Believe it or not, one of our favorite shows to watch during quarantine is on Twitter. DadHouse, “the best imaginary reality show on the internet.”
This weekend, we’ve asked the stars of DadHouse to tell us about their own Weird Quarantine Obsessions.
Log Cabin, by Daniel A. Hoyt
The only reliable marker of my days right now is my novel-in-Tweets, a weird time-travel/Hollywood novel set in 2020 called @TheStarsAreFire. It's a serial novel, and I add 200-odd words every day, but that started on January 1, so I don't consider it a true Quarantine Obsession. How about, then, building a log fucking cabin? Because I am a co-parent of a 3-year-old (he's here half the week in this time without daycare) and because I had four large, dead honey locust trees cut down this winter, I thought it would be fun to make my son a log cabin playhouse. It started as a hut, and then I got ambitious. I'm notching logs. I'm stripping bark. I'm getting all Oregon Trail out here. When it was still just a log hovel, my son and I would lie down inside it on a yoga mat (his idea!) and listen to the birds and the breeze. Something just seems right about hiding out in a small space right now, out in the great grand scary world but secluded from it too. I like the work of the logs, being outside with the living trees and the sunshine, the wild flowers and hawks in the sky.It makes me use my muscles. It makes me shut off my COVID brain for a while. Most of all, I'm happy to do something fun for my son. I'm happy those trees didn't die in vain.
In real life: Daniel A. Hoyt's books are This Book Is Not for You, a novel, and Then We Saw the Flames, a story collection. Dan teaches at Kansas State University.
On DadHouse: Daniel A. Hoyt, @dan_hoyt Um, I was not aware we were supposed to play a "character" on @dad_house.
Links, if you’d like to try this obsession yourself: I haven't Googled a damn thing. You know how to build a log cabin, motherfucker. You don't have to Google every damn thing!