Of a Crazy End to 2013 and a Crazy Beginning to 2014~~~~

Well Darklings,

I don't know about you but I have a feeling that if this last week is any indication I feel that 2014 is going to be a crazy year, bizarre, unbelieveable, strange and well I don't have any more discriptive words come to mind at this time but I'll think of a few.

First on the Family front----nothing insane or crazy Thank Goodness!   We took Coralline home on New Year's Day after having a very nice breakfast after mass.  Traffic was very light, reminds me of what traffic was like back in the 1950's (yes Darklings I'm THAT old).

My brother was having New Year's dinner at his house, family and friends coming over, the games banished to the Garage, my sister-in-law's doing, she was going to have sanity in her home, while dinner was cooking, of course the men folk had to drift in and out because the garage is Not heated,  then the rule was when dinner is served all games are off and not put on afterwards, she even unplugged the portable T.V. sets and locked the garage, which meant that the men folk Had to make conversation and use their brains.

I Really Like my sister-in-law.  But it made the evening so very nice and people re-discovered the art of conversation, my Cousin Louise also came and it was good for her to re-connect to some of the family, Brian had been invited over to some friends house for the day and my Sister wouldn't be home until sometime Thursday morning.

But the house when Doyle and I returned home was a little quiet when we got in,  my brother and his family were going to visit and stay for a few days at a Aunt's house of my sister-in-law whom they hadn't seen in some time, and were up there in years, and the children start school next Monday. 

But the next Day Sis came home and immediately went to her old office to pack up her files and other more fragile things and move them to her home office,  I was at work all that day helping staff catch up on the back log and put in a very long day, Doyle was at his office as well also putting in a very long day and seeing about assignments,  so when I had a chance to call Sis I said "no cooking, we'll have our old stand by.."   (Yes Darklings---Chinese take out).

Sis had a chance to tell me what she'd had completed and asked if I could help today, of course I said yes, so today, early we were back at her office, the movers showed up and moved her office furniture to her house and got it settled in, it wasn't much and they were very efficent and it made better sense to have them handle it as we knew we couldn't do it and Brian and Doyle would be working. 

So now Sis's home office is set up, we're taking a break right now and then back to it to put her files and books and such in order and exactly where she wants them.  And on Monday she will be working from home, it took time and paper work to set it up but already I can see that she is much happier about it.  It is her own space, and designed the way she wants it.  Even I can see that it is a big improvement.

Brian is still going to be renting a room from her given that her house is almost as large as mine, she has enough space to have her children visit and it not be crowded.  I am very happy for her and she can still drop over anytime she wants, since I've given her a key to my home and she's given me a key to hers.   But she did need her own place and this is perfect.

Ahhh but about Crazy Endings and Crazy Beginnings----well Darklings I'm talking about UFO's, Twins and Skull's.

Just the day before New Year's people from all over California from Sacramento, Stockton, Auburn and as far South as the Hollywood Hills reported seeing possible UFO sighings of a formation of 6 objects flying in a triangular formation, hovering and then suddenly zooming off at a high rate of speed.  The FAA of course said that there was no unusual aircraft activity in those area's but people had captured video and cell phone shots of these unknown objects.

Then the day before in the Salinas Valley a photographer in an air plane spotted an unusual and intricate Crop Circle that seemed to spell out the numbers in binary code 192,  the farmer didn't have clue what was happening until he saw people with ladders near his field taking photo's,  two men had been driving near the field late at night and saw flashes of light over the field and took a video of it before the crop circle was discovered the next day.   After a day or two the farmer had enough and immediately harvest the crop to prevent damage and any injury by on lookers.

Twins were born only a few minutes apart but in different years,  the first baby a girl was born just a minute before midnight Dec. 31, 2013 and her sibling a brother was born a minute or so after midnight Jan. 1, 2014.   The parents say that each child will have a separate birthday party.   I think an astrologer is going to have fun with that.  And the sister can rightfully say "I'm older than you are..." nyaa, nyaaa. 

But the strangest was the discovery of a human skull in the Oakland Hills, just off of Grizzly Peak Blvd.   The skull was found sitting on a paper plate surrounded by beads (possibly Mardi Grah type beads).  The police had received a tip about the location of this bizarre find and found it to be where the tipster said it would be.  The skull is said to be old, but not Native American----there are here and there and espeically in the Gold Rush Country old abandon cemeteries it is possible that it could have come from there. 

Now this is the 2nd skull to turn up in over 6 months, the first one was found in a Oakland re-cycling center and nothing further has been found in regards to that earlier find, and now this.  Also over 6 months ago, some sort of voodoo ritual involving a pig or lamb's heart was found in a cemetery in Colma, pinned to the heart was a picture of a young couple---a curse?  Who knows.

All of this just tickles my dark gothic heart,  I think of Anton LaVey was still alive he'd find it most amusing.

I mentioned this to Sis and she has found it to be absolutely fasinating.  And tonight a new episode of "Dracula" will be on T.V.  I'm not sure how this show is going to develop but I'm also said that the last 3 episodes of "Sleepy Hollow" will be coming to end it's first season,  I find that the writers are having a lot of fun with early American history and old legends.  I must add "Sleepy Hollow" to my collection. 

And my Sister is calling me, she wants to have her office ready, so I think I'll call Doyle to pick up our old standby again.

Later Darklings and may you have an interesting 2014.

This is the crop circle that appeared just before Dec 31, 2013 in Salinas Valley.

Of JFK conspiracies, "strange guests" and Dark Wine~~~~

Hello Darklings,

Sometimes I have fun, quiet fun when mentally tugging at someone’s braids or shirt tails---I do mean mentally. But sometimes it can reveal things that one wishes they should not have explored.

Saturday evening Doyle, Sis and I were relaxing after having an early dinner, we had seen on the news Friday night about all the damage done by the horrible windstorm that occurred on Thursday night, of which we had our own adventures with it. And then we watched a special about ‘where were you when JFK died”.

I remembered that Day that JFK died so clearly, that it would take a special post just about that. So on Saturday evening we talked about the conspiracy theories, and in some way I do believe that Oswald was a part of it although I don’t think he pulled the actual trigger, I think that he helped get a rifle for another person to use, someone who would have been considered perfectly normal to be at the book depository building.

But Oswald ran when he realized he had been framed, made the fall guy, I think Jack Ruby was also involved to kill Oswald, and if Ruby didn’t succeed, there would have been another person or Oswald would have been found dead in his cell without ever revealing his part in it.

There were at least two shots that hit JFK and one was from the front because the back of his head was blown out, an autopsy photo that showed that was never revealed, the Nixon film and the Zapbrudder film clearly show two shots, and an audio recording recorded a total of 4 shots, there had to be at least 3 shooters.

But putting it upon one man?? No, it was far bigger than that. Much bigger.

But what legacy would JFK have left? What could he have done after his 2nd term? History would have been far different, we would not have been in Vietnam for one, and the others? Who knows?

Saturday evening Doyle, Sis and I were still kicking the conspiracy theories around, Doyle has books and books about it, Murder and true crime are his favorite subject having been a police officer for many years. We even have discussions about Victorian Murders like Jack the Ripper.

Doyle has so many books on this subject that he had to put them in storage, but I’m going to be kind to him, behind the garage but off to one side of the green house is a large space, so I’m going to have an extension added to the garage which will hold Doyle’s books. My contractor will look into the permits but since it will be on the side of my property next to Sis’s house there won’t be any problems from any neighbor complaining. We will make it so the books will be protected and make it into sort of an office for Doyle for his research.

But while we were talking the telephone rang, our “ghostly artist” friends were driving around the area taking pictures of the damage the winds had done for the last two days and wanted to know if it would be alright to drop by, Doyle and Sis didn’t have a problem but Svengoolie was going to show “Evil of Frankenstein” with Peter Cushing so Doyle set the recorder. I said “Come on over”, then thought what could we serve them?

I mean its not polite to not offer something, Sis and I looked through the pantry, there were some dessert cookies and we had in the freezer the Petridge Farm single serving pastries, we could offer apple, peach, raspberry, and strawberry, and earlier that day we purchased and had in the refrigerator a chocolate cream pie that we were thinking of having for dessert while watching the movie, and there was various teas, coffee, sparkling waters, and wines.

We were set, I was already burning vanilla scented candles in the fireplace instead of a regular fire because of concern regarding the winds, and I placed cinnamon spice candles as well, and lit those. Doyle went to the CD player and put in 5 cds playing old time Jazz music by the Royal Society Jazz orchestra, and set it to soft volume, what some people don’t know is that we can have the music come through the speaker of our old 1930’s radio, it’s a floor model, the radio and record changer works and plays the regular a.m. stations and the old 78 records, but with a flip of a switch it goes to a concealed CD player and it sounds like its playing a lot of old 78’s. We can get up to and over 5 hours of playing time. It helps give the illusion of being in another time.

I wanted to set up an atmosphere of cozy comfort, using scent and sound followed by good food.

Our guests did not come empty handed and brought 2 bottles of Apothic Dark wine, this was a limited pressing from 2012, I had bought a couple of bottles the other day but had not tried it yet so this was going to be a treat.

Our guest’s ooo’d and ahhh’d over the house and its comforts. I asked them the reason for their excursions and our lady artist said she had been inspired by how wild the winds were whipping that night, that she even went out into it to get the feel of it. She said it made her face and body tingle, in some cases with a sense of freezing pain, she and her “husband” drove into it going to the beach that is not far from us and then to several parks to see how the trees were reacting to the wind.  I mentally thought what a dangerous thing for them to do, and how foolish, but artists types sometimes are only into the moment and to capture it.

They both talked of how they saw things being blown all over the place, it was like watching a one act play or a form of performance art as they were describing it, I rather liked it, in a strange bizarre way. They had video’d it and then the following day drove all over to photograph everything that they saw was damage, even the venerable old Eucalyptus tree that fell over at Lake Merritt, she posed all over the tree and its roots while her husband took pictures, she gathered some of the leaves and bark which she intends to include into her next painting---she is still working on her other series, but this windstorm inspired her for a possible new series, “That’s why” she said “It is so important to take pictures, so I can be inspired further”. It seems that this series will not be ethereal but more physically violent.

We told her what we experienced in our own area and Lucretia I even told her about you finding someone’s pajama’s on your Basil plant, I can only imagine your reaction to finding that unusual bit item, we laughed about it and our guest could see the humor in that, she said she’d like to do that as a counter point.

But I decided to tweak her a bit and said “why not a whole series of something like this but use the four elements. You could localize it we had a horrible Firestorm in ’89 or ’91 it was horrible killing 25 people” I began to describe to her the fire and the deaths to her, I told her how she could look it up on the internet, but then I began to see something in her eyes, she was excited by this to the point of like having a high. She didn’t relax until her husband spoke to her in a more matter of fact way in which would be the best way to promote the series and make it so that people would want to invest in such a series of paintings or installations.

When he talked in a more mundane and business type way she became her ethereal self again, I was at first having a bit of fun with her but then I was glad when her husband stepped in, there was something in the back of her mind, in her subconscious that I felt was not good to explore in our home environment. And I was mentally glad that Coralline did not stay over this weekend, for her to meet someone like that I felt would not be good for my young niece whom I felt would not be ready for someone so “Out There”.

Then our talk shifted to food and wine and we offered the cookies and Sis mentioned the pastries but our guests said that the wine would go better with the cookies and the chocolate cream pie but that we should taste the wine first.

We were very pleasantly surprised by this dark wine by Apotlic, it’s a limited edition of a blended wine of Petit Sirah, Teroldego and Cabernet Sauvignon, with a taste of dark fruits like blueberry and blackberry and then underlying it a hint of coffee and dark chocolate, it was an excellent combination that I found it silky smooth and rich to my tongue. Sis felt it should be a wine to serve with dessert, but Doyle thought it would be good to follow after eating a meat dish, like steak or something like that.

I felt that it was a good Autumn wine for relaxing in front of a fire after a busy day, something to indulge in to meditate and relax with. I would give it 4 out of 5 stars myself.

We finished our wine and desserts with coffee, by this time it was nearly midnight and our guests had to leave and thanked us for allowing them to drop by.

After they were gone we looked at each other, Sis told me that she felt that something very dark had been revealed accidentally that evening, Doyle said that it appeared that the husband was aware of his “wife’s” form of pleasure of other people’s tragedies, but we all agreed that it was not like people drawn to a dramatic situation that ordinarily doesn’t occur in one’s life but something that goes to the edge of the abyss and only the husband’s careful monitoring of her prevents her from falling in. Perhaps that is why she is always in white or off-white to keep her calm.

I could only agree, I had noticed that both Belladonna and Wiener Dog did not want to go near her and instead hopped into Doyle's chair and hid down next to him, I was concerned that since the dogs were both wearing sweaters they would become too warm but that didn't seem to bother them and would only come out after our guests left, I knew Belladonna to be very sociable and Wiener always greeted everyone who came by, but the minute our guests arrived they instead went into Doyle's chair, and we didn't try to coax them out.
Sunday morning we all felt like we had awaken from a strange dream from the night before, but the dishes in the sink proved that we did have visitors. Sis and I decided to go to church since we were up early, Doyle was going to take the Dogs for a walk. We managed to catch an early service, and later had coffee and pastry at a Starbucks, I was enjoying the reality of the crowd, and then remarked that we should stop by the newly re-opened Merritt Bakery for an afternoon tea dessert for us for today.  Something told me we should do mundane regular things today to escape the strangeness of the other night.

We took the long route and drove by the fallen Monarch of a Tree, we felt a sadness there, as children we’d gone to Lake Merritt on warm Sundays to picnic and feed the ducks I remembered playing around the tree, and we felt that we had lost an old friend. So many changes, some by alleged progress, some by an Act of God.

I called Doyle to see how he was doing and he and Brian were having breakfast with the dogs in tow at a friends' house, he and Brian had been walking together and a friend of his invited him to stop by for eggs and Canadian Bacon and strong coffee.  They were fine.  I told him we were shopping and would be hope later.
Sis had brought the shopping list and we did our grocery shopping and by a happy situation found quite a few bottles of the Dark Apotlic wine so we loaded up to lay in to the cellar for future. It is a good Dark Wine for those Dark Autumn and Winter Nights, but hopefully not a night like in a Hammer Horror film.

Later Darklings

One never knows what is out there in the dark, in the night.

Of being busy, busy with home chores~~~

Well Darklings,

I was up early this morning, taking in the almost Fall chilliness of it, Belladonna was in her sweater she does not like the cold, and considering how I found her I can understand.  Coffee perking in the coffee maker, sorry Darklings, no drip for me, perk is how I like it.

But the aroma is enough to waft upstairs and wake Doyle to stumbling sleepy headedness, and I do mean stumbling, I heard him cussing when he stubbed his toe.  Told him to wear his slippers that is what I bought them for.  

I sat out on the back porch enjoying my coffee and idlely watching Belladonna sniffing the air, looking at the garden, her ears twitching for anything that should not be there.  Then she would do her back leg stretches followed by her yoga positon of "downward facing dog" and come back to me that all was right in her little world.

Doyle came in and I offered to make breakfast but he said he'd make do with oatmeal that he'd prepare, he can be quiet the gentleman, even though I'm the one who will be washing the dishes and pot, but I don't mind. 

So today I let Sis sleep in, she has been very busy of late, and she'd done her share while I was and am working strange hours, and she'll make her own breakfast and do all the dishes.  So laundry, changing sheets, washing towels,  then gathering up the dry cleaning, the bills to be mailed,  my weekly maid service will be in while I'm out and Sis will be home to monitor and answer questions, while I quickly run the errands.

I had a light lunch out after I took care of things,  I was of two minds to just window shop or go home, but for some reason shopping didn't hold any appeal to me today, but I did need some nylons,  and I found the type I like, came home and did mundane ironing of somethings, while Sis worked on her reports and we talked about what to have for dinner, as Belladonna would go to the backporch screen door and check on things in the yard, which reminded me to call the Gardener and talk to him about some of the roses and what blubs to plant for a Spring Showing.

This time of year the garden gets that sad, dry look but there is some color and then it will be time to put it to bed so to speak. 

Doyle has taken the van to the shop for oil change, checkup, make appointment for tune up, then to car wash for washing, then he came home and picked up Sis's car for washing, and now he has mine for washing.  My vintage car I have carefully hand detailed by a speicalist should the need arrise.

And now I'm  taking a breather, and Sis has told me that the family that I bought Coralline's desk from said they'd be home at their Grandfather's house if we want to go and see what they have that we'd be interested in, she made arrangements for tomorrow afternoon which is perfect.

I told Doyle and my Sis last night about the visit from Mr. Cute Nice Yummy Policeman.   Sis asked me how cute was he and I told her, in front of Doyle, so cute that I was seriously tempted.  Doyle hooted with laughter and said  "My Darling, if you had really put your mind to it that young man would not have had a chance.  What stopped you?"   and I said " He had a wedding ring on, and I have to respect that."  

"Wedding rings,  that is like garlic to us Dear Sister" said Sis.   But I replied "One has to respect the situation, he was on duty.  But I was seriously tempted."

Then Doyle became serious and said that we may have to eventually consider a restraining order on "Crazy" but I said that it appears that he is on the police radar as he's done other calls of that type to other people, it's an annoyance to the police but they have to check the calls out even if its from someone who is not right mentally.  So we made a decision to document each incident that we would have with our local 51/50, and fi it did reach a point where we'd have no choice then we'll go forward with the restraining order.

But now I hear Doyle driving up the driveway, he always honks twice so I'll know he's home and we've still haven't decided what to have for dinner.  Hmmmm maybe Doyle will take us out, we'll see if we can persuade him, we can always dress vintage style and take my vintage car.  That sounds like fun, we'll see.

Later Darklings  

Just another quiet evening at home.