Fresh depressed Peace Corps boobs with leschmaniasis hiding in sperm trees, where the penis windchimes tinkle in the breeze

"Why are black women so bitchy?"

At least one person has wondered this recently and Googled it. For reasons that escape me, Google pointed this particular query to yours truly, extended psychosis.

I haven't been especially prolific on the old blog here lately, but I see in Blogger's data about extended psychosis that this is post No. 401. I sometimes wonder if anyone has read them all (myself included), but I whatever attracts my regular readers remains a mystery. One thing I'm increasingly curious about, however, is the traffic I get from Google searches. I know extended psychosis remains the No. 1 result on Google if you type in those words. But what confounds me are the readers who arrive here via other types of Google searches.

Here is a brief list of Google searches that brought readers to extended psychosis recently. Go figure.... (I am particularly curious about the last one on the list.) These are from a single day last week:

- Annette Funicello photo returning from hospital

- Peace corps depression

- Prominent boobs

- Fresh boobs

- Gay psychosis

- Jennifer save yourself

- Infamous insane people

- Psychosis of people who speak in rhymes

- Holiday song + are you having fun + safeway commercial

- Checking signs of life

- Penis windchime

- What to do if you encounter an elk

- I’m sorry to inform you dead killed

- Working with the criminally insane

- Why are black women so bitchy

- History of hairbrushes (also searches for: History of hairbrushes and how many sold each year)

- Cortisone psychosis

- Catty women

- Trees that smell like male cum (other variations: "semen trees" or "stinky semen"(

- How are dogs and humans alike

- Fuck Caprial and John’s restaurant

Mardi Gras cometh

So I'm planning another Mardi Gras party this year -- that'll be three in a row -- and this time around, I've enlisted help. I've formally established The Krewe of Portlandia, and things may get a little more "snazzy" (HGM's queer little word) around these parts.

For those who don't speak the lingo, a "krewe" is a social group formed solely for the purposes of putting on Mardi Gras events, including parades and parties. So the Krewe of Bacchus puts on the Bacchus parade in New Orleans, as well as a ball. These krewes are usually dues-paying organizations -- often very hefty dues -- but the members have the pleasure of riding on floats and tossing out beads and doubloons to the begging hoards and masses of people. (There is something to be said for that experience, as I learned personally a few times.)

I've not yet managed a Mardi Gras party where someone dares to get up on the table and bare her breasts while the rest of us pelt her with throw beads (but there's always a small hope of that). Nevertheless, I keep encouraging revelers to get into the spirit of things by wearing costumes and trying on, just for a moment or two, a touch of wild abandon. (People in the Northwest seem a bit stiff to me at times, but we're working on it.)

I thought it might be helpful to have multiple hosts, thus creating The Krewe of Portlandia.

The first person I enlisted was King Rex, who is a Katrina evacuee and hosted a Hurricane Katrina party at my place on the second anniversary of the storm this last summer. He so enjoyed cooking up a mess of New Orleans vittles and drinking Abita beer that he wanted to do it again. Well, let me tell ya: August is a bit hot to be cooking up a storm in my un-air-conditioned loft, so I said: Well, how about Mardi Gras instead? He's a good Southern boy, meaning he likes a gathering focused on food and drink, so King Rex readily agreed and started working up his menu. He's got shrimp on the brain by the sounds of all the recipes he's talking about cooking.

When I was telling HGM about our plan to cook Southern and drink, he snapped (the kind that would have had two circles up and a z-formation if he had let his inner gay flame up), and said, "You *are* planning to snazz it up a little this year, aren't you?"

I always have big dreams, but rarely do I have the follow through on these things. So I said, I *intend* to....

This was all HGM needed. "Because you know, you can't be throwing a party with a theme and telling people to come in costumes, and they walk in and see the same old place. In that case, you're just inviting people to come to your home and get drunk."

I know this.

"So what are you going to do about it?" he asked.

I got out my brand-new Therapist's Fix-It Ray Gun 2008 -- which can be used to de-escalate, stimulate, eradicate or motivate -- and set it to M-mode. I shot from the hip. The gun spoke these words: It sounds like you've got a strong opinion about that, HGM. I bet you have ideas. Would you care to be the Decadence Design Consultant? I can list you on the invitation.

BULLS EYE!

And so it came to pass that yesterday saw the collection of swaths of purple, green and gold (Mardi Gras colors) tulle, ribbons, masks, throw pillows and enough candles to send an SOS to the extra-terrestrials who keep abducting me lately. (I say it's an SOS because we have fun. It's not *all* anal probes.)

But I digress.

Suffice it to say, HGM's inner Martha Stewart came out. In the fabric store, he admitted that some fabric is so engaging to him that he wants to "eat it." I wasn't sure what he meant, but when I repeated this to S2 today, she replied, "Oh, I know exactly what he means." Somehow, I put what I know about HGM and S2 together, and it suddenly made sense. I feel the same way about certain hardwoods. (Cocobolo, how I love you and want to make you mine....)

Ooops. There I go again.

Back to the subject at hand. The fabric and the pillows and the masks and the candles and "lots and lots of Christmas lights" -- along with me supposedly replacing all white lightbulbs in my house with pink or blue ones -- is going to be assembled in my loft in some sort of decadent fashion. I believe we're going for that French damask-dripping, dark "Eyes Wide Shut" kind of voluptuousness. I'm not sure what will actually come to pass, but hey....

If you got your invite, you know the particulars. Two weeks hence, we will laissez les bon temps rouller!

How to make condensed milk

I can't think of the last time that I had a greater variety of *intense* subject matter come up in a single week. Maybe it's never happened. There was sex. There was death with dignity and drama. There was the promise of new life. There was a mutiny in my class. There was racism and heterosexism. There were tears -- good god, were there ever tears! There was also free speech and health care reform. There was God and the Goddess and a glass penis.

And I ain't talking therapy sessions and clients here. This is all in my personal sphere.

I took breaks from this Bizzaro-world by attending a couple yoga classes. In the restorative yoga class, a new teacher spoke very loudly. "NOTICE THE QUIET PAUSE AT THE TOP AND BOTTOM OF YOUR BREATH," she said, voice blaring. Just a bit distracting, and not terribly restful. A few days later, I took a Kundalini class in which my chakra kahn got stimulated. Fucking fabulous, vigorous workout followed by a melt-into-the-floor meditation. But my calfs have been complaining since then.

In between and around all of the above, people said things the following to me this week, all in complete seriousness:

"Your tongue is short, so you've learned to be artful."

"You're still working on your orbit."

"How does this work? Should I speak to you -- or to a priest?"

"When I see the two of them together, they are such a *couple* that I want to smash their faces in."

"You can always string a bunch of peacock feathers on garland and get the same effect."

"I don't get why you're doing that. I'm not judging you; I'm just curious. That's not the behavior of the person I know you to be."

All I can say is that there are times in my life when I'm surprised by the face I see in the mirror. The most curious thing to me this week is that it looks the same as it did on Sunday, when the week began. And I haven't even seen Saturday yet.

The amazing thing to me is that, as faces go, mine looks pretty happy today.

Note to self

Do not — I repeat: Do NOT — run through the house with a vomiting dog in your out-stretched arms.

The consequences of such acts should be obvious.

However, you may forgive yourself this once. After all, it was, 2 a.m. and dark and you just were trying to protect the silk duvet cover.

But still. You're a smart girl with really good spacial sense, and you have know about the splatter patterns of flying vomit ever since you were 8 and enjoyed that spinning barrel ride at Six Flags in Georgia. You should've seen it coming.

Encounters with elk

Just before the term started, I spent a long weekend by myself in a cabin up in the Olympics. I go there when I really want to get away from stuff. It is fairly isolated, particularly in winter. Late one afternoon, I took a long walk in the rain past waterfall after waterfall, just really enjoying the earth unburdening itself of an overabundance of water, all headed to the lake above which perches the cabin where I stay.

The light was starting to dim a little, a mix of the late afternoon and another squall rolling in, but I really felt drawn to head down to this meadow a couple miles from the cabin. I didn't have a flashlight, which would make my return trip rather precarious if I didn't get out in time, but I decided to take the risk and just kept walking farther, aiming for the meadow.

About 50 yards before I got to the clearing, I saw some movement through the trees at the edge of the meadow. A large elk came into view. Followed by another and another and another. One of them was a baby -- are they called elkettes?

Eventually, a dozen elk were clustered on the road in front of me, the adults in the herd surrounding the smallest of them. A huge buck walked forward and assumed a position like a guard might. They all stood and stared at me, and I slowly walked to within about 30 yards of them and stared back. We were like this for a good five minutes or so before they decided to cross the road completely and head back into the woods.

Below is a cell-phone video of the last member of the herd moseying across the road after the other dozen elk had moved on.



Once, when driving by in my car, I saw some elk on the far off edge of this meadow, but it is the first time that I have encountered them on foot -- and I have never been alone amongst such large wild creatures. It was a beautiful moment, and walking back on the road at twilight, through dense rainforest with all those waterfalls gushing and gurgling through the ferns and mossy rocks, was really marvelous. I am drawn to this place time and again, in any season, year after year, and it never loses its appeal.

Yesterday, I received a mass e-mail from a woman I know and had run into on Monday afternoon. She was announcing some classes she would be teaching and had drawn some cards from a particular form of tarot deck she likes to consult -- for what purpose, I do not know. In either case, this was one of the two cards she picked and what she wrote about it:

"Skillful Perseverance (8 of discs) shows a woman walking alone when a vision of an elk appears. She is wearing a shawl she wove - showing craft, perseverance, skill. The message - don't muscle your way through to your goal because the costs become very high. Rather, step forward with gentleness, pacing, and sensitivity for yourself."

After reading that, I wrote back and told her about my encounter with the elk, saying, I was that woman alone with the elk.

This afternoon, I spent a while baking goodies with HGM over at his place. Over a bite to eat, we talked for a little while about our shared experience of not having significant others -- or significant anybodies, for that matter -- and how we that can sometimes burden one's spirit a bit heavily. (Valentines Day seems particularly repellant to him, for example, while Christmas is a problem for me.) We were talking about cultural distinctions of the term "family," which is one way gays and lesbians have identified themselves to others in the history of our movement.

But the true nature of the conversation had to do with how difficult it can be sometimes to see people paired up when we are single and have been for a while. I'm going on two years without any decent prospects and just a few poorly matched attempts at a date or fix-up. HGM, on the other hand, has plenty of dating options but has never managed to be in a significant relationship. I had some questions about how much our sexual orientations and our age (we're both 39) winnow our statistical possibilities and how much was what HGM referred to as "difficulty in making some vital connection with others."

We also spent a great deal of our time talking about my study of death and dying and the progression of that massive paper I wrote last term, which I must now take up and revise. I have two clients who have very clear issues related to the meaning of life and death. One started talking to me about it last week, while the other announced as our session was coming to an end that she would start talking about it this coming Tuesday.

So with that afternoon's discussion in mind, I returned home this evening and found the following e-mail from the tarot-reading woman:

"I checked 'Animal-Speak' for elk and got: Keynote: strength and nobility. 'If an elk has come into your life it can mean that you are about to hit your stride,' she wrote. "It can teach pacing yourself, not giving up, not overdoing. Elk are Not solitary, they travel with companions, usually their own gender. Herds of elk have watchouts and they teach to live and work with others, not do so much alone."

So if there is any significance to my experience with the herd of elk -- aside from it being a marvelous moment that will always belong only to me (so much better than all those nasty moments I've had alone) -- perhaps it means I'm going to get myself a little posse of girls with whom to travel, live and work.

Perhaps I'm about to get my own harem.

Well, a girl can dream.

Where's my error-proof test?

I don't think it's official yet, but it seems some leg cramps I had earlier today were evidence that I, your dear UCM, am ... pregnant.

I had the pleasure this evening of having a one-on-one session of vinyasa yoga at the studio across the street from my home. During one of the first leg stretches, I got a funny fluttering cramp in the arch of my foot, then a little in my thigh. I shook out my leg and repositioned myself in the pose, and they went away.

A little later, in a bridge pose, I got a small cramp in my hamstring on the same leg. I lowered myself from the pose and repositioned. It didn't go away, so I sat up and massaged my leg for a moment. I commented that there's something missing in my food.

Trying to be helpful, as as we were alone in the room, the yoga instructor, with whom this is my first class, said to me, "Well, it's pretty common among pregnant women to get cramps like that in the legs, so you can always check with your doctor and figure out what to do about that during pregnancy."

She was suggesting I'm pregnant. Seems I'm already ... uh, showing.

Um, I said, I think it's more likely that some essential nutrient, such as potassium, is missing from my diet during the past few days.

"Oh," she said with a little wince. "Or that could be it."

Nice....

Suffice it to say, I remain as pure as the driven snow -- but not the least bit pregnant.

And in truth, I think it's an improvement to be assumed pregnant rather than fat. I think this mistaken assumption happened because my middle pooch is firmer that it once was, and I'm carrying my body differently. Friends regularly ask me if I've lost weight recently, and I haven't lost a pound. So I must be changing shape in a good way. As weird as I think it is to be thought pregnant, it's not as humiliating a statement about body shape as many other women might find it.

Cutest. Dog. Ever.

My friend Geodanny recently sent me this photo of the pup Brogan, which was taken in August when Geodanny and his wife, The Asian, my longtime friend, were visiting from the Bay Area. This is, without question, the finest photo of the pup ever taken. The lighting on a little Cairn's dark face is very hard to get right to show all this detail while still looking so natural.

Bravo, Geodanny, and thanks for the photo.

Hasta luego

For the next few days, I will be sitting in the adirondak chair pictured below, rather than being an armchair therapist or sitting at my computer.


I desperately need to recharge my batteries, and this is the get-away where I typically do just that. I'll be doing the R&R alone this time. As I've packed for my trip, I noticed a distinct difference between this year and last year, when I went to the lake by myself in late December. Last year, I was distressed about going there alone. This year, I'm craving just that.

Apparently, I am learning to fly solo with a lot more confidence. It wasn't the travel or the destination last year; it was the social isolation I was feeling. This year, I don't have that particular neurotic complex dogging me. I'm looking forward to solitude, to not even having to care for my dog. A few unstructured, unscheduled, no-pressure, sleep-and-eat-when-I-want, don't-hear-a-single-case-presentation days is just what I need.

I know others who need the same exact thing and can't arrange it for any number of reasons, so I feel especially fortunate that I get to have this time for myself in such a beautiful setting. It is without question the most restorative place I know. I'm going to go and gather as much of its marvelous energy as I can and try to bring some home with me. I'm going to need it this spring, I can tell.

See you all on the flip side.