How did I arrive at this wonderful place?

If you have been living under a rock, I was recently blessed with a new family. I found the love of my life – the perfect woman at the right place and time in my life – and her two children. After a long courtship she and I are finally together under the same roof, and the children seem to have taken to me in a big way.

I lived with roommates for nearly 10 years before flying solo for another. The last decade has been a wild(ish) ride by the standards of my more conservative or nested friends, with me answering to no one, being responsible only to and for myself. Friends who married at what today is a “normal” age have confided private envy at my freedom: my schedule, my nap time, my writing, my TV viewing, my CDs and radio stations, my road trips, my menu – sometimes healthy, sometimes not – you understand. Conversely, I lived in secret envy of their 2.5 children, dual incomes and actual vacations – by my definition, traveling somewhere you’ve never been, or going back to a distant place and experiencing something different each time. Vacations for me have almost exclusively meant visiting the aforementioned people.

I have actual and fake nieces and nephews and a plethora of pets who seem excited to see me whenever I can visit. My oldest friends have been convinced that when the time was right, everything would fall into place. Everything? Whatever “everything” is, it has indeed fallen into place.

In a matter of only two weeks – the time it took me to gradually move my life into her universe – my world changed … what an understatement. My world seemed to stretch in every conceivable direction all at once, and in the most incredibly unexpected ways.

I hope I look back on this experience, this abrupt change to my normal routine, my decade of true bachelorhood, as a sign of significant personal growth. Some would already say it is but acceptance of what should have already been. Regardless, I expect it to be a wild ride.

On that note, I’ve been acquiring blog fodder almost daily. Seasoned parents will certainly view my observations with, “Yeah, yeah. Tell me something new,” or, “Oh, you think that’s bad? Just wait until he/she ...”

I’ve been around small kidlets periodically for the last 15 years and have seen some amazing, shocking and hilarious things. But I could always walk away from the mess. No longer is that an option, so I might as well focus on the funnier aspects of the next 16 years of parenthood.

This “Overnight Dad” blog will explore shocks, surprises and epiphanies I experience in near real time. No preaching here as I’m wont to do, just the lighter and often stinkier side of becoming a dad overnight.