I hate Jimmy Buffet.

Actually Jimmy and I have a lot in common. We are both over 50 and we both learned to play the guitar at a young age. There we diverge…

Jimmy chose to become rich and famous and spend his mature years cruising between his many restaurants throughout the tropics, writing books, and playing sold out concerts to countless bare-breasted young women. Boring!

I chose to stay home and raise my children and spend my mature years wondering what the hell happened!

Don’t get me wrong, staying home and raising my children (and home-schooling them) will never appear on my growing list of regrets. It is by far the best thing I have ever done. It is an achievement that I will carry with pride to my deathbed. I just never counted on such a void between my parenting years and my deathbed.

My decline into that void actually began five years ago when my children began the slow process of abandonment. My son started college and my daughter decided to start attending public school. Almost on the same day, we finally gave up our rental home and became home owners. I turned headlong into my consulting career which had been on the back burner with yesterday’s leftovers for so many years.

Suddenly, I was a normal man with a job and a mortgage. Completely unacceptable!!!

So I dove off the deep end for a little while.

Now as I drag myself inexorably back from the edge, I thought it might be entertaining to recount my misadventures as a pioneer househusband and share my journey through the post-children void.

Jimmy, here’s what you missed…