sneaking off into the woods (and removing yourself from all that technological noise) to nurture the muse.

    of course, scary things often happen in the woods, so i’d prefer my cabin not to have ghosts or serial killers hiding in the woods. maybe just in the pages of my books.

    1. Yeah, I’ll gladly leave the ghosts and serial killers out of my cabin fantasies, too. It’s hard to write when you’re running away in terror. *grin*

  6. I really want a rustic cabin up north that is both secluded and within a quick jaunt to civilization. It also must have electricity, internet access and indoor plumbing. Beyond that, I’m not fussy.
    Ahhhh, that’s the dream!

    1. Oh, internet access is a given. Can’t survive without that! And indoor plumbing is high on my must-have list, too.

  7. We have a small wooded acreage about an hour from our home in Calgary, but I don’t think you’d envy my “cabin”. It’s a dilapidated 1975 camper trailer that was left abandoned in the woods, full of mildew from a leaky roof, with carpenter ants in the walls. The frame was sound and the furnace worked, though, so we stripped it out, evicted the ants, and put in a queen-sized bed which occupies most of the 7’x12′ interior space. No running water, no electricity, and a bucket for a toilet (for nocturnal use only, thanks). And the roof still leaks, so we installed a “permanent” tarp.

    Someday, there’ll be a cabin. Meanwhile, I spend my entire day writing outdoors when we’re there in the summer, and the trailer-trash abode keeps the rain off at night. It’s not quite heaven, but it’s right next door. 🙂

    1. I believe that’s what a real estate agent would call “quaint” and “charmingly rustic.” 😉

      And I was with you right up until the bucket…

  8. Writing retreat, yeah. Rustic cabin in the woods, no. On the beach maybe. For a while I was obsessed with the idea of putting a yome* in the backyard but my daydream of a serene, uninterrupted writing experience kept getting interrupted with the nightmare of a snake inside so I forgot about it.
    *a yome is a yurt with a geodesic dome

  9. I’d love a cabin–for summer, for weekends. We’ve talked about it, in fact. But I wouldn’t like to live there full time. See, I do like my “luxury” of bathrooms and other rooms to wander into when I need distraction…

    But we stay in a beautiful cabin sometimes for the weekend. Even better: we don’t have to own it or take care of it. And other people clean it up when we’re gone. 🙂

    I’ll send you the link. You can come sometime in the summer!

    1. True about renting vs. owning. There’s something to be said not being responsible for maintenance. OTOH, if you own something, you get to leave your vacation crap there — not much packing.

      And, boy, it would be great to come out in the summer sometime! Tell me again, which week in July IS summer there? 😉

  10. First off, I think Big Bang is one of the best shows ever, and I’m not just saying that because I’m a nerd. I especially love Sheldon. (And I know people very much like him.) A retreat would be super, wouldn’t it? Something rustic that never needs to be cleaned would be nice. With big windows looking out over a gorgeous view of water. Gotta have some kind of water. And lots of trees.

  11. I’m not one for cabin in the middle of the woods. I much prefer something on the water, like a beach house. There are way too many horror stories happening in the woods. Even if it is a cabin, it’s still too close to camping and I am sooooooooooooooo not a camper.

        1. Okay, what if we specify the cabin must have no cutlery? And woods can have no, um, werewolves? Would that work?

  12. That second one would be just perfect 🙂

    When I met my Honey, he lived in the perfect place, a tiny converted village bank. It still had the massive doors, the teller windows and the shelves. It would have made a perfect retreat. Sadly, the package he took on included me and 2 girlies so we couldn’t all fit. I think I mourn it more than he does 🙂

    1. A converted bank? So cool! Too bad you couldn’t hold onto that. But maybe you’ll find an even better retreat one day. 🙂

  13. Ahem. Actually, I have a cabin. In my back yard, nestled up against a bank of trees. My brother lived in it when he was still working here on the ranch. I don’t go there much to write because that would require firing up the woodstove and waiting for the frost to fade from the floor, but in the summer I like to sit on the tiny porch with my feet on the railing.

    As for Sheldon, I don’t have to watch him. I’m raising his twin.

    1. I’m jealous of your cabin, even if you do have to defrost it before you can use it.

      Re your little “Sheldon”: Maybe you can get him a guest spot on TBBT. He could play Sheldon as a child, in flashbacks. 😉

  14. Oh, YES!! While I’d love for my writing cabin to be parked on the edge of a picturesque lake, I’m really not that picky. Though I’d kind of like it parked in the middle of 10 acres of land with no one around for miles to bother me. What, too isolationist?

    And Sheldon ROCKS!! I absolutely adore Sheldon Cooper. He and the whole gang make me laugh ever so much. They may be science geeks but I’m a book/writing geek so it resonates deeply.

    1. I tend toward isolationism, too. I’ll bet a lot of writers do. And, yeah, book geeks aren’t so very different from science geeks. Obsession is obsession, right?

  15. I love that quote about perfecting inside. I’m more of a central air conditioning, creature comforts gal myself… Cabin fever smacks a little bit of the #booneybin to me, which you may recall is where we visit my in-laws every summer. 🙂

    1. LOL! Hey, your time in the #boonybin every summer just makes you appreciate your hotshot urban-agent lifestyle all the more. 😉

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