When I lived in Wisconsin, one of my colleagues used to say that an unnecessarily long answer or explanation for something was "the long way around Kelly's barn." True to Wisconsin form, this was usually applied not as an insult about someone else's speech, but rather as a self-deprecating apology for one's own long-windedness. Being prone to such things myself, I adopted the phrase, and now that I'm back in New York I find that my work colleagues have picked it up from me. Has anyone else heard this phrase?

My Dad, who is 74 and grew up in a rural area of southern New York state, still uses "Good night!"

Re: kitty-corner, there is an old children's game called "Puss in the Corner" in which the players are placed in position at the corner points of a diamond; the person who's "it" calls out "poor pussy wants a corner" and everyone has to leave his/her corner and scramble for a different corner, trying to prevent the "puss" from gaining one of the corners. I wonder if there is any relation between the game and the phrase?

And speaking of cats, someone in an earlier thread got worried about flinging cats and then comforted himself with the notion that the reference was to a cat-o-nine-tails. I would recommend Darnton's "The Great Cat Massacre" to anyone with an interest in the uses to which actual cats have been put, alas....

Finally, many years ago I was at a Shawn Colvin concert and she had just returned from Australia, where she heard many phrases of interest. One she shared with the audience which I find hilarious is "chucking a mental" to describe someone who's throwing a fit or over-reacting. Can any Australian catters verify if this was or is still wide-spread?

Margaret