My first attempt at crepe paper orchids.

For no reason that I can figure, the song “Oh My Darling Clementine” has been an earworm in my brain for the last day or two. Especially this part:

Herring boxes, without topses
Sandals were for Clementine

As I remember, all the kids I played with while growing up knew this song. What interests me is how we all knew it; apparently, it first became something of a hit in 1941 when Bing Crosby sang it, but his version is not one I ever heard. Various other artists recorded it, but I don’t remember actually hearing it anywhere but the playground. It’s just a song that all of us seemed to learn by osmosis, like “Ring around the Rosie”.

We also all knew the tune “On Top of Old Smokey”, although we didn’t know the lyrics and sang it as “On Top of Mt. Baldy”, the highest mountain near us. Or course, later, we all learned the ‘proper’ lyrics to this tune as “On Top of Spaghetti”.

All of this got me to wondering how things like this spread amongst kids today. Is it easier or harder with cell phones and YouTube and TikTok? Is playing “Ring around the Rosie” still a thing? Do kids still worry about “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back”? How do these things get passed between generations and is it still happening?

These are the things I contemplate at night and then wonder why I can’t get to sleep!

At first, I wondered if my upstairs neighbors were washing their patio. Then I realized that we were actually experiencing rain for the first time in what seems like years. July and August are typically monsoon months here in the Las Vegas area, but last year we totally missed out. This is the first rain we’ve had this year that has actually left the ground wet!

For the 4th of July, I made three bouquets for the house. My idea behind the flowers and arrangements was to evoke a night sky full of fireworks. The flowers are peonies, wisteria, and spider mums.

I see it’s been just over six months since my last post, which is certainly not what I had planned when I started the year.

In mid-January, however, I walked back into the house after an errand and my mom looked at me and said, “Who are you?”. This from a woman who at 97 had been showing no signs of any form of dementia. The episode didn’t last long but did lead me to put in a frantic call to our doctor. When I described what was happening, he immediately said she probably had a urinary tract infection (UTI). I thought he must be nuts or had misunderstood what I said but found out that this type of episode is very common in elderly people with UTIs.

Mom started on antibiotics immediately, of course, but she really had a hard time of it. I spent one night holding her hand, sure she was not going to see the morning. She became extremely weak, to the point she couldn’t even stand up by herself. When I had to leave the house, I hired people to look after her, which is an exhausting process in itself as I had to keep instructing new people.

Mom has now fully recovered but for two months or so maintaining this blog was more work than I could deal with. And then I just fell out of the habit as I didn’t seem to have anything to say. Hoping to do better in the future!

Here’s another view of the coyote: