Halloween Countdown Film #14... The Lost Boys

 

"One thing I never could stomach about living in Santa Carla... all the damn vampires!"

 

~Grandpa Emerson

The Lost Boys

 

There's a lot about this movie that's fun, but I guess the main thing is that the fictional town of Santa Carla, is actually Santa Cruz, California, a place near and dear to my heart! I loved going to the boardwalk as a kid, and young adult, and an older adult, but I have never been there since I have needed the wheelchair. The Boardwalk shows it every summer, when it's time for its summer movies on the beach event. Maybe next year I will give it a go. There's something to look forward to! I would hate to think I am too old for the fun. This movie would be amazing to see on the big screen, and on the very beach it will filmed on all those years ago! It's accurate to say I am sentimental about this one!

 

You'll love it! It's some late 80's coolness! 

 

 

 

 

Halloween Countdown Film #22... Salem's Lot

 

Ben Mears is a haunted man. Haunted by his past. But it's not a ghost that's haunting Ben, but rather misplaced regret, and the monstrous grief we all face at one point in our lives. As Ben returns to his home town of Jerusalem, to face those fears and regrets that have left him a deeply damaged, he begins to realize his was right to the voice deep inside that told him to RUN!

 

“The wind makes you ache in some place that is deeper than your bones.”

 ~ Stephen King,

  'Salem's Lot

 

“The town knew about darkness.
It knew about the darkness that comes on the land when rotation hides the land from the sun, and about the darkness of the human soul”

 ~Stephen King

  'Salem's Lot 

 

 

 

 “If a man dethrones God in his heart, Satan must ascend to His position.”
~Stephen King,

 ’Salem’s Lot

 

 “The basis of all human fears, he thought.

 A closed door, slightly ajar.”

 
~Stephen King,

 'Salem's Lot

 

Trick or Treat 2022 And Autumn Leaf Of The Day #39

"Across a golden Autumn tapestry appear the spirits of our ancient selves demanding recognition and reward for one haunted night. Sated, they retreat from winter's onslaught and retire to subconsciousness hibernation for another twelvehmonth."

 

~Stewart Stafford

 

 It's almost Halloween! I wanted to make this Halloween special because last year's was almost non-existent. I was pretty much an exhausted vegetable. My health was poor. I was exhausted and broken from the move and things were going pretty awful in general, and then Covid-19 hit us hard. But here I am, about a year or so later, and I am doing better and better each day, but I am still barely functioning in other areas of life, like cooking. I was hoping that by now I would be featuring a Halloween inspired recipe on my blog, or maybe show off my monster cake pan. Not monster as in BIG, but rather, it's a cake pan featuring the heads of different monsters, however it's a no-go. I will come up with something. I want to embrace stuff this year. Covid-19 is pretty much done with me at this point, I just don't want to say it too loud. So maybe I will make a simple cookie recipe, cut into bat and ghost shapes. We'll see! Stay Tuned.

 

Shhhhhh... don't disturb the ghosts of Halloween past.

~Me

 

 

 

Ben Mears And Rob Lowe

 

Preston Castle Wall

Ione, California

May 7th 2022

Minolta

"There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it."

 

~Shannon L. Alder

 

Preston Castle

Ione, California

Nope, not closing the book yet. Well, maybe the Twitter book, but that remains to be seen (see history). What do I mean by see history? Well, Elon Musk... the jerk... is trying to manipulate the price of the stock, and he has already said he would reinstate Trump, and you know how I feel about that, and I am not alone. Some of this shit is already firmly planted in history. The deal may not happen. We will see. If it does goes through, history will have a lot to say about it. 

 

But meanwhile back in the present. 

 

I'm not closing any doors either. I'm working on my health. Covid forced a giant detox of my eating habits. Before Covid, I ordered lean meat on my sandwiches, sliced extra thin, served with a jar of mayonnaise. Now, mayo is pretty much verboten. I can't tolerate mayonnaise, or anything oily. No fries. No jalapeno poppers. No mozzarella sticks, but there is some super healthy stuff I can't handle either. I can't have spinach, or lettuce, or any other leafy stuff like cilantro. Weird. I LOVE salad, always have. I am a veggie girl. But since Covid, I get a queasy stomach from it. Sigh.

 

I can't do much about most of it, but ride it out and hope it all goes back to normal one day, but I'm done with fucking waiting, I am taking lead and jump starting the process. Dr. Williams gave me a guide for kicking my sense of smell and taste back in. I purchased an aromatherapy machine. The sense of smell and taste go hand and hand. The idea is to choose a scent, and retrain my body to recognize it. Hopefully it will help my sense of taste if I use the same formula. I also purchased a sound machine to maybe help me get my body retrained to some healthy sleeping habits.

 

I can do this.

 

As for the mental exhaustion, again it's a matter of closing the last chapter on what happened last autumn, by closing the storage room. Hubby and I will be cleaning out the last of it next week, and that will be that. The door will be shut, with four months left on our contract at our current home. Hopefully Eric, the owner, will renew our lease, and I can take a little longer to recover, without another move. I'm trying to not think about it. I'm good right now. There is a roof over my head. I am relatively safe. And I am about to buy an air fryer to help me get back into the swing of cooking. I miss baking too. Alan has pretty much been doing everything since my breakdown, the poor man is well trained in being married to a nutjob. Sorry, chronically depressed person.

 

But he knows I eventually get back up, and I guess I will again this time too. What choice do I have? Suicide will always be sitting there, reminding me of it's availability, but, well, you know. Robin. I am trying really hard to not give up this time, in that I came so close to going though with it last fall. I have so much that I haven't shared about what has got me to this place, but as we move along I am sure the details will make themselves known. I just need to process things and go from there.

 

Now, about the "Lowe" in the title of this post. It refers to Rob Lowe. You might remember I posted about his visit to the Central Valley, when he filmed the first episode of, The Lowe Files, back in 2019. His love of the supernatural lead him to film the first episode at Preston Castle, in Ione, and that helped me find something to enjoy out here. I struggled in the first few years, as there isn't a lot to see, and photograph in and around Stockton. But Preston Castle changed all that. As did the town of Ione, Ca. The castle itself is mighty spooky and at the same time glorious. Like all truly spooky places it has a deeply troubled past, which intrigued me. In the next few years I photographed it many times over. And there is a very photogenic graveyard nearby and one of my favorite autumn trees to feature every year in my autumn leaf project, sits nearby in a small park and ride near the creek. 

 

I'm still grateful to Mr. Lowe, he will never know it, but he helped me heal. I experienced a lot of pain between 2015 and 2019 when he visited here. Because of his visit, I was interested about something again, and even slightly amused about how Preston Castle could have easily served as Hubie Marsten's house from Stephen King's, Salem's Lot, that Rob Lowe starred in. It's easy to pretend it was Ben Mears who visited here, and let my child's mind take over for a bit. Are there really ghosts roaming around among us? Perhaps. Are there vampires sleeping in an eerie house on a nearby hill? I don't know where they sleep, but I can say without a doubt that yes, there are vampires among us. That's what's got me to where I am right now.

 

Damn those vampires.

But Thank you, Ben Mears and Rob Lowe. 

 

"But when fall comes, kicking summer out on it's treacherous ass, as it always does one day sometime after the mid point of September, it stays awhile like an old friend who you have missed." 

 

~Stephen King

Salem's Lot

 

You might recall that this is my 

favorite quote to begin autumn with. 

 

 

Discover The Delta And Where Is My Book?

 

 

"Photography is what emotions look like."

~Jon Luvelli

 

I can't find my book. Last month, I bought a new book, Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer. Yes, I know, it's about teen angst/romance but it in all fairness, I wanted something different, and besides, I had recently watched just about all of them during a week of unwavering, relentless insomnia, and I thought I would see if the book was better written than the movie was. Shrug. I got through the first chapter, and half way through the second, when it went missing, but up to that point, no, it was fairly spot on. 

 

What does this picture have to do with my misplacing my book? Nothing really, except that the day I photographed this water tower, January 3rd, I was thinking about the story of Twilight. How Bella had just arrived to a new place, Forks, Washington, and felt out of place. I have been in the San Joaquin Delta region now, going on six years, and I still feel out of place. I am only just now finding my way, by discovering the beauty of migrating birds. It's easier for teens to seek the adventure I suppose. To welcome the angst. At my age, not so much. I would be happier with life being normal again. Something like 2013, when we found Joey, and Robin Williams wasn't dead. 

 

One more bit of angst with Trump to get through... the second Impeachment trial, which begins next week. I have no idea how long that will last, or if there will be another day similar to January 6th, but there is some comfort in knowing how it will end because I have very little faith in anyone in the Republican party doing the right thing. They are scared of Donald Trump, He's their vampire. So the horror story will play out as most horror stories in the real world do. History won't be kind to those who seek to harm, we all know it, and they know it too, that's what makes it all so perverse, and yet, when all is said and done, at least there are still things we can all count on. 

 

Republican's are vampires and cowards

and new books will go missing. 

 

~Carly

The Key To Ridding Yourself Of Vampires

"Theres nothing worse than waiting not knowing

 what'll happen to you. 

Your own imagination can be crueler than any captor."

~Rochelle Meade

Frostbite

Vampires. If we don't know any personally, we probably know someone who does. Maybe they are real, maybe they were just folks who suck our will dry. Vampires are needy. They are also demanding, charismatic, annoying, they keep odd ours, and they, if allowed, will suck you dry of compassion and common sense. I have known a few in my lifetime, but one day I grew up and learned the word NO. NO is a lot like holy water, or a pretty sterling silver cross, but not quite as lethal to the dear vampire as a wooden stake through the heart.  Funny thing about vampires, when they realize they don't frighten you anymore they lose all their power. They actually become mortal. I slayed a vampire this past summer, and it felt mighty good. Oh I had some help... an Angell actually, of the Angell Law Firm. LOL. It helps to have an Angell on your shoulder when evil comes calling!

The memory of that slaying brought another fond memory to mind. Last year, during our vacation, Alan and I visited Ripley's Believe It Or Not, at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. It was filled with all kinds of curious things, but the Vampire Killing Kit was my favorite of all the exhibits. I took as many photos of it as I could that day, specifically to do a post this October. Did some part of me see my vampire encounter coming? Nah... I don't think so. How could I? No, I think I just found it fascinating that someone would go so far as to actually create a full kit for riding the world of that kind of evil. But when you really ponder it, it makes sense. If something is bothering you, you create a way to make it go away! Vampires aren't a new thing, and getting rid of them will always be a challenge, but like I said, sometimes looking them square in the eye, and saying, "NO! YOU DON'T SCARE ME. I HAVE AN ANGELL ON MY SHOULDER. BE GONE EVIL ONE!"... works pretty darn well!

So, what's the key to ridding yourself of vampires?

Tell The NO.

If All Else Fails...

 Find the right lawyer to tell them to go away!

Leaf Of The Day

October 2nd, 2015

Mood: Happy

~Me :)