The experience of fathering a five-year-old girl compares favorably to the experience of trying to put your pants on over your head. It’s impossible. Not only that, it’s stupid even to try. Certainly there’s a contortionist at a seedy, backwoods county fair who can do it, but I’m not that person. I can barely bend over to tie my shoes without tumbling to the ground, grabbing my hamstrings and shouting “CRAMP!”

My efforts to maintain a healthy understanding of my daughter and her mysterious ways have almost universally ended with me huddled in a corner, crying into a row of empty Stella Artois bottles as I recite (to no one) pages from Fancy Nancy, which I have read to her approximately 58,000 times. But the latest manifestation of her interminable girlishness is almost more than I can bear.

My home has been overrun by sequins. Sequins!

They’re everywhere. Blue ones, purple ones, silver ones. I find them in the carpet, in the shower, between the X and Z keys on my keyboard. They fall from her like rain, as though she was born with a thin exoskeleton of small, shiny pieces of reflective plastic. A fish has its scales, a porcupine has its needles and my daughter has her sequins. Sequins!

I have thoroughly researched my lineage and there is no mention of any “Bedazzled” predecessor, so this is clearly a genetic relic from Hot Wife’s side of the family. Then again, I suppose the source of this problem is immaterial; what matters is how we deal with it. How do I care for a girl who leaves a trail of colorful shimmer everywhere she goes?

Raising a son is so much easier because when boys leave a trail, it’s made of more conventional materials – like mud or blood or urine. (I’m sure there are boys who leave trails of sequins, but one can only imagine that those boys are decedents of Siegfried and/or Roy.)

***UPDATE***
Sources close to Dad Gone Mad confirm that the June issue of Good Housekeeping, which features an entry by the world's most handsome blogger, is on newsstands starting today. Check the "Good Reads" section of the magazine.

One night, about a year ago, I decided to quit dreaming.

Every day, every night, for 20 years, the dream was exactly the same – same props, same characters, same outcome. I could picture all of it with vivid clarity, but the fantasy never survived the transition from sleep to the real here and now. It burned up on re-entry. It lived only in the ether of my mind.

In the dream, I was an author. I wrote books. I spent my days on safari in my own imagination. I was satisfied. I was doing what I loved for a living, and that contentment permeated every hard, dark corner of my existence. Then suddenly I was awake again, and the reality that I was NOT the person in my dream washed over me like rain cloud.

So one night, about a year ago, I decided to quit dreaming. I sat down at my keyboard and began to write. I began to create the trappings of my dream in real life.

It has been the hardest year of my writing life. Rejection has reigned. Every small victory has been countered by enormous disappointment and despair. I have neglected friendships, responsibilities, family obligations. Phone calls and emails have gone unreturned. I have opened my soul to criticism, and I have convinced myself that this is my last best chance to accomplish something for myself – to escape the rut of cubicle jobs, financial desperation and career aimlessness.

Thursday morning, my agent called from New York.

“You have a book deal,” she said.

Just like that, the dream became real.

Just like that, my life changed direction.

It has taken me three days to come to terms with what has happened. I have shared the news with family and friends, and although their expressions of pride and joy have filled my spirit, the accomplishment didn’t seem real to me. This isn’t the kind of thing that happens to me. I’m just a copywriter. I’m not accustomed to achievement or satisfaction or…winning.

I did it. I actually fucking did it.

I wonder what I'll dream about next.