Just utter clown shoes over at Birdsite (logical end result of firing your skilled engineers). Check out this screenshot of a live test in progress! Interesting choice of hashtag there at the end 😂

I bought a sofa chaise today. I can see many cozy winter nights with tea and a good book and a blankie in my future.

It's the little things 😂

Lotta new folk here. Hi!

I'm Ash. I'm an education science researcher at a large Midwestern R1 university. I used to be a music professor. Now I study learning & cognition in students with disabilities and design better approaches to instruction for those kids & their teachers.

I'm queer (pan if you wanna get technical), neurodivergent, & perpetually single but content. 😂

Glad you're all here. This is a welcoming space with nuanced, thoughtful conversation on everything under the sun.

I think the thing that scares me the most about the collapse of democracy is that I know a post-democracy world is going to harden me, and force me to be harder than I think it's really in my nature to be. (I'm a softie.)

That, selfishly, is what I fear more than anything else. I value compassion. I don't want to live through a collapse that hardens me.

Oh! And I forgot to mention that in the midst of all of this grief, I broke up with my boyfriend in August (we'd been seeing each other since March and I thought it was getting kinda serious...and then his ex decided she wanted to get back with him and I was yesterday's news).

So I'm newly-ish single, facing down two flavors of grief, both related to intense matters of the heart, and coping with the collapse of democracy. But I'm hanging in there! Lol 😂

External conditions have not been conducive to the healthy processing of such complex emotions, to say the least.

The world is...ahem...well, it's screwed, and now I have decided my purpose on this earth is to just protect vulnerable people and try to keep them safe and shepherd them through what's to come.

And some day, maybe cut loose this shame-grief so I can eke out peace--as much peace as is possible at this moment.

So that's why I've been gone. Good to see you all again.

And because he messed with your head, how do you know that the person you loved was even real? How do you know he didn't MAKE you love him through world-class mind games?

Shame-grief.

I dunno if anyone else has been through this--the sudden, unexpected death of a person who was both beloved and a boogeyman (in that order)--but I have been a head case since June. So I haven't been on CoSo at all, and I've been trying to get my head right.

It feels shameful to want to grieve the love part. The part where I was in love. The person I was in love with. This is why I'm calling it shame-grief.

It's the same kind of shame that says "You wanted it. Everything he did, you were asking for it."

So how exactly do you grieve an abuser you were batshit over before he revealed his inner sadist? How does that work? Mad love, even as he was messing with your head & taking parts of you that didn't belong to him?

In the "before time," before things went to shit and he did some bad stuff that messed me up so badly I'm still in therapy for it, 15 years later...I was hopelessly, madly, manically in love with this dude.

And he died, just like that, and I have been grappling with grieving the guy I loved once--because I can't go back and undo that--and feeling relief that he's not around to torment me anymore.

This is...confusing. To say the least.

So things are...uh...popping off. Like, everywhere. Birdsite. Midterms. Ukraine. And so on. Shit's wild right now. Like everyone, I'm just trying to keep swimming.

And the thing running in the background for me: GRIEF. Or as I've been calling it, shame-grief.

My ex-fiancé died in June. Massive heart attack on his bicycle. Probably didn't feel a thing. 54 yrs old. I loved him madly, once. He was also my abuser. We had a complicated, toxic relationship, and he did bad stuff. But not right away.

I went on a long social media break following some...stuff.

April: Ran my first half marathon!
Also April: Got promoted!
Also April: Got COVID :(
May: More health issues :(
June: My ex-fiance died suddenly, that was a doozy
August: Broke up with boyfriend
Also August: More health issues
September-present: Navigating a lot of change, health stuff, but blessed with work and family and music and literature

I'll try to check in more often on here 😂

Hi Coso, it's been a minute. Boy things have sure changed since May, let alone December 2017 when I joined up! 😂

How is everyone?

Got this nice runner rug for ten bucks at ALDI and it apparently came with a cat magnet inside

#CatsOfCoSo #CatsMan #CoSoCats

Happy to report that the antibiotics began working quickly and symptoms are resolved, just feeling tired & sluggish now

Dodged a bullet for sure -- I am an advocate of listening to your body when it tells you something is up but I don't always follow through

Glad I did this time

This week can just go get bent, whew, glad it's over

What a week it's been. Woke up early Saturday morning in quite a bit of pain, and was peeing blood. Knowing that this is not normal, went to urgent care.

There, doc ran tests and said "You have a severe UTI and it hasn't made its way to your kidneys yet, but it's getting there"

Oh boy (I have reduced kidney function from surgery to remove a tumor about 4 years ago)

If I'd started antibiotics even a few hours later, could've been bad news

In Eco's "Ur-Fascism" he discusses how fascists consistently portray their "enemies" as simultaneously weak/toothless and monstrously powerful

In anti-choice rhetoric this appears as "You women are all unloved cat lady losers, but also promiscuous slutty sluts who can't keep your legs closed"

There is no logical consistency to this stuff so don't look for it

Had a devastating conversation with a co-worker today. She expressed her fear for the world her 3 year old daughter will grow up in.

In her next breath, however, she talked about how feisty and physically strong and headstrong her daughter is.

And I said, "That's awesome! She's gonna need to be strong."

Then we were both quiet for a little while.

Woof.

I finished #Ozark season 4 and I am still a little deep in my feelings 😭

Even though it was foreshadowed all along, when the inevitable thing happened I was upset 😤

This video does a really nice job of explaining all the symbolism and connections to previous seasons in the final season, it's really well done

https://youtu.be/uLscr9Db5BI

Late in 2017 I signed up to see what this COSO thing was all about (think I was one of the first 10K on the site?)

Around the same time I had a hysterectomy b/c my uterus had been (literally) trying to kill me for years. I spent the recovery hanging out on COSO meeting cool people.

Was thinking about that, and how the precarity of Roe v. Wade was always in the back of my mind when I made decision to have that surgery. Carry on COSO and thanks for the connection.

This news and what's coming next are solidifying my transformation into enraged overprotective queer spinster auntie

I have emerged from my chrysalis ready to cut heads with nothing to lose

(Seriously if you have a stake in pregnancy get on birth control NOW because that is next)