My mom’s birthday is on the 23rd. Last year around this time, she was here helping me while I was healing. That was also the moment she was formally introduced to Luna. Not a casual “oh hi, that’s the dog” introduction either. This was a full onboarding. Snoring. Following. Judging. Guarding the bathroom like it was Fort Knox. And staring into your soul while you eat. At some point during that visit, Luna quietly decided: “This human is now family.” No paperwork. No discussion. Just vibes. So naturally, I started thinking… if Luna could get my mom a birthday gift, what would it be? Flowers? No. Too fragile. Chocolate? Poison. Rookie mistake. A card? She can’t read and would eat it out of spite. No… if Luna were in charge of gift-giving, it would be something meaningful. Something heartfelt. Something that says “I love you and you are important to me.” Which means it would absolutely, without question, be a wrapped squirrel. Not alive. Not moving. Just… respectfully presented. Probably placed gently on the floor. Maybe with a little head tilt like, “I worked really hard on this. You’re welcome.” And you’d have to react correctly. Because this is important. You don’t scream. You don’t cry. You don’t ask follow-up questions. You say: “Oh wow… thank you, Luna.” Because in her mind, this isn’t chaos. This is love. This is legacy. This is family tradition. So happy early birthday, Mom. You survived the introduction. You’re officially one of us now. Please note: no squirrels were harmed in the making of this post. Probably. #LunaLogic #DogMath #FamilyIsChosen #BirthdayGiftsButMakeItWeird

As kids, my brother and I slept in bunk beds. This is important information. Because I was the older brother, which meant I had a moral obligation to use my position for chaos. I would hang my arms off the side of the bed in the dark. Not move. Not speak. Just… let gravity do the work. Full commitment. Like performance art. Minimalist horror. And every single time it worked. There would be a pause. A shuffle. Then the unmistakable panic yell that translated roughly to: “THERE IS EITHER A MONSTER UNDER THE BED OR ONE IN THE CLOSET AND I WOULD LIKE AN ADULT IMMEDIATELY.” Looking back, this is objectively hilarious. At the time? It was a full emergency. No middle ground. You didn’t investigate as a kid. You announced. Loudly. You woke the house. You rolled the dice and hoped a parent showed up before the monster finished whatever monster business it was clearly in the middle of. So yeah, this version isn’t historically accurate. There probably wasn’t a giant green boogie monster with big eyes and a friendly smile. It was more like… shadows. Arms. A coat that moved wrong. A brain with no chill. But the vibe? The vibe is dead-on. It was always a monster under the bed or one in the closet yell. No third option. And the fact that it was almost always caused by me just quietly dangling my limbs like a budget horror movie extra makes it even better. Time has a funny way of turning childhood fear into comedy gold. Especially when you realize the real monster was just your sibling being bored. #WestOfNormal #SiblingChaos #MonsterUnderTheBed #ChildhoodLore

So a lot of you have no idea I have a brother. This is mostly because our family tree looks less like a tree and more like one of those emergency evacuation diagrams you don’t really understand until the fire alarm goes off. Everyone’s got stuff. Ours just came with bonus levels and no tutorial. I love the guy to death. We both went through a spectacular amount of things we never should have. We were kids. Like… small humans. With backpacks and weird haircuts. Not junior adults assigned to handle adult chaos while pretending everything was normal because someone really, really wanted the American Family™ experience. You know, smiles, denial, and “we don’t talk about that.” Spoiler alert: we talked about it. Eventually. And then we moved on. Because the past is the past, and I refuse to live in a rerun nobody asked for. Fast-forward. I’m the creator of West of Normal, which exists because reality is weird, childhood is complicated, and humor is cheaper than therapy (but still very effective). And this character right here? Sean. Yep. That’s my brother. Not a literal biography. More like a vibe. Punk hair. Too much technology. A boogie monster under the bed that offers unsolicited medical misinformation. You know. Childhood. This strip isn’t about trauma. It’s about surviving it with humor intact. It’s about kids who grew up too fast and adults who learned how to laugh anyway. It’s about love, resilience, and occasionally yelling “MOM!!!” at imaginary monsters who absolutely should know better. Love you, man. Thanks for surviving it with me. Also… sorry I made your boogie monster talk. #WestOfNormal #FamilyButMakeItWeird #BrotherEnergy #HealingWithHumor

While watching the game halfway through decided there was no way Seattle wasn’t going to win. At first I placed a 34-21 Seattle win. But decided to change it to just “win” marvels of procreate when 30 Years ago everything was hand written and I would have had to use white out or paint to make the corrections. Anyway, I’m drawing up two more today. One focusing around my mother’s birthday on the 23rd. The other more politically geared.

As I get deeper into building the world of West of Normal, more characters are going to start wandering into it. Fin and Darcy aren’t random. They’re Luna’s stuffed animals. The ones that get dragged from room to room, guarded like ancient relics, and occasionally sacrificed during zoomies. They’ve earned their place in the canon. Soon you’ll probably see the yellow ball and the red bone make appearances too. Those are sacred objects. Powerful artifacts. Capable of ending naps, starting arguments, and summoning chaos at exactly the wrong moment. There’s also the gray squirrel. I’ve labeled him Peanut. Peanut the Demon Squirrel shows up daily like he pays rent. He sits just close enough to be disrespectful. Close enough to be personal. Luna has a very complicated relationship with him. Somewhere between sworn enemy and unfinished business. I’m pretty sure when he shows up in the strip, he’ll be wearing Braveheart-style war paint. Because that feels accurate. And fair. West of Normal isn’t about big heroes or epic quests. It’s about the small worlds we build around the things that matter to us. The routines. The jokes. The dog toys. The imaginary wars fought through the window every morning. And what happens when all of that exists in the same space as politics, celebrities, news, and world events… because those things affect them too, whether they asked for it or not. More characters coming. The world’s getting bigger. Luna’s still in charge. And me… I might pay for everything, but apparently I’m just along for the ride. #WestOfNormal #WorldBuilding #DogsOfInstagram #CreativeProcess