Paul took this video from the sun roof of our car while I was driving down a hill from a client’s house in Carmel Valley. The house is a gorgeous rustic ranch on 146 acres on top of an expansive hill over looking the valley. On the ride up Paul said, “We gotta capture this view on the way down.” It was just breathtaking. Watch out for the Spanish moss. It is like an enchanted forest.

Paul took this video from his cell phone last week to show me the beautiful ride he took up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco.

Johnny Prynce, our rock star tenant, has been traveling on tour all month and is breezin’ back into town today for a concert in downtown Santa Cruz at the Catalyst. Woo hoo!! We’re all going. The opening act is a band called Radid Fire whom I have mentioned before. Rapid Fire consists of three teenage boys around 13 years old, two of whom are the twin sons of my friend Kathryn, who is a frequent commenter here. I just talked to Kathryn and we plan to meet up and agreed to wear our ear plugs and to keep our phones on vibrate. The video above is of Johnny’s band, Dirty Penny singing “Vendetta”. Enjoy.

Yesterday was Sam’s 19th birthday and we all went out to dinner to celebrate. My girls, Eva and Sophia, were at their dad’s and did not attend, but Paul’s kids, along with Susie, his ex-wife, met up at a wonderful Chinese restaurant in Capitola called Canton’s. I highly recommend it.

It was a pleasant evening. We each had assigned jobs to order various courses, ( mine was appetizers) but desert was the usual fortune cookie. Sam went first to read aloud his fortune, but before he did he said, “I think I got Dad and Carol”s.” (Carol is me, those of you who don’t know.) It said: “You will be very happy with your spouse.”

“What a nice thing to say”, I thought, not only because he could recognize that his father and I are happy, but because he acknowledged my existence in the first place. You see, Sam and I have a very turbulent past, so to speak. There are times when he looks at me with such disdain I swear he hates me. If I had to list all the mistakes I made as a step mother,  most would  begin with Sam.

When I first entered Sam’s life he was coasting along just fine without me. Both of his parents worked outside the home and there I was working from home and therefore able to observe him not doing his homework, eating crap and playing too many video games. I felt it was my role to correct his behavior and made it my mission to do so. In hindsight, this was not such a great idea. It not only back fired in my face, it bred resentment. I hope someday Sam will look back on my “interference” as caring rather than an annoyance. Only time will tell. If I had to do it all over again I would simply leave his parenting up to his parents and stay out of it. I set myself up to be the bad guy, even though I was well intentioned. Perhaps Sam’s acknowledgement that I was  good for his father was the first nod in my favor. Maybe I am making way too much of this, but sometimes I just have to take what I can get.

Zip and Kyle snoozing on the hot tub

My cat Kyle and Paul’s cat Zippy were resting peacefully today on the hot tub and Paul commented on the metaphorical significance of it. The first few months of our combining families and living together they hissed at each other. Now they are very comfortable buddies. They are not exactly next to each other, but close enough.  What a relief.

Sometimes I look back on some of my posts and I think I paint such a rosy picture that maybe you might get sick of me and think that I am laying it on a little thick. I wax on about how I married the most perfect man and have the most perfect life. Well I don’t. I am here to tell you that I have snot on my couch. With five teenagers, it comes with the territory.  I have found candy wrappers under the couch, nail clippings, moldy sandwiches and now…. snot.

I did marry a lovely man. That part is true. But he did not come to me in isolation. He had three children and the blending with my two has not been an easy task. It was the hardest on me, truthfully, because I am a clean freak neat nick  as in, it bothers me if the butter knives in the silverware drawer are not facing all the same direction. Or the bath towels aren’t folded a certain way. And I cannot for the life of me understand why no one seems to do things the way I want them done. So you can see my challenges here. These days with grad school and all, my standards of cleanliness have gone lower than I ever thought they could go. But I have my blinders on. One must in order to survive. I’ve had a lot of practice. When I lived in NYC in my early 20’s the view from my apartment was a brick wall. I made it a point to never look out that window. My motto now is, “Don’t look under the couch.”

View from the esplanade

I finished my second class in graduate school yesterday and to celebrate Paul and I headed down to the beach to watch the surfers and then had dinner in Capitola Village. I have been working so hard it was really nice to get a brief respite. What a wonderful husband I have, I must say. He has been so unbelievably supportive, helpful and encouraging with my academic endeavors. I could not have gone back to school and have done so well as I have without him. He’s the best and I am soooooo lucky to have him.

We had a bit of drama at the Shwanda house last week. My daughter Sophia and my husband Paul got into a big argument on Tuesday night over something as innocuous as the TV (he wanted to watch the Olympics and she wanted to watch a reality show) and she just had a hissy fit. She stormed out of the great room, starting slamming things around, claimed she ” JUST CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!” packed her bags and drove across town to go live with her father.  It was not her finest moment and it wasn’t mine either. She screamed some expletives at her step father, which she later came to regret, and I allowed myself to get caught in the middle when I should have been backing up my hubby. I got defensive. I let my “I’m-so-sorry-for-getting-divorced-and-remarried-and-making-you-move-guilt” get in the way of reason. Read the rest of this entry »

Image of pastel sketch of snow scene by Nina.

Here is another photo of my talented sister Nina’s art work. This is the view of a grove of trees at our sister Pam’s house in New Jersey. I am so happy to know that my sister has something to do when she is snowed in. Keep up the great work!