Cabinets

Political: how much you want to bet Wes Clark ends up on Kerry's?

Kitchen: installation is proceeding. Russell spent all day and Jon spent about half the day working on the bases and base cabinets. About a third of those seem to be sitting in place and presumably are leveled. Nothing's bolted into place yet.

We've discovered the first two noticeable mistakes in the kitchen job:

1. Herrell got the cabinet over the refrigerator backwards. It was supposed to be vertical storage (for cookie sheets, cutting boards, etc.) on the right and regular shelves on the left, but he built them the other way around. Oh, well!
2. Jon and/or George mismeasured where to put one pair of outlets, so I now have two pairs of outlets behind the refrigerator, where I only need one. The other will end up as a junction box with a plain face plate. It's no big deal, though, because there is another pair of outlets a few feet away, and I don't see myself needing four. That corner's going to be pretty cramped and unusable anyway. The base cabinet in that corner has a door only ten inches wide, it's such a screwy corner. Ten inches sounds like a good-sized cabinet door, but it looks pretty puny. I have no idea what kind of stuff will end up in that cabinet, but it will have to be narrow, whatever it is.

Caligari: (let's hope not) the other day Norton (my grey cat) gobbled a chicken bone off my plate before I could stop him. It was about a two-inch piece of wishbone--which is to say, longer and pokier than I can envision finding a harmless path through his cat-sized digestive system. The vet recommended:

• giving him a 3 inch serving of petromalt (I decided that meant daily, so he's had 6 inches) to help bind up the bone in other stuff and move it through as an innocuous, blunt mass


• watching him closely for signs of depressed appetite, crankiness, trouble pooping or peeing, futile attempts to barf, bloody stool, or bloody barf


• bringing him in immediately in case of any of the above


• watching for the bone in his poop or barf

She said most stuff passes within a day or two, so I'm starting to worry, but I've been watching him for about 48 hours now, and there's no sign of anything wrong with him. He's cheerful, up and about, and eating and drinking normally. On the other hand, there's been no Norton poop in the box since I got home from work yesterday, and none of the poop that was there at the time was long enough to hold the bone.

Please think good digestive thoughts for my number one son.