A few years ago, I had decided to go on my Wii and play Animal Crossing: City Folk after not having played it for a few years because I’d done all I could and got bored with it. So I got on the game and, after killing about a billion cockroaches that had infested my house while I wasn’t playing, I went to see which villagers had stayed and which moved out (If you don’t play for a long time, some will move away).

The first villager I ran into was a cute black cat named Kiki who lived next door to my house. She was shocked to see me, made comment along the lines of it being 2 years since she’d seen me and proceeded to tell me, “I thought you died!” Wow… Thanks for that rather macabre revelation, there, Kiki… I suppose she had a point. If you don’t hear from anyone for a while, you either forget about them or say something along the lines of, “I thought you died!” Nope… I was just being antisocial…

Actually, I had a lot of things going on…

First and foremost, I no longer have big toe nails! I had the second removed 2 weeks ago today. You may be wondering why I took a picture of my nail (yes, this was my nail). Well, it’s because I had a lot of people who commented and said they get ingrown nails all the time and maybe they should get their toenails removed. Seriously… There was a reason mine were removed. I had run out of choices. It was either deal with excruciating pain all the time or get them removed permanently. I didn’t want people to think this was a good solution to not have to deal with having to cut out their ingrown toenails. You should only get this done out of necessity. As you can see with how curved the front of my nail was, it was pulling my skin in and pinching it, which caused a lot of the pain. It was also so thick it caused constant pain. If I had other options, I’d have taken them, but I’d exhausted them all. And since showing off this picture, no one has said they should get it done.

And, lucky me, Morticia has gone back to work after her surgery, so the early morning, break time and on the way home calls have started up again…

Sometimes I can avoid them, especially the afternoon ones when she knows I take a nap. She still calls, but she knows that’s when I take a nap to try and catch up on the sleep I don’t ever seem to get at night.

Unfortunately, I can’t avoid every call… And it’s still the same shit, different day, different week, different year… I’m quite literally going insane. One day I’m going to tell her, “You know, talking to you and trying to be your friend is too much like work.” It is… It’s like the worst job you’ve ever had times a million and you get nothing out of it.

I’ve also been spending time rewriting a romance story I wrote years ago. Not a regular romance story, mind you… They’re a bit dark in nature. Real life is never a case of boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl live happily and stupidly ever after. So I wrote my stories with tragic events in them…

Anyway, this particular tale’s main male character’s looks were inspired by a real person (amazingly enough). It’s the man pictured here, Dennis Wilson, the late drummer for The Beach Boys. I love this photo…

My mother was always a huge Beach Boys fan, as was I (still am). I may have only been a little girl, but I had such a crush on Dennis. I mean… look at him! Christ, how did he get to be this handsome when there was so much chlorine in that gene pool?!

Anyway… I remember when he died, drowned in 13 feet of water at the marina. I was watching the news with my mother that night when they broadcast the news. I was only 10 at the time, but I remember turning to my mom in tears, freaking out, asking how they’d ever be The Beach Boys without Dennis. I was quite traumatized by this for some reason… Even to this day, his life and how he died saddens me. So, when I decided to write the story I’m currently revamping, I decided to pay tribute to him by using him as a model for my male character. I have no idea why this was important to me; it just was… I also use Dennis as inspiration for other things, like male characters I draw. Especially the hair… He had phenomenal hair…

So, if I disappear for a while, have no fear… It just means I’m in one of my happy places with my Dennis Wilson look-alike character…

For those who don’t know anything about this troubled, tragic guy, here, look him up on YouTube. BBC made an amazing six part documentary about his life, including his involvement with Charles Manson and his merry band of assholes, his struggles with addiction and his tragic death, which is a mystery in and of itself.

And if you don’t know anything about The Beach Boys… Dear god, where have you been all your life?! Look up some songs, listen to them! And look up Dennis Wilson’s solo album Pacific Ocean Blue, it’s fucking amazing how much of himself he pours into it. Pay homage to one of the late greats.

Sail On Sailor…