John Kelly's Washington

Post Metro columnist John Kelly was online Friday, June 5, at Noon ET to chat about spite houses, horse masseurs and anything else on your mind.

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Discussion Archives/Recent Columns

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John Kelly: I feel so special. On my way into work this morning I got to be on the train that was announced over the Metro system as the train "experiencing mechanical problems." At the time, I--and hundreds of others--were standing on the platform at Judiciary Square. We'd just been offloaded because one of the doors wouldn't close. It wasn't a crowded train, just a recalcitrant door.

So, off we got while the driver made a sweep through the train looking for any stragglers. And then came the announcement: Delays on the Red Line due to a problem train at Judiciary Square. That was me! It was like hearing my single on the radio.

At least I wasn't in a SUPER hurry. And the next train wasn't too crowded. But if I lag a little behind in my question answering it's because I lost 15 minutes this morning and will be spending the day catching up.

So, what's on tap? Oooh. "Tap." Tap = water. And I'm sick of water. I know we need it to live, but do we need so freakin' much of it? I am officially sick of the rain. (To be officially sick of the rain you must fill out Govt. Form 1272-X, have it notarized and file it with the appropriate officials.) I know I spent a year living in a rainy country, but the rain there varies from day to day. This weeks it's been all the same. Oh joy.

I twisted my ankle a few weeks ago. It's a bum ankle, first sprained 10 years ago and never really the same. It goes out more than Paris Hilton. It's more twisted than David Carridine. (Too soon?) Anyway, at the physical therapist's this morning we were talking about poor Mercedes Clemens, the Gaithersburg woman forbidden from massaging horses by the state of Maryland. I've decided to make this my crusade. Let other journalists expose torture and secret prisons. I will focus my ire on the ridiculous chiropractors who meet in a star chamber and issue rules to massage therapists like Mercedes.

Speaking of crusades, our

Send a Kid to Camp

campaign started this week. We're hoping to raise $500,000 to support Camp Moss Hollow, a summer camp for at-risk youth. If someone would just give $500,000 we could end the campaign early. Or five people could give $100,000 each.

What else? Ah yes, spite houses. I wrote about one this week, not quite a house but an odd little suspended addition on N Street NW. I'm dubious of some of these "spite" houses. Whenever anyone sees a skinny house they dub it a spite house, but this one apparently is the real deal.

What would you do to tick off your neighbor? What's your neighbor done to tick off you?

Let's chat....

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Arlington, Va. : Hey, John: Do you know anything about the Philadelphia Cheesesteak Factory in Georgetown? It's been shut down for weeks. Closed? Relocated? Condemned? I love going there in the wee hours for some cheesesteak and fries. I miss the place!

John Kelly: I talked to the Cheesesteak folks and they said the owner of the Georgetown building didn't renew their lease, plus "the building was too old." They are looking for a new Georgetown location and will reopen there in the fall. In the meantime, their Alexandria location is open and they do delivery from there to D.C. To order delivery, call 703-461-7878. More info here.

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Long Hollow, Pa.: Hi Answer Man,

Ok, so I know this is not really your area, but I have, what should be, a basic re-fi question, but all I can find on them InterWebs is info about mortgage and auto re-fi's. My wife and I used a major bank for fertility treatment financing over a year ago. With the low rates being offered at this time, how do we go about looking into refinancing this loan (we have perfect credit)? BTW, we are expecting our first child later this year. Thanks!

John Kelly: I'll throw this out to the assembled chatsters. I don't know what you would do. We're in the process of refinancing our house and, you're right, most of the attention is focused on that. I haven't heard anything about refinancing other kinds of loans.

Congratulations on the forthcoming blessed event. Start socking away for college now.

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Reston, Va.: Hi John: Can we please make the theme of today's chat about my hair? It's been raining/humid for the last however-many days, my hair is curly and frizzy and I hate it....and summer is just getting started! What is a girl to do?

John Kelly: Well, you have a few choices. You could go the Sinead O'Connor route. If that's too extreme, you could cover it with a hat. With this weather, you might be better with a swim cap.

If none of those options are appealing, you may just have to stay in your room until it stops raining.

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Silver Spring, Md.: First the Post gets rid of the Book World Section, long before it dismantled its never that great anyway Sports section and then incorporated its Business section into the A section, making a very awkward fit.

Now they make Fisher an editor of some strange "crack" reporting team. Snooze. If you go anywhere then the Metro section will be completely useless to read with Fisher no longer writing. THEN the Post has an excellent two-part series on a fascinating (and disturbing) unsolved murder of a young lawyer that they ONLY PUT ON THE WEB, and snub the people who, oh you know, BUY the paper.

So I ask you, with all of this, why should I keep subscribing (I'm 25, one of the few members of my generation that I know of to do so) when I can read the important news online that is updated throughout the day for free? Come Monday I will most likely smarten up and do that, though I never thought I would.

John Kelly: I guess it comes down to how much you like holding a physical paper in your hands, whether you think that reading experience has an innate quality that online doesn't have, whether you appreciate the ads that you see in the printed product, which differ from those online, and whether things like coupons are important to you. I think many people still do, even if they also look online.

Don't forget in the case of the Business section, it used to run at the back of the Sports section. It only became its own section about 10 years ago. So people who say it's awful that it's stuck in the A section don't really have much of an argument, in my mind.

Those other cuts and contractions? Yes, they hurt. I hope they aren't fatal. I don't think they are. In the grand scheme of things, I guess we'd rather you subscribed to the paper. But we also appreciate you reading us online.

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Eager for RC: So when will start getting our RC badges? When will the statement of principles be published? We need a manifesto. This should be the Summer of Civility!

John Kelly: I am working on it. I have a nice logo, created by Post artist Patterson Clark. We've decided rather than go the Facebook route, we will run it out of my blog. I'm planning to kick it off next week, inviting readers to post examples of bad behavior they've encountered, good behavior they want to recognize, methods that might work for defusing the situation, businesses that actually act on complaints--that sort of thing.

I'd love to put the logo on some buttons and send one to whomever wants it. It would be like our secret signal.

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Loans: I'm totally stupid in this area and have never had a major loan other than educational loans, but could the answer be just to take out a new loan and use that to pay off the fertility treatment loan? Considerations: would that have an effect on credit score, length of repayment...

John Kelly: Here's something I just thought of: If you default on a loan for fertility treatments, do they repossess the child? I mean, I've heard of people offering their first-born....

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Too soon?: I guess it's not too soon, because this is (literally!) the fourth Carradine joke I've read online today that was immediately followed by the question "Too soon?"

John Kelly: Oooh, are the other three suitable for the chat?

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Arlington, Va.: So, John --

With Marc Fisher moving on, do you feel pressure as the only D.C.-area-centric columnist left at the Post? I gotta say, you had better not be going anywhere. I don't know if I could take it.

John Kelly: I have no plans to go anywhere. Curiously, though, I have been told to clean out my office. But so has everyone else. They're renovating the newsroom and so people will be moved every which way for the demolition crew to come in. But as long as I have a notebook and a Smartrip, I can do my job.

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Frederick, Md.: I put up a spite fence between my yard and my neighbor's yard. Does that count?

John Kelly: How high was it? And why? Were his kids ugly? Did he decorate his back yard with those inside-out tire planters? Do you garden in the nude?

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S'mores: I want to sponsor a week of s'mores around the campfire at Moss Hollow. Any idea how much that would cost?

John Kelly: I'm going to say $77. (One hundred campers a week x 5 s'mores each x cost of graham cracker/chocolate/mashmallow = $77.) And, yes, I pulled that number out of thin air.

The soup-to-nuts cost for a week at camp is $700. That includes all the per-child overhead to run the camp. Any amount is gratefully received.

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Recent?: After reading your intro, I wanted to see what you wrote about spite houses, so I clicked on "recent columns." Most of the links that came up were from 2007!

washingtonpost.com: 1800s Architecture on N Street: A Lovely Archway and 12 1/2 Feet of Sweet Revenge (Post, June 2)

John Kelly: Whoops. I will notify the Tech Team. Thank you Rocci for posting that link.

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Pennsylvania: I have sympathy for your ankle. I have a similar ankle -- tore the ligaments about 10 years ago falling off a curb. They're never the same again, are they?

John Kelly: No, they're like rubber bands that are stretched out or broken. My physical therapist said the idea is to strengthen the muscles in the ankle and calf. The ligaments are shot, gone forever. Only thing you can do is have surgery (and I don't know what that entails). But if you can strengthen everything else down there, they can take keep you from twisting it. Plus, you have to improve your balance. I probably should have done all this 10 years ago when I first did the damage. I didn't do much strength work then, just lots of flexes with a rubber tube around my ankle.

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Bill Killed: At least a dozen people posted this on Facebook yesterday. Surely someone's got a Kung Fu joke to put out there, right?

John Kelly: "Well I guess he finally snatched the pebble from his hand."

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re Too soon?: Well, the funnier ones were not Post-friendly. The other wasn't so much a joke as a reference, and was rather lame. The Abovethelaw blog linked to a CNN story, with the comment "It's not entirely clear if Bill killed himself. (Too soon?)" (A "Kill Bill" reference, for those who missed it.)

John Kelly: I wonder if there would have been those Kill Bill references if he'd died peacefully in his sleep. That's the danger of being an actor. Not only do you get typecast in life, you get typecast in death.

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Told you so: (only your chat wasn't up yesterday -- first thing I said when I heard about David Carradine yesterday was "just like INXS, autoerotic asphixiation mess-up"

John Kelly: Here's what I don't get, is sex for some people so mediocre that they have to resort to autoerotic asphyxiation? Maybe you get bored around age 72. And nothing says sexy like a curtain cord in a closet in a Thai hotel room.

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Not Neighbors, But Landlords: I live in a condo and pay rent every month. The neighbors are annoying with loud music, but that doesn't get to the land lady. Not only does she live in the next room, she has strange ideas about how to live. She constantly goes behind my cleaning to clean again, sets a "no cooking after 9 p.m." rule, when I get home at 8 p.m., and is passive-aggressive to boot. She refused to fix the AC for a year, instead preferring "a guy I know" who turned a screw and left. She paid $300 for that and of course the AC completely broke this year. She finally had it replaced but complained about the cost (no one else has to pay; ugh, no I pay rent to cover some of this stuff!) and insisted to me the other night that it broke because people turned the dial a degree or two. It can only stay on one number, NO MATTER WHAT because "the engineer told me." I am sick of this and can't believe someone can be so stupid. I'm not doing anything in retaliation, but I'm open to suggestions.

John Kelly: Are you stuck in a lease you can't get out of? I think the only retaliation you might have is to withhold some of your rent. I mean, a functioning air conditioner in Washington summer is a necessity.

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Use of spite in zoning: A fence isn't really a spite fence, cuz it's not prohibiting adjacent owner from using his land as he'd wanted (i.e., putting up a window where he'd planned). Putting up a fence is just a way of saying "I don't like looking at your yard." In planning, spite strips are small bits of land people retain to keep a developer from accumulating the entire block and building a big box.

John Kelly: Re the fence: I thought so too, but let's let the home owner explain....

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Frederick, Md.: The fence is six feet high. I put it up because they were planning on building a patio that would have crossed the property line. There are townhouses. I foiled their plans and I'm so proud of myself!

John Kelly: So, a preemptive strike. Could you have let them build the patio then showed up with a copy of the plat and told them they'd have to jackhammer out the last two feet, since it was on your property?

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Red Line, Md.: We had Red Line issues today, too! There was a (looked to be homeless) guy ranting and raving on our inbound train today -- someone (seemed to be Metro staff) confronted him, but then left the train! The guy went from talking about angels to threatening to blow up the train. As we stopped at a couple of stations, the conductor called for transit police assistance, but didn't wait very long and no one came. We (along with a handful of other customers) switched cars.

I don't think the guy was dangerous, really, but it was odd to have the Metro staff not stay on the train if he perceived it as a real problem.

John Kelly: I wonder what their training is in that sort of case. I assume that any sort of serious confrontation requires a transit police officer. But if the Metro empolyee was going to check out the situation, you wonder why he couldn't have asked the man to get off the train. If he was worried about his safety I can understand him deferring to an officer. But then why let the other riders stay on the car?

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Moss Hollow: While I think the effort is really great, I have to say I hate Send a Kid to Camp time. I love the variety of your columns and look forward to reading them every day (except cursed no-column Fridays!) but this time of year I dread the monotony of the profiles of camp/camp goers. The same goes for Children's Hospital columns. I still read them (just like I still listen to WAMU during the pledge drives) and I'll probably donate too, but I can't wait 'til it's over.

John Kelly: I hope the columns can stand on their own as columns. I do try to find interesting stories, and I'm a sucker for weird illnesses. I think you may see fewer columns that are completely devoted to Moss Hollow this summer, but I will of course mention every day how to donate. And the need is just as great this year as it has been in the past. And don't forget my blog, "John Kelly's Commons.

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Great neighbor: In our townhouse community, one of the team of two trash collectors assembles all the trash bags in front of one house before the truck reaches them. That way, all the trash is in one place. On a warm, sunny day (remember those), they assembled all the trash in front of my house, but never picked it up. I arrived home to see 10 bags of trash on my front sidewalk. My great neighbor arrived home at the same time, and offered to move the trash bags to a common area, away from my house. He could have easily done nothing.

BTW, I called the Community Association, and they called the trash company to pick up the trash ASAP.

John Kelly: That is a great neighbor. I once accompanied the contractor who picks up most of the residential trash in MoCo. As you can imagine, that stuff gets ripe. They love freezing days, since it keeps the odor down a bit.

I hope you baked some cookies for your neighbor. And then Febrezed your front yard.

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Herndon, Va.: John: What are your thoughts on the Robert Wone articles this week? It's terribly tragic, yet the story is so compelling. It doesn't seem like anyone knows the whole truth of what happened.

washingtonpost.com: The Robert Wone Killing Remains 'a Head-Scratcher' (Post, May 31 and June 1)

John Kelly: It was a fascinating story, well told by Paul Duggan. I really don't know what the answer is to the central question: Whodunnit? As Paul told me, "It's like a Rubik's Cube." Once you get one part figured out you realize that on the back of the cube there's a little green square in the middle of a bunch of red. If thoes three guys did it, don't see how the cops'll prove it, barring a confession.

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Doctor Do Little: Golly John, you sure are falling apart. Bad heart, bad ankle, bald spot ... what's next? Hope you're not having take the little purple pill.

John Kelly: Wait a minute. Bald spot? Do you know something I don't know? Ah, you must think that's why I wear a hat. I'm no Chuck Mangione.

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College Park, Md.: Re: the would-be horse chiropractor (well, person who wants to do chiropractic on horses, not horse who wants to be a chiropractor) --

Wah, wah, wah. Cry me a river.

I'm a veterinarian and a horse enthusiast, and she has been crying the blues in the press for ages now. Horse anatomy and human anatomy are so very different (big surprise there, eh?) so if the human chiropractor board says she isn't qualified, so be it.

The problem I and many other veterinarians have is with people doing chiropractic on horses and making diagnoses -- really inane, really incorrect diagnoses. The animal's owner has no way of knowing whether the chiropractor's diagnosis is on the mark or not. You can ask the horse, but they just don't let on.

Animal chiropractors aren't subject to much regulation, save the veterinary medical board acting against them if they violate the practice act by, say, making diagnoses. Good chiropractors make an animal more comfortable, and that's fine. Bad chiropractors mislead owners and there is pretty much no accountability.

Sorry for the rant. I'm just really tired of reading about this woman.

John Kelly: A few things: She doesn't practice chiropractic on horses. She massages them. She's been riding since she was a little girl, has owned horses, wrote for local equine publications and took a course on horse massage. She then took more courses and got her human massage license.

The Maryland Vet Board objected to her massaging horses, as did the Maryland chiropractic board. The vet board backed down, possibly because it was looking as if they felt only vets should massage horses, which is odd, since doctors aren't the only ones who can massage humans. And many much more dangerous procedures are handled on horses by non-vets, including dentristry and shoeing.

But the chiropractors didn't back down. Nor did they explain why. Why should I be allowed to massage a horse but not a woman who actually knows about horses. Yes, she knows about humans too--is licensed to massage them--but why is that keeping her from massaging horses?

The whole thing is messed up.

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Tick off neighbor: My neighbor on the right is a cat lover. My neighbor on the left is a bird lover. I live in the neutral zone ...

John Kelly: Watch out for Romulans.

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I think the only retaliation you might have is to withhold some of your rent.: You cannot legally withhold your rent in D.C. Please research your legal options or go to the Landlord-Tenant Clinic at the D.C. Court, arrive before noon M-F. They can help.

John Kelly: Thanks for the advice.

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Washington, D.C.: Is Clyde's rotating the Moss Hollow specials? Because lobster and strawberry shortcake isnt exactly this workingman's lunch.

John Kelly: Yes, there will be different things every week, most based on the fresh ingredients they are getting at the time.

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If you don't get it....: then what do you read on the toilet? Seriously, this is a real question: what do people do in the bathroom without a newspaper?

John Kelly: Some may just...go to the bathroom. I don't understand it either. I have to read, even if it's just the label on the shampoo bottle.

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washingtonpost.com: Chuck Mangione (Google Images))

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Foreclosure, D.C.: I think when you get a fertility loan, your collateral is the family jewels.

John Kelly: Yikes! Don't fall behind on the payments.

Is that why the symbol of a pawn shop is

golden balls

?

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Reason to Subscribe: Hi John,

The reason I continue to subscribe to The Post dead tree edition is because it helps my 8-year-old daughter with her reading and her understanding of our community and the world at large. Each morning she reaches for the paper to read the caption of a photo that catches her eye and then asks 15 questions. She has a learning disability, so I love to see her interest in reading the paper. Without the physical paper, she would not get that info because once I turn on the computer, WaPo is not going to be the site she wants to visit. So, thanks!

John Kelly: Interesting. Thanks.

I love my computer. I love the Web. But I think the reading experience is different there. I get a better sense of what's going on in the world from 15 minutes scanning the paper than 15 minutes scanning washingtonpost.com. Of course, I still look at washingtonpost.com--all day long. But my morning routine includes the paper. That may change as hardware improves or as the look of the Web evolves.

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If thoes three guys did it, don't see how the cops'll prove it, barring a confession. : My opinion, Dylan did it, they all cleaned it up, and they all think they're smarter than everyone else. They aren't smarter, they just got lucky. But something, somewhere down the road is going to come out.

John Kelly: I hope so. The bungled forensic work worries me. And it makes me wonder how ironclad the forensic work DC did do is.

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Spite Houses: There are a few places on Mass Ave NW, near where it hits H St with some spite houses. New condo construction right on either side of a run down house.

John Kelly: That's almost the reverse of a spite house. Call it an etips house: a house that was left up because its owner didn't think the offers for it were high enough.

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It still isn't a spite fence: Cuz they could not have LEGALLY built a patio that crossed the property line. You could have called the city and had them stake the boundaries, and if the neighbor built the patio over the property line, THEY WOULD MAKE HIM REMOVE IT. I have seen it. The fence still lets them use their land as legally allowed: build a patio on thier property. You HAVE potentially put shade on what they thought was going to be a sunny spot, so that does make it a spite move in that sense of doing something just to affect their development rights. The never had the right to develop on your property.

John Kelly: I received an e-mail from a reader who said his father and grandfather helped work on a spite house in Georgetown. The woman who owned the land was tired of loiterers gathering there and carousing, so she quickly threw up a little house.

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Shampoo Bottles: You and Weingarten should team up. You can tell us the ingredients in shampoo, and he can talk about the contents of his wallet.

John Kelly: That reminds me: I sometimes read the contents of Weingarten's wallet.

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RE: Newspaper in Bathroom: Health tip: If you are reading an entire Post Magazine Feature Article before you are finished in the bathroom, seek medical attention immediately. If you can only get through a Weingarten article, you fall within the normal and healthy range.

John Kelly: The Post Health section once had a great headline on a little story about how best to move your bowels: "Don't Just Do Something, Sit There."

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Wow: Saying "Watch out for Romulans" to the "neutral zone" person is possibly the best chat response I've seen for a long time. I salute you. (Should that be with the Vulcan salute?)

John Kelly: Thank you. Live long and prosper.

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Re-Financing A Fertility Treatment Loan: I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but the person who asked the re-fi question isn't going to be able to "take advantage of these low rates."

It actually plays into the joke you made about reposessing the kid -- there's no collateral. It's a basic consumer loan, and with nothing like a house or a car to back the loan, you're not going to be able to get a very good rate at all regardless of credit.

One option could be, if they have a house with equity, to re-finanance their mortgage and take that equity out, and use that money to pay off the fertility loan.

John Kelly: Ah. That might explain why we haven't heard of an explosion of consumer loans.

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That's almost the reverse of a spite house.: Oh, okay that makes sense. Spite houses are built to annoy. The houses on Mass were already there, but remain occupied to annoy.

John Kelly: Exactly. The Random Civility movement will end the practice of people annoying one another.

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Silver Spring, Md.: What's the next step for Ms. Clemens? Did the judge schedule a follow-up hearing, or will she need to file a new motion? If the attorney general can't speak for the Board, perhaps the judge needs to order them to appear in person to explain themselves.

John Kelly: Her lawyers filed a motion for summary judgment. There is a hearing on June 17. And you better believe I will be there. In squeaky shoes.

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Re: Moss Hollow: John, you offered this reader a solution in your intro to today's chat -- just donate $500,000, and we're done. Well, $499,923 because I'm sponsoring that week of s'mores.

John Kelly: That's the spirit! I obviously don't know enough rich people. Or any.

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Baltimore, Md.: Re torn ligaments: No, they are not coming back. I had a total rupture of a major ligament on the instep of my left foot about 6 years ago. I was advised that without surgery, my foot would literally deform. So I had the surgery -- it involved moving another ligament in my foot, one near the little toe and using that to replace the failed ligament. It worked and I have only a tiny scar, but I could not put ANY weight on foot for six weeks while it healed. On the other hand, working from home was nice.

John Kelly: The doctor will look at my ankle again after four weeks of PT. Then I guess he'll think about surgery. I hope I don't need it, but it would be nice to walk around without constantly worrying I was gonna collapse like a New York investment bank.

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Anonymous: Do you and Weingarten hang out? I imagine the two of you are a little like Oscar and Felix....

John Kelly: No, we've never hung out. Weingarten's hard to get close to. He's usually surrounded by his jackbooted minions, muscular comely women with visible panty line.

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That reminds me: I sometimes read the contents of Weingarten's wallet. : There used to be a Web site, maybe there still is, called "What's in Jeremy's Wallet?" Jeremy posted the contents of his wallet and said funny things about them.

washingtonpost.com: What's In Jeremy's Wallet?

John Kelly: Wait, what's this? "Half a gram of cocaine." Jeremy!

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What To read on the Toilet.: I bring my laptop into the can when I'm at home, I bring my iPhone into the can when I'm at work. Both get the Internet just fine.

John Kelly: I predict you will drop your iPhone in the toilet eventually. If you're lucky it won't take a photo on the way down.

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Etips Houses: The WaPo did an article on the etips house on Mass. Ave a few years ago. It is actually pretty interesting. A Solitary Stand at the Precipice Post, May 3, 2006)

John Kelly: YEah, the sign is still up for the pizza joint that's supposed to open there.

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Seriously, this is a real question: what do people do in the bathroom without a newspaper? : I have a stack of magazines and catalogs in the bathroom. Sometimes I bring my book. Sometimes I talk to the cat. Sometimes I think up questions I could ask in John Kelly's chat.

John Kelly: What's the cat doing in there? That's getting into David Carridine territory.

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Neighbors: Our townhouse neighbor just put down a railroad tie between our front properties to line her garden, but unfortunately she put the post down on my property. Should I complain? It's just a couple of inches. Or maybe I should paint it, and when SHE complains I can say "oh, I thought that was mine, since it's on my property."

John Kelly: I'd say you should mention it. Will she take it in the right spirit?

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Could you have let them build the patio then showed up with a copy of the plat and told them they'd have to jackhammer out the last two feet, since it was on your property? : YES. I've seen contractors have to take out tens of thousands of dollars of construction if it didn't comply with code, much less encroach on someone else's property.

John Kelly: Which is why it's always a good idea to measure twice and build once.

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Laurel, Md.: John, remember two months ago the big weather story was drought and how brown the Spring grass was?

You think that in July 2019, we'll be wearing sweaters and wondering why we didn't realize a decade ago that weather is often cyclical?

John Kelly: For everything there is a season, fer sure. There's a difference between weather and climate, of course. I don't know if this week of rain has anything to do with climate change. I do know I want the weather to change!

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Recent: Wait, it's not still 2007?

John Kelly: Nope, Bush is out of the White House, Obama is president and Dick Cheney has quietly retired to Wyoming, where he builds ships-in-bottles.

That's all from me today. Thanks for stopping by for the chat. Answer Man will be in the paper on Sunday. I'll see you here next week. Enjoy the weekend. The forecast calls for sun. The rain returns on Monday.

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What's the cat doing in there?: She hates being alone and will put her paw under the door and pull/push until she's broken the lock and popped the door open. So now I just let her come in with me. It is a little weird to use the facilities with beady eyes staring at me.

John Kelly: OF course, she probably doesn't like using the litter box with you looking at her.

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Langley, Va.: Thanks for such a great chat today, John. I was in a complete snark (sick of the rain, too) and you've brought me out of it.

John Kelly: My pleasure!

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Should I complain? It's just a couple of inches. : you might need those couple inches someday if you want to build an addtion and can't meet the setback save for just a couple of inches.

John Kelly: Ah, good point. (This is turning into a financial/homeowner advice chat.)

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John Kelly: What's the cat doing in there?: Heavens, John --

If I don't close the door quickly enough or tightly enough, I have an audience of usually both cats AND two Jack Russell terriers.

I guess I should be flattered that they cannot tear themselves away from my side, but it can be unnerving.

John Kelly: Thankfully, our black Lab has his own hobbies.

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