Behind the Scenes

Don’t you just love having insider information?  Like for instance, while watching It’s a Wonderful Life the other weekend, Dave mentioned that in the scene where Uncle Billy walks drunkenly offscreen and you hear a loud clatter and then Uncle Billy yells, “I’m okay!”, and you assume he ran into some garbage cans or something…well, the loud clatter actually came from a clumsy stagehand and both Uncle Billy and Jimmy Stewart played along.  The director liked it so much he decided to keep it in the movie.  After Dave told me that little nugget, I googled the movie for more little facts and found out lots of other cool trivia, and if you’re interested, you can find it here.

It made me wonder if there might just be an audience out there interested in some “Dirty Laundry” trivia! 

<sound of crickets chirping>

Well, here’s the thing.  Too bad.

1.  Did you know that people often arrive on my website because they have googled something?  I am honestly still thrilled when I see that Google has pointed someone in my direction, like I’m an expert on Jimmy Stewart trivia or dirty laundry or something!  I can see on my “Dashboard” (what Blogger calls my control panel) what a person has googled in order to come to me.  And basically:

-people in Australia are looking for a Barbecue Chicken Pie recipe.

-people in the UK google “Angry Birds claw machine” an awful lot.  I wish I knew why.

-people in the UK are also interested in willow tree root systems.  They get directed to my chair post a lot.

-at Easter, I get tons of hits for the Bunny cake and at every holiday, people are looking for the M&M pretzel recipe and Mini Oreo Cheesecakes.

-I have had a lot of people looking for a “dirty house poem” which leads them to this, which makes me glad my name isn’t attached to it.

-the most searched for phrase is “mini oreo cheesecake bites” with 573 searches.

2.  This particular blogpost is my 338th.

3.  Goldfish crackers and Diet Coke keep me (non-nutritionally) fueled for (non)optimum written output. 

4.  Strangely, the keys on my keyboard occasionally make a happy crunching sound when I am furiously typing away.  I wish I knew why.

5.  There is another mystery going on that I haven’t been able to figure out.   According to my Dashboard, I receive the most referrals from a website called “Happy Brown House”, in fact, I have had 1,516 people referred to me because of that site (which is even more than Google, which came in second place).  I have gone to that site and searched for why that could be.  Am I listed in the sidebar as a blog she follows?  Did she link to one of my recipes?  Maybe the blogger for that site is a stalker who checks out what my blog is doing ten times a day?  No, no, and maybe.  I have found no good reason for that blog to give me so many referrals though.  Now I will be polite and refer you back.

6.  Although you would expect the United States to be my largest audience, and it is, you wouldn’t expect South Korea to be my second largest, now would you?  (They’ve given me 640 hits!)

7.  Do you remember the original title for my blog?  It was the very lame “Howls and Growls from the Wolfepack”.  I hated that the minute I adopted it but couldn’t think of anything cute or clever.  I’m not crazy about “Dirty Laundry” either, but I think it’s too late to change that now.  If I were to change it though, I think I would possibly change it to “Guinea Pigz ‘n’ Stuff”.

8.  Waiting in my blogpost queue are 8 unfinished blogposts.  Posts I begin that I can’t finish for some reason, posts that seemed like a good idea at the time but fizzled out, and just some really bad stuff that I should probably delete, because what if they accidentally get published some day?  That would be even more embarrassing than you knowing I pick up worms with my fingers. 

9.  Thanks to my blog, I am a published author! 

Proof I am an author:

I spent much of November using Blurb to convert my blogposts into a book.  I was trying to beat the November 28 deadline so I’d get 20% off the price, and I made it, by just a tiny bit.  The kids knew what I was doing because I spent many, many, many, many, many, many hours at the computer, and they were all annoyed impressed.  At one point, Jack asked me if lots of people would be buying my book and would we be rich, to which I answered, “My child, we are already rich in love.”  And then he looked at me funny so I admitted that the book was just for us, and that’s when he lost interest and went off to play with his cars.

But I love it.

 

10.    Contrary to popular opinion, this blog is not ghostwritten by the guinea pig.   Just get that one right out of your head, people.  He may give me ideas, keep me well supplied in goldfish, occasionally massage my tense shoulders, download and edit my photos, and take dictation, but he does not write this blog.

Well.  He hardly ever writes my blog.