Oh, and did you know...

... that if you google "aquadoodle" my blog is on the front page? Not the first listing, but I'm like #9. Huzzah!

Also, a disturbing number of people have found my blog recently by googling a variation of "mommy's trombone." Um, is there a euphemism I don't know about? Because I was careful to keep the word "rusty" completely out of that post.

Movin' on up

Update: My tomato soup recipe is at #3 ... you've only got to get me two higher to get that check sent to the ASPCA.

Oh, I'm in the top 10 search results again!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en-us&q=aquadoodle&btnG=Search

Thank you, Parenthacks!

I love being on the first page of google search results

"tomato gorgonzola soup"

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4GGIH_enUS260US261&q=tomato+gorgonzola+soup

#10 and rising, folks ... anybody want to go and click through a couple times to see if it raises me up a few notches? I will personally donate $100 to the ASPCA if we can get me to #1 by the end of the month. Who's with me on this?

Insomnia strikes again

I finally got around to signing the blog up with Feedburner, which is handy for all of you regular readers - now you don't have to keep checking back to see if there's new content, you can subscribe and it will tell you whenever there's an update.

Best of all for the only-barely-computer-handy: you can skip all this "feed" crap and easily set it up so a message is sent directly to your e-mail whenever I post something new.

Convenient for you, but since a lot of my views seem to be "nope, nothing new yet" visits from regular readers, I suspect my number of hits per day is going to tank. Oh, well - I'm willing to suffer for you guys, so I'll take the hit ;)

Just click on one of the Feedburner widgets on the lefthand side of the screen if you want to subscribe - it would make my day, and possibly my week, too, if I get a lot of subscriptions right away :)

Know what I love?

I love that fact that at least 1% of the people who read my blog each day ended up here because they googled "baby poop stain removal," or something similar. Hey, it doesn't matter what I'm famous for, as long as I'm famous, right?

Oo, this is cool

I'm the number one listing that shows up if you google "pleather Docksiders"

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=pleather%20docksiders

I knew those pink nightmares would be good for something other than daily junior high school humiliation.

Y'all are weird

Okay, my daughter may be the one running around declaring that she's Clara (from The Nutcracker) and Herr Drosselmeyer needs to come get her out of bed to go to the potty, but some of my readers are ever weirder than that.



The person who searched for "pecker cupcake pan" - weird.



The 12% of my recent readers who get here by searching for "feet" in google images in Italy, Canada, Australia, and a couple other places - weird. And kind of freaking me out a little bit.



The person who searched for "cervix speculum womyn" - probably disappointed by what s/he found. Also, weird, because normal people spell it "women," dude. But thanks to him/her, I now know that if you google that phrase, I'm the fourth result. Um, yay?

search results

Oh, and a quick message to the person in Canada who found my site by googling "home remedy for crotch rot" - you have my sympathy. Go get the napalm, and some acidophilus capsules. It's less messy.

Hi, CooksTalk folks!

I think I'm too late to catch most of you, judging by the number of referrals I've seen via my sitemeter, but I just wanted to say,

Hi, guys! Boy, have I missed you!

Let's see ... since we last talked, I've moved back to Cleveland (hi, Biscuit! hi, Carole!), started selling my craft patterns, started selling baby gifts and quilts online (hi, Chiqui!), and haven't killed the kid yet.

My kitchen here SUCKS. Search for "kitchen" or check out the "kitchen renovation" tags to see the whole renovation planning process ... I'm going in for the official estimate on Monday evening, and after I revive Jason, I'm hoping we can start soon and get this sucker finished by Christmas or early next year. Getting the "here in 2 weeks" cabinets from Ikea should help that :)

I haven't been cooking much, although I was thinking of you guys a few weeks ago when I made somebody's cornmeal pumpkin griddlecake recipe I printed out like six years ago. Hopefully I'll find more time to cook once my kitchen doesn't suck so bad. Did I mention the suckitude? It's large.

Anyway, stick around, especially during NaBloPoMo, when I'll be posting at least once a day in hopes of winning fabulous prizes. Feel free to comment and let me know who's visiting - I can't wait to "see" some of you again!

Nihon no cook, aka LazyMama, aka avonhokie, aka Gretchen

I'm not sure ...

... but I think Asha posted my pumpkin hack sometime this weekend. Hmm, let's take a look at the site stats, shall we?

Guess so :)

More fun with the sitemeter

Continuing my plan for blogosphere domination, I'm now the third AND fourth results if you search for "i'm about to kick somebody's ass" on Google. Hurrah! Maybe if we all pull together and a bunch of people link to my posts, I can hit #1 :)

Oh, and howdy, Parenthackers! Pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee, and stick around for a while. I'm bound to say something interesting eventually!

Did you know?

If you search for "how to turn a bathtub into a couch" on google, I'm the first result?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4SUNA_en___US206&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=how%20to%20turn%20a%20bathtub%20into%20a%20couch&spell=1

And if you search for "I'm about to kick somebody's ass" on ATT/Yahoo, I'm number 6.
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu5TqihlHaXQBfVJXNyoA?p=%22i%27m+about+to+kick+somebody%27s+ass%22&y=Search&fr=yfp-t-471

Great, now that song's going to be stuck in my head for a week. Everybody sing along now ... And watch the Ze Frank shows on that page, too - I had forgotten. Oh, how could I forget you, Ze? You're on my list of five, you know.

Have you looked at my site meter recently?

Hooray, me!

Come out, come out, wherever you are!

I'm putting all the new readers on notice ...

I'm participating in Schmutzie's great delurk on Wednesday, October 3rd. So start limbering up your fingers ... I get an average of 33 hits a day, so I'd better see at least 25 comments on Wednesday's post! Or else ... I don't know what, maybe I'll write another 14-page essay on my mental health and force you to read it out loud or something.

And no, MLF, it doesn't count if you just post 25 separate comments. As lovely as that would be, it wouldn't help me beat the lurkers out of the bushes.

Fun with the sitemeter

Did you know that if you go to the AOL search function and type "puking," on the fourth page of search results you get my blog? How cool is that? Huh? Sooooo cool!

If I use the word "puking" a few more times in this post, maybe I'll make it to the third page!

A message to some new readers

Dear Sir or Madam:

I was interested to see that you arrived at my site yesterday after using Google to search for "should I buy a house if the basement gets a little wet." I backtracked the search and found the page in my blog where you entered, and it was fun to read stuff I wrote a year ago and haven't really looked at since. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

And the answer is, "hell, no - there's no such thing as 'a little wet.'"

Just ask our former next-door neighbors, who are busy trying to dry out their 'a little wet' finished basement for the second time in three years, thanks to two freak sump pump failures and some wacky global warming weather. I think the rain hit Tuesday, and yesterday afternoon the carpet was still so wet it would soak through your socks almost immediately, and let me tell you, it smells funky down there. Their next-door neighbors had the carpet in their finished basement floating on top of the water, and they've seen barely a trickle in past storms.

When it comes to wet basements, my advice is to run away, far, far away. Barring that, buy lots of plastic totes, and assume that anything that goes in the basement will end up ruined at some point.

Thanks again for visiting, and I hope you stick around! The waterproofing on the basement in our current house is sure to fail at some point, and you wouldn't want to miss that, would you?

- the management

PS - to the person who ended up here after searching for "ground ivy eradication in lawns," you have my condolences. My advice: move. Clears the problem right up, as long as you check the new house's lawn before you close.

A shout-out to Asha and the other hackers

Just wanted to thank Asha over at Parenthacks for the mentions this week ... it's always fun to watch my sitemeter statistics jump up when she posts a link to one of my blog entries.

If you've come to my blog from Parenthacks, welcome!

And if you've never heard of Parenthacks, do drop by and take a look. You wouldn't believe some of the ideas that people come up with for making it easier/more convenient/less annoying to deal with kid stuff.

My personal favorite hacks so far are the "pool noodle as makeshift bed rail" and "Sharpie your cell number on your kid before you go to crowded places." Good stuff.

Looks like I'm not the only one

In the last week I've had at least ten people visit my site because they searched Google for some variation of "black bugs on nasturtiums." Hi, gardeners! I feel your pain!

Oh, and whoever searched for "infant poop stain removal" - try scrubbing with Shout, then soaking in OxyClean Baby for an hour before you wash it. Works for darn near everything, except hardcore sweet potato stains.