Happy New Years Eve everyone! As my husband and I make a trek to South Bend to celebrate with friends, I bring you an entirely random post that’s been brewing on the back burner for a while.

Sometimes search engines lead people to my little site here for all the right reasons. Two of the most common searches that land innocent bystanders on my blog are:

a) “Thick Strawberry Banana Smoothie.” And guess where they go? Well, my Thick Strawberry Banana Smoothie recipe. I love it when everything just makes sense like that. It makes you think there’s some order to this crazy world we live in.

This would be a good time to remind you that making this recipe is henceforth mandatory. I’m instituting a worldwide law asap, as soon as I can get the UN to answer my email requests. Hello? Secretary General Ban Ki-moon? Are you getting the wheels of this process rolling?

b) “External flash for camera” or “Nikon Speedlight SB600”. They land on my ever-so-helpful “The external flash: how I love it, count the ways,” in which I praise that flash to the heavens. It was one of the first posts I wrote.

Pretty straightforward stuff. Somebody that works over there at the internet is clearly doing his job and deserves a promotion. We’ll call him Lutgar. Lutgar the Linker. He links peoples’ searches to the probable sites that contain the information they are looking for.

However, sometimes Lutgar has a bad day. He was out of clean underwear in the morning. The hot water in his shower kept wigging out and scalding his skin off. His coffee had coffee grounds floating in it, and his breakfast burrito fell all over his pinstripe shirt because of the faulty aluminum wrap job done by the half-asleep teenager at the 24 hour drive-thru.

Lutgar arrives at the Internet in a sorry state of mind. “What the crap do these people want today anyway!” he mumbles, just loud enough for his co-worker Polly the Pop-up Person to hear. “I mean, I don’t even care anymore. I mean, it’s not like I even get paid enough to do this crap anyway,” he mutters, as Polly rolls her eyes.

And those are the days that Lutgar just likes to mess with people. If you catch Lutgar on that day, someone who searches for, say, “homeschooling program for 4th graders” will instead land on a site that describes, in detail, how to infest your neighbor’s zucchini patch with slugs because you’re pissed off that her hair is always perfect and she always seem to be jogging, sweatlessly, around and around the block. Just as you were trying to fend off your guilt for neglecting to go to your swimathon/spinball conditioning hip hop class, too! And as this innocent internet surfer who just wants a good education for their kid clicks on the garden-destroying tutorial instead, Lutgar will be grinning maniacally from his swivel chair at the Internet, feeling a little less bad about the salsa stain right in the middle of his shirt.

What I’m really getting at here folks is that sometimes the most bizarre searches land people on my blog. “That Lutgar. There he goes again, the little troublemaker–wonder what went wrong this morning,” I speculate as strange searches populate my blog stats.

So come with me on this short but informative journey as we examine some treasures of the past, and as I attempt to do some investigative work to figure out if there is in fact a remote connection between my blog and their search.

1. “how to knock your wifes socks off” : Well that’s a no-brainer. Clearly this misguided husband clicked on “3 classics that will knock your socks off” and instead of reading about how he needs to buy his wife a box of chocolates and season passes to the opera, he read about how I stayed away from author Willa Cather for the longest time because her last name sounds like ‘catheter.’ And in my days as a nurse’s aide, well, me and catheters . . . we were heavily involved with each other. And I will talk no further on that subject.

2. “what is a good chemistry set for a 11 ye” : ummm . . .whaaaa ?? I actually needed to consult with my husband in order to shed light on this. We discovered that instead of finding a great chemistry set for his pre-teen, he read my book review on the Flavia de Luce mysteries, in which the main character is an 11 year old girl with a penchant for chemistry. I can only hope he immediately requested these books at his local library. They’re extremely entertaining.

3. “could i please see pictures of a baby shower at home because that’s where I will be having mine”: this person probably ended up reading about Heidi’s mini baby shower preceding Erica’s wedding. This shower did not take place at home, but at a church, so it was 100% unhelpful to the individual doing the search. However, I’d like to highlight the fact that this woman typed her entire request into the search engine as if she were talking to a person instead of simply typing “pictures of baby shower at home.” Maybe she has a closer relationship with the Internet than I do. I can’t believe Lutgar didn’t let up a little. He usually doesn’t get any “please” or “thank you”s, just a lot of nouns strung together like “cabin house decor antelope” or “recipe chicken slow-cooker.”

4. “jenna handsome”: Ummm . . . thank you?

5. “top baby naming blogs”: I mean, if you consider ‘Poofball’ and ‘Explosivo’ top baby naming choices, then yes. I hereby claim the toppest of the top baby naming blogs.

6. will she ever finish the dang dishes: That’s a question I ask myself daily–about myself. Thankfully my husband usually steps in. I guess the real question is–will he ever help her finish the dang dishes?

7. some kind of red sore of the gums: Please don’t tell me about your medical problems! I have a very active imagination, so please have mercy for the sake of my psychological well being!

8. army ranger weddings: maybe Calvin Klein is finally about to hire my sister Erica and her army ranger husband Dave as wedding models for his new line of bridalwear. Calvin? You can just send all the checks to me, as their official agent.

9. jenna the pioneer woman: If only, folks. If only.

10. what does jenna want for christmas: I’m so sorry if any relatives of mine had to actually read my blog post on the matter to figure out what the heck was on my Christmas list this year. Hopefully this search had nothing to do with me and was referencing another Jenna entirely.

11. pasta fatta in casa blog: No! This blog is not about me making consummate amounts of pasta and getting fat in my house while speaking Italian! OK, I may have posted a ton of pasta recipes. But I refuse to get fatta. You hear me, people?

12. how to make egyptian farmer costume: Unfortunately, I can’t even begin to imagine what an Egyptian farmer costumer would look like, but I hope you enjoyed my thorough documentation of pig-wrestling in a mud pit while in Egyptian costume. This is the same post perused by those who searched for pig costume naked mud and wrestling twinks. Yes, my mother Twinky did indeed wrestle, but no nudity was involved. There was just the tiniest peak at my cousin Eleanor’s underwear–or so I’m told.

13. if i were a pumpkin what would my name b: Well I don’t know you well enough to say, but if I were a pumpkin, my name would most certainly be Pumpiddyumpaggis.

Enough investigative journalism. Enjoy a simple list of the remainder of my compilation. Please tell me if you know what the heck was going on in these poor, deranged peoples’ brains. Like the search for “you cheating heat old song.” I can’t even begin to decipher it.

make-up for a little mouse face

sudden stinky hands

i like to drag the hair on my arm between my teeth

spank her

is barstool’s jenna married

muscle jenna

lestoil addiction

what to wear in chicago october 2010

unsolved mystery charlie dinosaur

banana turned into a pile of mush

And on that note, cheers to the end of a wonderful year! I’ll be toasting to you all in my heart when midnight rolls around! Thank you for your kind, encouraging, funny, and insightful comments throughout the year, ever since I started this blog back in June. You’ve been such a source of joy to me, and I thank God for each and every one of you.