It's been a while since something I made was on the front page of Reddit.

Nonbinary Fuss might make a good band name.

Between 2 and 3 AM Thursday morning, my mother's heart stopped and they were unable to restart it. I am saddened to inform everyone that she has passed away.

My dad and I are incredibly sad and we have been missing her deeply since she first went into the hospital. We're not sure what life is going to be like without her. She was the foundation that held our little family unit together. We've both cried many tears in these past few weeks.

All that said, we both agreed that we are somewhat relieved that my mother is at peace now. Even before she was infected with COVID, her body had been deteriorating. She suffered from severe psoriatic arthritis and spent pretty much every second in pain. She was losing weight fast and she was tired all of the time. When she was at her most fatigued she would get confused and fall asleep sitting up in her chair—sometimes falling out of it and hurting herself. We could not figure out what was wrong and were very concerned we were losing her. We didn't actually send her to the hospital for COVID. Her infection was a shock. She had the vaccine and the booster, but I'm afraid her medications and illnesses weakened her immune system a great deal. Her body was just too sick to fight this.

I saw her last Wednesday as I went to pick up some of her belongings. As I viewed her through the window, I got this strange feeling that she wasn't there anymore. I don't know how to explain it. And each day as I called for an update, they would tell me about how they tried to wake her up. Her eyes would open, but she was not aware of anything in her room. She didn't respond to voices or touch.

She had already left us in a way... and I don't think she would want her body to continue living in that state.

So, we are relieved that she no longer has to feel that constant pain. We are relieved that she doesn't have to continue living unconscious and unaware on life support—as that isn't much of a life at all.

For the past few years, she fought so hard to stay in our lives even as her body continued to fail her. I thank her for fighting as long as she did and giving us as much time with her as possible. I know that wasn't easy for her.

She was a great mom. She was the kindest and most supportive person I ever knew. Her guidance and wisdom were the most treasured things in my life. I feel so incredibly lucky that I got to be her son. Words cannot express how much I am going to miss her.

I don't know what happens after we die. I'm afraid I am not really the religious type. But I will admit there is a part of me hoping that Otis and my mom are reunited and playing with his fox.

I try to keep this blog reserved for happy things that will make people smile, but I know a lot of you care about me and want to know what is happening in my life. So I've decided to share this here.

It happened on February 3rd. So we've had some time to process. But it has been really hard. It just doesn't feel real yet. Both my dad and I keep expecting Mom to just... be here. It doesn't make any sense that she isn't here. She's been here for the past 40 years. How does she just stop being here?

We have a lot of things to figure out. My dad and I have a pretty good routine. I am taking care of him as he battles kidney failure. I even got my driver's license after over a decade so I can take him to his dialysis. Being able to drive again has been oddly freeing even if I don't really go anywhere.

I just can't believe how much loss I've experienced in such a short period of time. Otis was hard. This seems... impossible.

But I am thankful I have such a giant community of loving people that have been sending their love and support.

A big thank you to my best friends Katrina and Delling. I don't think I could have maintained my sanity without them.

And I'd like to thank my friend Chris, who is my partner in crime and comic collaborator. He is a wonderful artist and he surprised me with this yesterday. It made me cry, but it is beautiful and I love it so much.

Any second now...

Updated Wishlist

I had a few requests to post my wishlist for Christmas. So I updated it and ordered everything by priority.

Froggie's Christmas Wishlist

And if you would rather do the PayPal thing...

Froggie's Frozen Nugget Fund (which is more of an Almond Milk for my tummy fund these days)

And I am on Venmo too...

Froggie's Newfangled Venmo Thing (sirfrogsworth)

Thank you all so much for always helping out. All the cool and nice things I have are because of your support and generosity over the years and no amount of thank yous suffice. But I thank and love all of you so much.

And I love all of you who just read and like my stuff too. That means more to me than anything. This community I've built keeps me sane and you can't put a price on that.

Happy Holidays to all.

This is Aki and Haru.

Haru is a bit unsure about all of this Christmas cheer.

Astrophysicist burn.

The man has a minor planet named after him.

I think he is qualified to be the orbital police.

This Twitter account never fails to make me chuckle.

Dear inconsiderate abled people,

I have to wheel my dad in and out of dialysis.

When we arrived, the parking spot closest to the wheelchair crosswalk looked like this.

Me, a disabled person, had to walk these carts to the receptacle so we could park properly.

But the fun didn't stop there!

Let's take a look at the wheelchair crosswalk.

This is the ONLY place you can access the dialysis establishment with a wheelchair. This person decided to leave their car parked there for 15 minutes while they got their Chinese food.

I had to slowly back my dad's wheelchair down the curb in order to get him back to the car. I would prefer to not employ less-than-safe wheelchair maneuvers with my disabled elderly father.

So I ask anyone who doesn't fear a little confrontation, if you see people doing these kinds of things, please say something.

And if you know someone who does these kinds of things, maybe send them this post and show them the unseen consequences of their actions.

Thanks a bunch, Froggie

Does anyone need to see a duck running a marathon in cute little webbed feet shaped running shoes?

This might be the greatest act of kindness any corporation has ever committed.

Fall photography.

All taken on a smartphone while going to get the maiI.

If you are wondering why your smartphone photos don't turn out like this, well... I rammed them all through the Photoshop machine pretty hard.

But if you gain 20 years of image editing experience, you too can spend all afternoon zhuzhing up your phone pix.

2 of the skies were replaced. Feel free to guess which ones. (One is pretty obvious.)

Tonight I am going to try and recreate picture #10 with my DSLR and see how much different it looks.

So, this channel The Game Brass only has 5,000 subscribers and I feel like they deserve a lot more than that. They do full brass covers of video game music with up to 16 parts. It's crazy.

While the video production is a bit shaky, the audio recordings are fantastic.

It sounds like frickin' John Williams scored Zelda.

I know from experience it is hard to convince people on Tumblr to watch videos, but I really think these folks could use a few more subscribers.

So if you like classic video game music, perhaps you could help me spread the word and do these folks a solid.

Penguin everything!

If you weren't aware of the story, my state governor, Mike Parson, accused a reporter and a security analyst of criminal "hacking" for exposing a security flaw on a public government website. They were able to find several social security numbers of teachers by viewing the HTML of the web page.

Basically, Gov. Parson accused them of hacking for hitting F12 in Chrome.

This was laughed at almost immediately on Twitter.

Then Parson doubled down.

And people laughed at him again.

Pretty much the entire information security community invalidated these "hacking" claims.

InfoSec educator Shannon Morse had this to say.

And because of the overwhelming evidence that this was NOT criminal hacking, Governor Parson retracted his statement and humbly apologized for his mistake.

HAH!

Of course he didn't do that.

HE'S A REPUBLICAN!

He tripled down.

And it's a masterpiece of dying on a hill. I have never seen anything quite like this.

Parson had his PAC called "United Missouri" produce this video calling out the "Fake News" and showing scary computery images that I guess represent hacking. And for some reason, they show a TV inside a hotel room during most of the video. I guess they couldn't afford a stock image of a computer monitor after paying for the Matrix-y graphics.

The video has an impressive like/dislike ratio on YouTube.

"Okay, our video isn't doing great. Everyone in the office hit the like button. All 8 of you!"

And the twitter version has a fun ratio as well.

I guess someone was out to lunch when the office liked this post.

The replies are fun...

After this video went live, Professor Shaji Khan, who verified the security flaw for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, demanded the Governor apologize and cover the legal costs that may incur if this sham investigation continues.

I really hope he sues Parson's pants off.

TL;DR... My Governor is an idiot.

It's okay, Belle. I cannot see you. Good job hiding.

One of my ongoing corgi jokes is that they are *almost* good at hide and seek.

They are just too long and have no sense of where their patoot is in three dimensional space. So you will often find them half under the bed or around a corner with their rear on display. And they are always so shocked when you "find" them.

"I guess this is my life now. Just call me Leaf Nose."