Do prunes taste like plums?

how do I reach?, originally uploaded by shaunaforce.

One of the gifts of being a full-time writer is that I have time to procrastinate in truly useless ways.

Don't worry -- the writing of the book is full-speed ahead. In fact, with any luck, I will be halfway through the manuscript at the end of next week. The contract for this book deal requires me to write quality prose in voluminous quantities every day. Luckily, this matches my temperament just fine. Tell me I can't make a challenge, and damn it, I'm going to do it!

However, any act of creativity requires a certain degree of procrastination. That's where the best ideas emerge. Someone once said -- and if you can remember who, let me know please; it's driving me crazy -- that writing a book requires a lot of looking out the window time.

Well, instead of looking out my window all the time, sometimes I look at my site meter. Endlessly addictive, this activity allows me to know how many people are coming to this site, and from where. For all of you who have sought me out deliberately, by typing in "gluten-free girl" or "celiac blog" or "gluten girl Shauna" on Google or Yahoo or MSN, then welcome!

Some of you have come to this site because you have typed in a desperate search like "Do potatoes have gluten?" or "Do pomegranates have gluten" or "Does yogurt have gluten." I hear your pain, and the answers are no, no, and sometimes. Still, it makes sense that you have landed here. I hope you return.

But lately, my favorite game with myself is to look at my site meter and pick out the oddest, most improbable searches that led people here.

For example, just this morning someone found my site by typing in, Do prunes taste like plums? Now, this kills me. Why would anyone type that? Why not just eat a prune and find out through your own sensory experience? But, well, if that unknown person is still on that search, then yes, prunes do rather taste like plums. They are plums.

I have been having such fun reading these ridiculous searches that I thought I would share a few with you....

Of course, I have lots of hits from anything with the word free in it, such as:


free snowman soup labels

Free Soups at Eat Park


There are an inordinate amount of hits from the Middle East, at least ten a day, for the phrase "Free Girl." I can only imagine this site is a terrible disappointment to them. That is, except for the one person in Iran, last summer, who came by one day, then returned to this site every day at the same time for at least three weeks. Maybe he has celiac!

And then there are the strange hits for anything with girl in it:

How do you explain why you love a girl

That is the ineffable question, isn't it?

Creative ways to ask a girl to dance

Hop on one foot while spinning counter-clockwise, singing to her in Swahili.

Girls on fire

Why does anyone want to see this?

girls injured foot pics

I still receive at least one of these a day, as far as I can tell. And by the way, in response to the soldier in Iraq who asked me to send him more photographs of my broken ankle from last year? I'm sorry, no. Ew.

dodger girl costume

That was one of my dreams as a kid. It never came true.

girl meat roasted alive

This one truly terrifies me.

Girls cooking naked

There won't be any of that on this site!

And worst of all,

the ugliest girl on earth

Oh!


the truly odd


Gimmick sunglasses blowtorch

“heat miser” sheet music

How to make parchment paper coffee old looking

nail salon upper west side home visit

love bite recipe

aggressive career women


And finally, some lovely, poetic phrases that inexplicably landed people here:

everyone emerged to the room

summer picnic poem

on plane with Paul McCartney

Don't I wish!


Finally, to the person who reached my site by googling, "I just had to come by" -- I'm glad you did. I hope I didn't disappoint.

Come on back, everyone. (Unless you want pictures of girls on fire with broken ankles, okay?)

p.s. Just as I about to post this, I clicked over to read some of my favorite food bloggers -- another excellent way to procrastinate against writing. To my delight, I found that Shuna from Eggbeater put up a post yesterday about this same odd phenomenon. Shunas and Shaunas -- they think alike.