Trapped in a Cabin with Tori

I can’t stay away, chumps. Tori Spelling has yet another reality TV show. “Cabin Fever” is the fresh hell that debuted yesterday on the appropriately acronym-ed GAC channel. (How do you feel about another Tori and Dean reality series? GAC! barf! sputter!)

Apparently it was filmed before Tori knew about Dean’s serial cheating. You know, when she learned exactly how un-special OW-turned-wives are. This is the golden ignorant period when her biggest marital problem is adjusting to a port-a-potty. Versus adjusting to the fact that she married a booze-pickled Canuck with a wandering dick. (Which really, when you think about it, is akin to adjusting to a port-a-potty. It’s unstable, disease-ridden, and stinks to high heaven. Lean in, Tori. Lean in.)

Tori bids us to watch her.

Not only is it the 4th of July, but it’s also the premiere of our new home renovation show Tori & Dean: Cabin Fever! It premieres tonight, Friday, July 4at 10/9c on Great American Country (GAC) owned by HGTV. The show is reality meets reno! We filmed it last summer and it documents our whole family moving up to Canada for the summer to renovate a lakeside cottage. Dean and I and all 4 kids completely renovated and decorated an entire cottage ourselves. Watch the 6 episode series and see us redo all the rooms, bring my modage style (modern vintage) to the lake, and create an amazing outdoor oasis! We DIY’d our hearts out and created a dream summer destination. We even picked up a couple goats, chickens and rabbits on the way! Will you be watching? Love, T

Is it wrong of me to wonder what happens to the goats, chickens, and rabbits when she moves back to LA? Do they transition from pets to meat? Are they useless props? Will they be carted back on TV like her kids when she needs some camera-ready cute? More important, are they pastured, free-range goats, chickens, and rabbits? Because if I want to watch smug, aspirational reality TV I demand that my livestock be HSUS-certified, organic, and on pasture. Make a note, Tori. Only common people raise conventional livestock — and you are a special person.

But in Cabin Fever, I believe the premise is Tori is slumming it with the proletariat who have summer homes that can only be reached by private seaplane. Watch Tori use an outdoor toilet! Watch Tori learn to lay sheetrock! (Watch Dean lay everything that’s not sheetrock…) Watch Tori cope with house of ordinary proportions!

No really. Watch. “Baaabe?!”

According to the promo literature, Cabin Fever is about Tori and Dean “bonding” over home remodeling. Clearly, these Hollywood script writers have never combined marriage and gutting a bathroom. (Raising my hand — I have!) That premise is as laughable as enriching your marriage when your four grown children and their offspring move into your basement.

Home remodeling is not “bonding” — it’s something people endure for the greater good of working plumbing or more closet space.

But maybe Tori needs some adversity to triumph over. Like enduring “cottage life” and picking out the right vintage accessories. Versus the adversity of dumping a cheating husband. Good life decisions are like home decorating, Tori. It’s all about the editing.

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Tara
Tara
9 years ago

It is like “an icepick” through my head!

Babushka
Babushka
9 years ago
Reply to  Tara

Amen.

GladIt'sOver
GladIt'sOver
9 years ago
Reply to  Tara

I wish there was a “Like” button for this!

Drew
Drew
9 years ago

Tara, LOL!
I wonder how many cheaters fold when it comes to any real life challenge. A-vacation!- home remodel with money coming out your ears is not one, trust me. If a marriage can’t handle daily life with those milestones we all experience it is doomed anyway. Cheaters seem to thrive on ME,ME, ME! You know simple things like priorities ie family and spending time doing things you love individually and together go by the wayside with cheaters. It’s like they have this whole other life. I am amazed too at how much my ex was able to juggle so many of the good things in his life all the while sabotaging our life together living his fucked up inauthentic life. Major red flag is finances. I think Chumps can learn a lot looking at how money is spent and on who. I think I will actually run a background check on the next man I become intimate with. Five years out and haven’t been interested yet. Work became more a priority for my ex when he discovered more women were propositioning him. That old saying is true. Surround yourself with losers and soon you will become A loser. I think a good man, one with morals, has no problem communicating his commitment to others(to SO, or family). While those on the fence send signals to like minded losers. So many of these cheaters throw money onto their poor choices too. Finances and entitlement. Who knew? That cottage is a bit like spackle. These two cheaters uh just need it, to look good. And yeah my cheater ex threw away that custom home on twenty acres we worked so hard to have too. You know on that lot that needed a well and electricity and a driveway and a home. The one my children worked on too. The one we moved them to. The one I spent ten years of our marriage drawing and two years contracting work out on. Good to know now that while I was busy doing the work in my marriage my ex was disengaging and out fucking his racquetball partner. In regards to Tori and Dean I wonder who will get that cottage (and porta potty memory) in the divorce?

MMargaret
MMargaret
9 years ago

Money and time. The two big items to watch in a marriage – who gets how much and when. As a Chump, my experience is this – I do what he wants to do and go where he wants to go: early on his contribution to ‘fairness’ is to go along with my stuff while subtly dragging his feet and not getting into it so I learn not to do those things with him. With time moulded to the Cheaters satisfaction, a process that can take some time and history, the stage is already set: that is how I woke up to the money being spent on him, the vacations spent doing his stuff, his free time being very free and mine being parcelled out in 15 minute segments or reduced to the hours between midnight and 6 am. Hmm, how did that happen, I wondered, and found the major shift occurred when we had kids. He used them to anchor me and free himself. And how dare I complain about “our” life?

CW
CW
9 years ago
Reply to  MMargaret

From the sentence beginning “With time moulded to the cheater’s satisfaction” to the end of your post, I can definitely relate to it. It was always about what the XW wants and when and how she wanted to do it.

MovingOn
MovingOn
9 years ago
Reply to  MMargaret

You wrote about my life as well. Money was an issue unless it was the thousands he adored spending on home renovations (and we didn’t even get our own show!) or on a vacation he wanted to take. I had no free time until the kids were in bed, and then I was expected to use it on lavishing attention on him. He was free to come and go as he pleased. Is that what having kids is all about with these cheaters? To anchor us to them so they can play while we take care of real life? I honestly don’t understand why my ex had kids with me. Why don’t they just cut bait and run while they have the chance instead of increasing the amount of “unpleasant,” real life responsibility they already wish to avoid?

Dutch-chump
Dutch-chump
9 years ago
Reply to  MMargaret

When I had just discovered the deceit, I thought: who is this man and what has he done to my loving husband?

Now, with more and more distance, I see things for what they really were. There was no shift in his behavior, of course, with children and more responsibilities, his character came more out into the open.

But when I recently heard a mutual acquaintance mention him talking about a windsurfing holiday we had when we were just together, when he tried to ride a horse, fell off and couldn’t surf, I realized… I went with him on surfing holidays all the time. Either trying to read on a windswept beach, or pick up windsurfing myself.

Then this one time there happened to be a place where you could make trips on horseback. Grudgingly he granted me that hour… And fell, hurting his back (nothing serious). Complaining all the remaining time on how his whole holiday was ruined. Never did that again, from then on it was just surfing… I felt so guilty!

During false reconciliation his major complaint about me/our marriage was that I decided too much, arranged everything. It was not only a lie, I tried to involve him in most decisions, only to be ignored or brushed away. But it was also so unfair, since I was the one that tried to arrange everything just how I thought he’d want it…

Almost a year out and I’m still in the discovery phase. Not of what he did… But I’m discovering more and more doormat qualities in me. It’s not just my picker I need to fix. To the outer world I’m strong, independent, vocal. It hurts that not only my supposedly loving husband bought that image, but… I did too.

Follow the money, time and attention. The balance doesn’t have to be level all the time, but our marriage was so imbalanced, with children and more and more duties piling up on my side only. But it had always been there. I had (unknowingly) decided not to level it out once in a while. Never thought that was a problem. Until it was.

Psyche
Psyche
9 years ago
Reply to  Dutch-chump

This is so, so true, chumps. Money and time… And you’re right, Dutch Chump, we’ll have to really work on not just slotting ourselves into the same situation all over again!

Captain Awkward has a great take on this dynamic (see quote below), which can also crop up in friendships and family – any time we chumps are working hard trying to build a relationship with someone who is frankly selfish! I don’t think I ever did this with anyone else, though: maybe because my friends and family are better people than my ex, maybe because marriage is just really ripe for this with the whole “two become one” lifetime devotion (especially if accompanied with a heavy dose of wifely “submission” in Christian circles, ugh!).

“There is no prize for being the most world’s most accommodating person. And if there were a prize, it would be ‘hanging out with people who walk all over you, being afraid to speak up, and silently seething at them, forever.'”

(from this post; see also this one on a romantic relationship).

I love Captain Awkward almost as much as Chump Lady 😉

Datdamwuf
Datdamwuf
9 years ago
Reply to  Psyche

Captain Awkward and army rock. I only wish I had the life skillz at the same age as she does. Anyone needing to work on boundary issues would do well to read her blog. Don’t forget, there is a separate forum if you need to work out some issues for yourself.

LovedaJackass
LovedaJackass
9 years ago
Reply to  Psyche

My ex-husband (not the cheater) would never do anything he didn’t want to do. He wouldn’t wait for a table at a nice restaurant (even though he could wait at the bar and he was a big drinker). He wouldn’t watch a TV show he didn’t like. He wouldn’t go to a movie he wasn’t interested in or to a play I wanted to see. He would spend thousands buying stuff for his adult son but refuse to add to joint funds to buy a family car when mine broke down. He complained about going to holiday events with my family, until one holiday I got dressed and was going out the door and he said, “I’m not ready yet.” And I said, “I’m not waiting.” And I went from that relationship to the Jackass, who didn’t have any of those issues because first he was busy “selling” me on his comparative wonderfulness and then he was busy gaslighting and courting his married OW. So I sure need to fix more than my picker too. Currently living along and working on figuring out what I like.

Jode70
Jode70
9 years ago
Reply to  MMargaret

MMargaret, you have just written about my life. I spent 20 years down doing what he wanted. If I ever asked to do anything he threw a tantrum, stood there with his arms folded and complained the whole time. I made my needs smaller and smaller, gave up asking and he just went off and did what he liked, went out with lots of different female ‘friends’. I stayed at home, raised our children and worked. Yet when he ran off with the final other woman I was told it was my fault and that I wore him down….. right..

beachi
beachi
9 years ago

I laughed when I read the title of this. Oh Cabin Fever, it is so catchy. Am laughing as I type this.

Right a bonding remodeling momen with a cabin and camera crew and the sandwich restaurant chef or whoever there and the makeup team and for crying out loud.

Love the shot with her looking at the port a potty.

Can these people actually figure out how to have a life? They must be so odd to be around.

beachi
beachi
9 years ago

moment not momen

This couple seems to be wimps to me, ok, wimps in all of life.

beachi
beachi
9 years ago

Sorry the song jungle boogie keeps going through my head thinking of the title cabin fever

sparklykangaroo
sparklykangaroo
9 years ago

Poor little rich girl who doesn’t know how to do much else than be on tv because she can’t get her hands on daddy’s money. I sometimes wonder if she ever thinks about when she, while still married, deliberately went after a married man and thereby set something in motion that tilted her soul. Will I be watching? Ummmm, that would be a no.

Tonya
Tonya
9 years ago

The best line ever, the line that sums this whole shitty thing up is when Tori says –
‘We have a lot of poop in this family.’!

Pure awfulness!

P.F
P.F
9 years ago

Tori and Dean

As we we watch their “reality”, I realize that for these futternuts, they actual live in a suspended reality…outdoor toillet and all. Tori and Dean’s relationship is a “reality” show from day one. They are both dysfunctional modern day people. They are actors playing “real people”. They are sincere in their fuckupness, in the sense that they take themselves seriously and assume the audience does too.

What these two idiots can’t understand is that they are fake people trying to live the “dream”, even if the dream requires mental gymnastics.

They had no shame for their past actions and flaunted their “love”. Their disordered mindset was not conquered by “love”, because they don’t even understand the concept of true love. Ironically, they will move on eventually, and flaunt the “new” and improved love in their third and fourth marriages to other people.

GladIt'sOver
GladIt'sOver
9 years ago
Reply to  P.F

YES. P.F, you nailed it. They are both narcs simply acting at being normal people. They will never “get it” and will never change, no matter which “true love” they are with.

Your description of Tori and Dean is also a perfect description of my ex, although he hasn’t managed to get a reality tv show yet, much as he’s tried.

Miss Sunshine
Miss Sunshine
9 years ago

Do we love this show because we know we are watching the karma bus roll over an OW? I think that’s why I enjoy the clips.

Well, there’s also the creeptastic fascination with analyzing a known cheater’s behavior toward the soulmate schmoopie that he fucks over, because this is the very fabric of who he is.

Moving Liquid
Moving Liquid
9 years ago

I was morbidly fascinated by their recent reality show, True Tori, but I am so sick of talentless, soulless, greedy fucks like them, the Housewives of Everywhere, the Kardashians. They make me feel dirty. Their god is money. Period.

I honestly don’t think any of these folks feel pain the way we do. They are far too busy planning their next “business” or worrying about how they look on camera. They are utterly unfamiliar with real struggles of real life by real people.

GladIt'sOver
GladIt'sOver
9 years ago
Reply to  Moving Liquid

I don’t think narcs are really bothered by cheating in the way chumps are. That requires actual emotion, a soul, conscience and empathy. Narcs might feel rage at being cheated, they might feel humiliation, they might feel loss of their cake. But I don’t believe they feel actual genuine grief, loss or fear. And they certainly do not feel remorse, that’s for sure.

Lilac
Lilac
9 years ago

For me home redecorating means hell. Since D Day I realize that the 15 years of construction on our house was part of his passive-aggressive (and outright aggressive) personality. Because he possessed the skills to do major renovation (although not the time and money at the same time), he insisted on it all being done by him. I was not allowed to hire anyone. He added two floors to the house, made our home inhabitable (even though we still lived in it) for months, and it took years before we could ever live in the addition. I don’t think we will ever have closet doors or baseboards. because he never finished the siding, the attic is filled with raccoons and squirrels. The 1950’s kitchen just got almost finished being redone after six months of construction. He will never grout the tile or put on the finishing touches. If I ask to hire someone, he says no. If I ask ANYTHING of him, he might eventually do part of it or “forget” or angrily say how he never has any free time because he works 55 hours a week and has spent all his time building ME a kitchen. The hours he works are by his choice (because no once can get along without him), and he refuses to ever take a week off even though he is in his 60’s. “Do you want me to stick a broom up my ass and sweep too?” is one of his favorite sayings. I spent the 30 years of my marriage often alone with the kids or going to events without him because he was always working or building. Somehow he found time for his 25 year old slut that he claims was only a friend who had problems and needed help. (CL, can you draw a cartoon of Martyr Man????) Now I can’t get him to leave or admit he cheated. He doesn’t call sexting, lying, money loaning, and omissions cheating. And those are just the charming things he admits to.

Ms. Shepp
Ms. Shepp
9 years ago
Reply to  Lilac

PUHLEASE in re Tory.
My STBXH must be related.
He moved us into an old house on a busy street (I said NO), with NO closets (I said NO), leaky clawfoot tub (NO), leaky sink (NO), bats in the attic and now the basement, too (NO, NO, NO!!!!!) – I think you get it. Promised to fix all, fixed NOTHING. Admitted nothing. Sometimes. A real gaslighter. Sometimes putting in as many as 5 entire hrs. a week, from home.
He LOVED that it made me so unhappy. Loved it. Became enraged when I bought a makeshift closet.
I now see that it was all just a game. After one year here, he left me w/ this house falling down around my ears & our brokenhearted son. Oh, and his aging, one-lunged mother down the street (“he really is broke, honey.”). Gone. Out of State. His online anthem was “I moved to PA to take care of my mom.” Now what is it? “I fucked over central PA, so Colorado p_ssy, here I came?” Whatever.

Still, I harkin back to one of my first CL reads that began “YOUR KARMA FOLLOWS YOU, ASSHOLE. . . . It’s the tree that falls on your house,” and I take heart. He is a Narc. CL & Co. introduced the idea, and I matched stories word for word.
I finally understand. You see, I COULD NOT give up until I did. It brought me peace, the knowing. Sometimes. Until the bats get into the living quarters and I have to call the police. Oh boy, I only wear my good jammies now that I’ve met them; good jammies with maybe a swipe of gloss.

Silver linings, dahling, silver linings.

Lilac
Lilac
9 years ago
Reply to  Ms. Shepp

Oh no, Ms. Shepp! Bats! That is even worse than raccoons. I am so sorry for you and your son. I hope that karma brings you joy and a wonderful future life with a finished home!

Datdamwuf
Datdamwuf
9 years ago
Reply to  Lilac

Hire a contractor and get the work done, you don’t need his permission to make your house livable. You cannot make him leave, true, you can file for divorce and get an end point to the madness. Go see a lawyer, begin

Lilac
Lilac
9 years ago
Reply to  Datdamwuf

Good and logical advice. I have started hiring people without asking him when I can afford it. The lawyer part is still too expensive, but I will find a way. I am so sick of his control and immaturity.

GladIt'sOver
GladIt'sOver
9 years ago

Ex and I did a major remodel/addition on our house a few years before Dday. Right in the middle of the remodel (which ex had insisted on), he paid for a two-week trip to Europe for him and his mom. He did not consult me before doing this and it was a nonrefundable payment. He went on that trip and had a great time, leaving me to deal with the tumult as walls were knocked down and the whole house redone. We couldn’t afford that trip, we were already totally overextended by the remodel.

At the time, friends could not believe I “let him” go on that trip. My reply was that how was I supposed to stop him? He did whatever he wanted, he never consulted me about anything and did not care what I felt anyway, and he was entirely self-centered. In looking back, that trip pretty much summed him up. An immature, self-centered narcissist who could not delay gratification for a moment, and was a financial disaster with no ability to look ahead, understand consequences or care about his actions.

Moving Liquid
Moving Liquid
9 years ago
Reply to  GladIt'sOver

My god, GIO, they really are all from the same mold.

Einstein
Einstein
9 years ago

Are we supposed to believe that Tori and Dean are actually doing this remodeling work themselves? Tori in her little hardhat and gloves? Oh please….it’s as fake as their personalities.

The cheating is just another plot for a TV show (although I don’t doubt his wandering dick, just her assertion that she gives a shit), which is in itself a slap in the face to every man/woman that has ever had to go through it. It sucks….it isn’t fodder for a TV show.

nomar
nomar
9 years ago

Tori’s expression while watching in disbelief as the sewer truck backs up onto her property to unload a Port-o-Potty?

Wow! That’s exactly how I feel when I watch the Tori & Dean show!

exrepeatedmeme
exrepeatedmeme
9 years ago

I am always amazed how the posts here are just the right topic for me at just the right time.

Every one of these renovation horror stories could have been written about STBX.

I’m still in the 1950s bungalow we bought 25 years ago, which was a fixer-upper then because it was what we could afford. It still isn’t finished. But at least I have fully functional plumbing – we went for over two years with a bucket under the drain of the sink in our only bathroom because ToddlerBoi wouldn’t fix it but a plumber would have been “too expensive”. God I was an idiot not seeing what was right in front of my nose.

I did finally get the worst of it renovated eight years back, when even TB could see that the house would fall down around us if we didn’t. The contractor we got in was wonderful, really skilled at renovating old places and cost conscious. TB “had to work” so I took on the supervision and grunt work to save us some money. We spent that Christmas with no walls, no power, no running water, no heat (because of course it was “too expensive” to rent a place for the interim) and I still remember the look of pity on the contractor’s face when he realized that we weren’t moving out over the holidays. Now I realized that he felt really sorry for me, but he never said anything, as there wasn’t anything to say.

TB said he would finish up the reno when the contractor left (as he didn’t want to spend any more money). You can imagine how well that worked.

I’ll be selling the house, and of course all those unfinished things will need finishing. I’ve specified in the separation agreement, which went to his lawyer Friday, that all repairs and maintenance need to be done by professionals. Before I included that line in the agreement I had horrible flashbacks to him standing on the top rung of a step ladder trimming trees with a circular saw held high. And the time he went up on the roof to clean the gutters, a horrendous rain and windstorm raging and night coming on, forgot to take his cell phone with him and didn’t tell anyone, then fell off the roof when he slipped on the same step ladder coming down (wore his dress shoes up on the roof, leather soles). He is so heavy that it took eight paramedics to get him to the ambulance, concussed but otherwise ok. Until I went NC I heard regularly about how that one was my fault for insisting that the gutters be cleaned out (and yes, he did refuse to get someone in to do it because it was “too expensive”).

My new place will be finished (imagine, baseboards! paint! drywall complete!), clean, and free of ToddlerBoi. I will get the guy in to clean the gutters whenever I see fit. I am so glad STBX left; I can’t imagine living like that again. Good luck to the new OW that he is no doubt grooming – one of his dreams for retirement was always to buy a cabin somewhere north, well off the highway, and renovate it. I wish her luck with that.

Lilac
Lilac
9 years ago
Reply to  exrepeatedmeme

OMG! Mine fell off the roof too and got a concussion. We thought he had died because he was unconscious, and my kids went through hell as the ambulance took him away awake but not well. He is still angry at me for allowing the hospital to keep him overnight. They are all cut from the same mold. Glad you are FREE, Exrepeatedmeme. I can’t wait to get there.

exrepeatedmeme
exrepeatedmeme
9 years ago
Reply to  Lilac

Lilac, some days it’s like we are all talking about the same person, isn’t it? It wasn’t until I started reading here that I really started to understand just how “not special” and “not unique” STBX really is……It’s funny, but one of the paramedics told me that the “unprepared midde aged guy falling off the roof” is a regular thing that he saw at least once a week. So really not special.

I’m still on that road to freedom but it gets closer every day. Almost 3 years since he left, two years since I found out about OW, but finally things are moving. I’m hoping my Christmas present this year will be the final divorce papers letting me know that I am truly myself again.

Keep on going, Lilac! Stay NC, get the best lawyer you can even if you have to borrow to do it, and be kind to yourself always. It is such a better world without these people in our lives.

Lilac
Lilac
9 years ago
Reply to  exrepeatedmeme

Thank you! I hope you get your Christmas wish this year, Exrepeatedmeme!

Chasing the sun
Chasing the sun
9 years ago

Her dad is Aaron Spelling….Power and prestige in her family… Tori will divorce well if it comes to that…

Daisy
Daisy
9 years ago

Oh Tori…did anyone else notice her fringed shirt and braided hair? Is that how she thinks the little people dress when they are in the “wilderness”? It’s so funny in a clueless rich girl way. I wonder how long it took her to find the exact right outfit for the arrival of the porta potty?

ChutesandLadders
ChutesandLadders
9 years ago

GAC is akin to Cathy’s “ACK!” Both are annoying as hell. Like Tori.

CharacterMatters
CharacterMatters
9 years ago

GAC! No thanks, Tori.