Home Roost Recap: Kate's no Ma Ingalls and that sure ain't a LITTLE house

Coming up on Kate Plus 8! Kate screeches, the kids are finally old enough to realize how annoying she is (yea!), and if Kate is going to make obnoxious chicken clucks throughout this entire episode I don’t know how long I will last. It’s actually not the clucks that bother me. It’s that she thinks she’s hysterical.

The episode title says it’s called “Home Roost” but the TV guide says it’s called “Chicken Coops.” Eh, neither is all that creative. Try again.

Yup, Kate is going to cluck and cackle throughout this episode, I guess I'll have to just accept it. She is literally just throwing in cluck sounds in mid-sentence. There’s been a lot of concern the past few weeks about how Kate sort of seems to be …well, losing it lately. You know, with the uncombed hair and the bare feet and the lollipops. Quite honestly I think she’s just trying to stick it to everybody, F-you. But clucking mid-sentence for no apparent reason doesn't help.

Kate says they’re going to get chickens. That’s fine, as long as they are well cared for and you don’t give them up when it gets hard like you did the dogs. At least giving up a chicken is probably not as hard on the chicken as it is on a dog. Dogs are one of the planet’s most social creatures and they get attached. My dog babysitter and very patient friend Leslie says my doggie cries for about two days when I go on vacation. Poor doggy. And poor Leslie.

Kate babbles that it’s “amazing how we have the organic space” for this project. Um, as opposed to the hazardous waste areas of the property?

I guess we’re supposed to feel sorry for Kate because eggs cost her $3.50 a dozen and she always has to buy a lot because she has eight, count them, eight kids! Three-fifty for eggs? They better be golden. I’m guess those are organic eggs. If she bought regular eggs like other families of multiples, they go on sale all the time and she could get them for 99 cents sometimes, full price maybe $1.60. This is why Kate is in the situation she is now, because she is so unwilling to slum it with the rest of us making omelets with just a sad old regular toxic egg.

There’s that Amish farmer neighbor of hers. At least I think it’s the same guy. Farmer Dan? I can’t blame Farmer Dan for associating with Kate because I assume he really doesn’t watch T.V. or read the tabloids and doesn’t realize what Kate has done to her kids. Traditionally the Amish have always been so against exploiting their kids. The few documentaries that have managed to get clearance to film, they’ve had their children’s faces blurred out. And they absolutely refused to participate in the movie of the week made about the tragic shooting at one of their schools several years ago. Good for them. Your children didn’t die so the public could enjoy a melodramatic Lifetime movie about it. My grandfather is neighbors with some Amish, they bring him vegetables and they’re good people.

That’s odd, Collin is looking really apprehensively at Farmer Dan and whispers fearfully, “He looks scary.” Surely Collin has seen many Amish where he lives. Or maybe he just has a good sense about people. He certainly has a good sense about the paparazzi.

Kate has unrealistic expectations about this project. She thinks the chickens will just be all fun for the kids. It probably will be fun for a few weeks, then it will be a chore. See, kids realize they will get eggs whether they do the chore of gathering them or Mom buys them at a store. So why do work when you will get them anyway? As long as Kate is committed to making the kids follow through on this chore. Kids in the 19th century gathered the eggs every day. They had to so they could eat. I’m sure these kids are capable.

They pick a beautiful grassy field for the chicken coop. Speaking of the 19th century, the kids prance cutely through the field and Kate opines, “Looks like Little House on the Prairie!"





Actually, it kinda does:


Except the Ma on that show had work ethic and was always home baking pies for Pa and fetching water from the creek and applying a bread poultice to her leg after she cut herself on barbed wire. All this without electricity. That Ma was in the trenches she was. I like the photo of Ma I put to the right because outwardly she is working hard but inwardly she kinda seems like she's sick of this shit.

And since Kate brought it up, I have to share this link. Little House on the Prairie meets Brokeback. Worth your time. Little House was a good show but it was so schmaltzy you practically had to wipe the drool off it. Which is exactly why it’s still so good actually.

Kate chomps away on some cud or gum or something as they pick a good spot in the horse barn to put the chickens in the winter. Ha, Kate says the farmers arrive with the assem-le-able coop. Assem-le-able? Really, Kate?

“Wanna go help?” Kate asks the kids excitedly. “No,” one of them retorts. I don’t know which one. Ha, I love these kids more every day. Sometimes they are about as sick of this shit as Ma is, aren’t they?

Kate is slowly starting to realize that eight kids means eight pairs of helping hands on the farm. Back in the olden days people had eight kids on purpose for that very reason. This chicken coop is literally coming to them on a truck in 200 different pieces. I thought this thing was pre-assembled. Coming up, Kate pretends she is running the house on her own.

We’re back! This coop is certainly not pre-assembled, or at least they don't want us to think it is. Maybe their company web site which says it is, means they assemble it for you on site?

Shouldn’t you decide which way the coop should face before you start building it? Predictably, Kate is that nightmare homeowner who doesn’t lift a finger and then says at the end of all the work, Eh, can you move it six inches to the left?

Does TLC really think it’s interesting to spend this much time watching strangers put together a coop? Kate acts annoyed that the workers/strangers let the kids go up on the chicken coop roof while she went back to the house. Well, don’t leave your kids alone with strangers and that won’t happen.

Lunchtime, and Kate is freaking out on the kids for playing with the sliding glass door. A couple of them are even in time out. What, TLC doesn’t pay her air conditioning bills?

Why is Kate in such a pissy mood? Be happy, it's more free stuff. She's gotten so complacent. Proof she is hardly ever with her own children to know these things, she tries to yank the backyard hose around to rinse off the picnic area they were eating at, only to discover the hose doesn‘t even begin to reach this far Haven't they lived here for more than a year now and she never noticed this? She then blames the hose and not her own stupid self. Then she says the house is full of half-functioning equipment and then bitches that she runs “twenty-six acres alone” and “nobody will help.”


........ Hahhahaha. Who runs this pr----sorry, hahahhahahaha. Ok, I’m good. As I was trying to say, who runs this property when she is in New York and L.A. then? Fairies? Unicorns? Kate, just stop. We know you have nannies, assistants, bodyguards, gardeners, and tons of other people making this house run. We have the photos. Also when you actually let Jon on the property he used to help out like take out the garbage, we have photographic proof of that too. You most certaintly do not run this by yourself, your kids have worked long and hard for you to afford to pay people to do it for you, so knock it off.

I also need to put in an additional hahaah because she never would have had this problem in the first place if she had just stayed at their old little house on the Andrew Ave. prairie and had been content with what was quite truly a very nice middle-class American lifestyle most people would be so lucky to have. You wanted your mansion, now you got it with all the hard work that comes with it. It’s yours, all yours! As far as the eye can see! Suck on that, Kate.

I adore six-year-olds and I nannied for one, but sometimes asking a six-year-old to help out ends up just being more energy for you. Like you think you are saving energy by asking Aaden to run up the hill and turn on the hose. But first he can’t find the end of it anywhere and is running all over the place like a six-year-old would. Then he fumbles around not turning it on enough and it takes him forever to finally get it right. Kate is shouting instructions at him the whole time. Yeah, just do it yourself, it‘s easier.

Back at the homestead, Mady and Cara are on the couch making fun of Kate. What’s funny is this show might be saved if it’s going to be about how the kids are slowly turning on Kate the older they get. Mady with a roll of her eyes says well, I guess we got chickens because we needed to stop buying eggs apparently??? I love how this kid is basically like “WTF” to every ridiculous thing Kate does for the cameras. If she’s this awesome at ten, imagine her at thirteen or fifteen. And imagine her tell-all.

Kate’s clucking again and the kids are looking at her like she’s a nut. Oh, that’s good to hear, the chickens were only transported 200 feet in those cardboard boxes because a neighbor was keeping them until the coop was ready. You can call off your letters to Pam Anderson and PETA.
Kate says that chicken feet are dirty. But the streets of New York aren’t? It is after all the concrete jungle just like Jay-Z says.

It’s kind of neat to see how the kids are getting older and a lot more capable of doing big boy and girl stuff like filling up a water jug for the chickens and carrying it over all by themselves. And then I catch myself and remember these are not our kids, they are not the public’s business, and we have no business finding pleasure in watching these strangers grow up. When will their lives be their own again and not ours?

Collin seems to be the one who is loving all the new responsibilities of the chicken coop the most. Collin’s a “great kid” Kate says. Yes, he is Kate. But that’s for you to know, not us. So why are you continuing to put him through this? In the meantime the rest of us will continue our normal lives, which might include a pie or two we baked for our husbands, without the cameras watching.