I have a confession to make. Just a little one . . . I caught up with the Kardashians last night. I know, I know, I shouldn’t have . . . I should have clicked on the Food Network and watched a rerun of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, but I keep reading that the K-clan ratings are through the roof, and I needed to understand why. Why? WHY??!! Also, I was having an episode of PVCs (heart palpitations.) My doctors tell me it’s not life-threatening, but it feels like my heart is throwing a party and has cranked the volume on the boom box to full throttle; I needed a diversion from the internal merrymaking.

Only I wasn’t diverted. I was bored. And then more bored. I was waiting for something, anything to happen with those Kardashians to take my mind off the flip-flopping in my chest, and it never did. Kim K was cranky, eating compulsively and ignoring Khloe, Kourtney was cold to Scott, Kris Humphreys was immature (yeah, I can see why Kim divorced him, never mind marry him in the first place) and that was pretty much the gist of the entire episode.

Well, if that’s as exciting as their reality gets, I can’t for the life of me figure out why everyone is watching them. On top of that, we already know the punch line . . . Kim and Kris get divorced. With good reason. For goodness sakes, he told her the veggie burger she was scarfing out of a plastic takeout container smelled stinky . . . why’s he gotta go and pick on someone’s food choices? (And for the record, I can already watch cranky people eat veggie burgers right in my own kitchen . . .)

Which made me start thinking about reality TV. Again. You see, I joke about having a reality TV show about our farm, but several years ago, we were approached by a casting company that was interested in using us for a show called, “America’s Ultimate Animal Family.” The directors were super enthusiastic and said they were just about positive we would be the ones chosen . . . until . . . the producer realized our children didn’t live at home with us and they really wanted drama revolving around them (i.e. “Your veggie burger stinks.” “No it doesn’t.” “Yes it does!”)

The casting agency loved the CD we submitted (they needed it in 24 hours flat, holy cats what a rush) loved that we had over 100 animals available for hundreds of episodes of drama, laughs and face plants in the mud, but darn those kids of ours for growing up and getting lives of their own. I explained to the men from L.A. that we have countless kids on the farm that I’ve outright stolen from other families (quite easy to do when you have ponies, actually,) but no, not good enough for those persnickety casting directors.

So, I did what any mother would do in this situation; I called my adult children and told them they needed to move back home. Immediately. I broke the news to my daughter first.

“No,” Bo replied.

“Bo, please! It’s the perfect opportunity!” I said. “We could show the whole country what it’s like to rescue horses and pigs and sheep from slaughter . . .”

“I don’t rescue horses and pigs and sheep,” she replied. “You do. And I am not moving home. Besides, you tore down the wall between Matt’s and my bedrooms and made it yours. Where would we sleep?”

“Sofa bed?” I replied.

She hung up on me.

I called my son, Matt, who was living in Seattle at the time, working on a post doc in organic chemistry.

“You’re joking, right?” he asked.

“No, Matt,” I replied. “We can use the story line that we need help back home on the farm and you can give up building those molecules that you make for the university and come home and clean horse stalls for your mama. It will make for all kinds of drama!”

“Yeah it will,” he said. “Aside from that, your ceilings are too low. And you stole my bedroom.”

Matt is 6’5” and some of our doorways are 6’4”, not to mention the section of the kitchen ceiling that’s only 6’3” high.

“Oh, come on, Matt! Wear a helmet in the house! The audience will love it!”

“No.”

“Matthew John, I suffered through a miserable labor and delivery to push all 10 pounds of you out into this world . . .”

“It took 15 minutes, you practically delivered me in the car.”

“Don’t be fresh with your mother!”

“Oh yeah,” he added. “And where would I sleep?”

“The sofa bed.”

He hung up on me.

This is riveting drama, right? It’s at least as exciting as Kim Kardashian binging on junk food while ignoring Khloe and being cranky towards her almost-ex husband. Only in our reality we have the added excitement of a full-sized pig sleeping in the kitchen, 40-something horses and dozens of other unusual furry and feathered friends and even we don’t know the punch line every day! And then there’s all the glamour* of living on Locket’s Meadow Farm . . .

But then, I don’t know . . . maybe America likes being bored by people in designer clothing. Maybe a middle-aged woman in Levi jeans and Eddie Bauer work shirts cleaning up after 120 unusual pets wouldn’t cut it, even if my ungrateful children lived back home, whacking their heads on the ceiling and sleeping on the sofa bed (which they would have to share with a half-dozen cats and two Jack/rat terriers.)

So much for keeping up with the Kardashians. If the PVCs kick in again tonight, I will skip Kourtney and Kim Take New York and check out Dance Moms, Celebrity Wife Swap, The Biggest Loser or the Real Housewives of Atlanta . . .

Hey, wait a minute! That’s it! That’s what I’ll pitch! The Real Housewives of Bethany! A show about women who wouldn’t dream of leaving their house without a jackknife and mini-flashlight in their pocket, who get up at 4 a.m. and feed horses, clean stalls, trim goat hooves, throw bales of hay, mend broken fence, then work a paying job during the day . . . 

And then again, maybe I’ll just watch Chopped on the Food Network and skip the potential for inspiration. This country may not be ready for the reality of real life out here on the farm . . .

(Here's a sample of the kind of "reality" those silly boys from L.A. are missing out on . . . duh . . .)

*Editor Kathleen Schurman owns Locket’s Meadow Farm in Bethany where she lives a life filled with “glamour” which is her cute little euphemism for “manure/mud/slime, etc.” When she is not writing for the Bethwood Patch she is shoveling glamour, teaching therapeutic riding and occasionally writing a book. But mostly, she’s shoveling glamour . . .