Tommy Smothers keeps visiting my head...

Oh, the Slithery-dee
He crawled out of the sea.
He may catch all the others
But he won't catch me.

No, he won't catch me --
Stupid old Slithery-dee!
He may catch all the others
But (slurrp)


Why this actually got recorded on an old Smothers Brothers album I've never been able to relocate I'll never know. But every now and then it bubbles back up to the top of my memory.

Helen cried the first time I sang this to her as the ending startled her so badly. (Or maybe it was the singing...)

This day was definitely a Slithery-dee sort of day. Late start to work and school -- but the cello got in and out of the car with the sixth grader on the first try.

Computer systems at work hiccupped along as normal. Only four phone calls with the computer technician trying to scotch tape this all together for us. I actually got to write a news release today -- hizzah! Every now and then the director, communications, should actually communicate with the media. Actually I don't knock it -- my job is so varied I never know what will land on my desk each day when I arrive. (Hope tomorrow it's cake...)

The ride home from work included the daily Metro train slowdown, a car accident between the station and the house that made the whole drive more of a roll, and 25 minutes to finish sixth grade spelling and math and dinner before Girl Scouts. Wheew. Then home again to my own home work.

However the list of "we gottas" before this weekend looms like Jaws circling the boat and Helen just reminded me about a birthday present she needs for a party she's been invited to on Friday.

Wanted: one "Bratz" doll. Answers to the name of "Jade". Wears removable feet.

The parents are coming, the parents are coming!

The holidays are upon us. Thanks to my mother and my daughter, there are turkey decorations around here somewhere that should be creatively strewn and strategically placed about the house: NOW. I haven't the slightest idea where to start looking for them. Dust needs to move before they get plonked down anyway and the 209 remaining pieces of just-collected Halloween candy need a corner in which to hide.

The big silver Buick chauffeuring my parents, two large suitcases for their week-long visit, several bottles of requested booze (it's for recipes, yeah. Bourbon for the sweet potatoes and rum for something that escapes me now, yeah...) , and a thawing turkey are slated to arrive on Sunday. Before then, the house must be cleaned, homework banged out by both of us, laundry mountain surmounted, groceries purchased. Oh, and the 500 pictures of Germany Helen and I took on our trip last summer with my parents need some sort of organizing as my parents have been promised a review of them during the visit.

"They're driving with a turkey?" asks Helen incredulously.

"It won't be sitting in the back seat propped up with a book and its own window seat," I say, trying to look my part as wizened mother. "It'll be in a cooler thawing."

"Okay..."

Helen is the sensible one in this house.

Entropy lives here, or life at the Johnson home

My watch, every clock in my house and the car are all set three minutes ahead -- yet I never get anywhere on time. No matter the level of chaos or calm around here, I always seem to be playing catch-up -- apparently now assigned as my static state in life.

In high school and college physics, the one lesson for which I managed to stay awake was the lecture on entropy: The thermodynamic process of expending energy or heat to return a body to its "natural" state following environmental or chemical changes to that body.

Think of freezing water to make ice cubes and then having the cubes melt again to form water.

This has been my story since my mother and father tried desperately to get me out of bed and on the school bus with a minimum of panic 30+ years ago. Life is always moving; there's much, too much, to do. It's just getting to all of it on time, coherently, and without wearing the navy blue pantyhose and black shoes (again) that seems to be the sticky part.

Now the shove from the warm sheets and out the door is provided courtesy of the BBC and NPR from a battered clock the ex didn't care to take with him. If not greeted with the "furry eyeball" coming from the curl of brown, orange, white and black who has reconned the dead center of the bed as hers (thanks Mollie) the likelihood of being tripped by thunderpaws the flying feline remains between my room and my daughter Helen's lightswitch.

"It's seven. Get up, we're late again." Flash of light. Rumble, rumple -- mumphf from the bed. "Oh, and Grandma and Grandpa will be here on Sunday, so we better get cleaning..."