Paul is traveling much less these days and spending more time working from his home office in his study which is furnished with a comfy couch next to a fireplace. I, too, work from home in my art studio, which is in the back of the house. When it rains, Paul lights a fire and I bring my laptop into his study and we work side by side next to the fire.  We both love this new arrangement because not only do we not have to go anywhere, we get to spend more time together. Yesterday was a fairly sunny day, about 65 degrees, so we decided to take a drive up the coast after lunch so that we could go to the dump. Yes, the dump. We had a lot of things to recycle and the Santa Cruz dump is probably the most beautiful dump you will ever see. It is in on a hill top in the middle of farmland with the most stunning, panoramic ocean view. Gorgeous. We recycled all our cardboard and old files and then headed back down the hill where I witnessed my first ever glimpse of a wild turkey crossing the road. Aahh. What a nice afternoon. Dump run, turkey sighting. I just love living in Santa Cruz.

Whew! Wow, what a month this has been. It flew by. I cannot believe it. I just finished my first course, Media Literacy, for my master’s degree in Internet Marketing and I ABSOLUTELY loved it. I think going back to school  was the best decision I ever made. I am learning so much my brain is bursting with creativity. I made my own website on iWeb, a movie about myself on iMovie, set up an iGoogle page and created an avatar in Second Life. The latter of which was way cool. If you have never been to Second Life I highly recommend it. It is virtual reality at its best.

The greatest part of all of this is that this whole experience has brought Paul and me even closer together. We talk endlessly all day (we work together, remember) and into the night about  how we can work what I am learning into our current and future business plans. I have to create a marketing plan for my master’s thesis on a company of my choice so I am doing mine on our business. Paul tells me he has never seen me so happy, energized and creative. I agree. Going back to school at 48 , with five children has been an amazing experience. Everyone chips in to help out and whatever doesn’t get done I am learning to ignore. My standards of cleanliness have gone lower than ever before but who cares? I am a vessel of knowledge now and nothing is going to stop me.

I’m starting a new blog called Stepmoms Talk that I want to be a starting and on-going resource for stepmoms. There are lots of us out there and we all come from different perspectives and stepmom situations. Some of us have kids of our own, some don’t  and then have some or don’t. Some have ex-wives to deal with and some don’t, but we all have one thing in common and that is we are helping to raise our husband’s/spouse’s/parrtner’s children and we want to do it right. I am looking specifically for stepmom bloggers to be panelists on weekly videos, kind of like momversation, and every week there will be a topic for discussion that runs the gamut of our collective experiences. It will definitely have a positive tone because we are here to help people offering inspiration, advice and constructive criticism only. If  you are interested, please contact me at carol@shwanda.com.

The best part of the homemade dollhouse  project was that it was made in our art studio. Paul built it for me when we got married. It was a place for me to do my writing and seaweed art, but also a free space for the children to invent, create and make messes. We work on art projects, make candles, sew, have my Just Imaginate craft classes. It’s a fun room. When we lived at our old house, my girls had a play house that their father had built for them. They missed it terribly. This special room is for all of us and I love enjoying it with them. The photos below are of our studio.

art studio entrance

art studio interior

another view

Last week the kids had a four day weekend because of the semester break. Sophia had her wisdom teeth out on Friday, but was feeling well enough by Saturday to spend the rest of the weekend working on a homemade dollhouse. She came out to my studio (where I write this blog, among many other things) and told me that since she didn’t have any homework, she wanted to tackle a project she always wanted to do and that was to make a dollhouse out of card board boxes. She worked on it the rest of the weekend, enlisting the aid of her two sisters to help her. It was amazing what they came up with. They built, decorated and furnished the entire house all with found objects. The made bookcases filled with books, lampshades out of sewing thimbles and shower curtain rods out of bead wire. Everything was in miniature and it was a masterpiece. Here are some photos of their homemade doll house.

Our family was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday in a column called “On the Couch.” It is a series that comes out every Sunday in the Style section about how couples met. Our story was titled, “Second Marriage, a Second Chance at Love.” It was a really nice write up and we were all so excited that we ran out and bought four newspapers. Today I looked up the article online so that I could write about it here with a link to it and to also send it to all my friends and family who live on the East coast.

The interesting thing about reading an article on-line is that you can read what people comment about it. There were 14 comments and I was very curious to see what people wrote. Most were positive but some were so vitriolically cynical I was stunned.  There’s some pretty sick people out there. No one said anything bad about my husband or my kids, just me.  I was accused of being shallow, materialistic, lazy and stupid.  Some of the comments must have been so bad there were withdrawn because they violated the paper’s policy. It was really mean and totally uncalled for. My oldest daughter was reading over my shoulder as I recoiled in shocked disgust. She reassured me by saying, quite profoundly, “You know, Mom, happiness is boring to some people. Conflict is what sells. Whenever I have to write an essay about something in school, I always make it up because otherwise, the truth would just be too boring.” Well, said, my darling daughter and how true.