Google had this cheerful, 100% boob-free picture on my search page today, along with the message “Happy Birthday, Barb!”

Today, as Google reminded me on their search page, I’ve completed another year on the planet. Considering the alternative, I’m thrilled. I’ve got so much to be thankful for this year that I should start listing blessings. [Those who know me can just stop laughing right now.]  Of course, I’m thrilled with all the generous and (obviously) sophisticated and discerning people who read this blog. I’m just a little concerned with how you get here. A review of Google search terms that brought people to my blog reveals that literally thousands want my advice on reasons NOT to get married. That’s closely followed by those interested in reasons NOT to have children. But the rest of you?… Instead of going into details best left unwritten behind WHY these search terms led directly to my blog (“husband works on turkey farm how to clean washing machine”, “how many pussy cat can make up a cow”, and the fairly disturbing “bad words that have barb in it”, plus the usual off assortment of “water big boobs girls xxx”, “sexfaking.com”, etc. ) I’m just going to go munch on some birthday boob-cakes and rerun last years birthday post on weird searches that led to me.

Text I thought I was sending: “What’s the point?”

Text autocorrected (to the Hub’s surprise): “Where’s the porn?”

Obviously, I should be more forgiving of others’ typos.

But then there’s my blog. Now that most people know to do their searches under privacy settings, the search terms that bring them to my blog have (mostly) lost my interest. There is one huge exception to that. Typos. For reasons which I only recently figured out, every day (and especially on weekends) there are searches—a lot of searches—for some variation of Sex and Taub. Those are two words I would not usually expect to occur in the same sentence. Or even the same house.

SEARCH TERM     TIMES USED THIS YEAR (SO FAR)

• sex taub…………….410
• taub sex…………….132
• free sex taub………. 46
• xxx girl bar taub…….. 12
• chocolate boob taub. 11 (actually, I totally get this one)
• sxe taub…………….   9
• the ever-disturbing big cock taub (thankfully, only 5 searches, but they all ended up at my blog)
• and a variety of misspelled one-offs involving all the penises and other primary and secondary sexual characteristics you’d care to list.

I admit it—I haven’t read 50 Shades of anything at all, and I’m not au courant with the latest in digital erotic offerings. But I’ve seen my own blog and that’s certainly the last place I would have expected anyone to search for sex of any flavor. So today, I decided to do the searches myself. I can see you all shaking your heads and saying that this couldn’t possibly end well. You’re so right. But I did find two possible explanations for the (misspelled) search terms:

1. Apparently a particular…er…sub-genre of YouTube offerings is called SexTube. And, either from inherent inability to spell or misspellings lubricated by copious alcohol, those porn-seeking souls end up at my blog.
2. Or they may be looking for Seth MacFarlane’s (actually pretty damn funny) Sex With a Tube of Toothpaste.

I picture them, their drunk little fingers cluelessly entering various words in my blog search field, unable to come up with anything more exciting than the chocolate boob I wrote about here last year in Venice.

And there was my birthday dessert, which had a long name which, apparently, was Italian for chocolate boob. And yes, I ate it. (Did you miss the part about the chocolate?)

Saint Agatha bearing her severed breasts on a platter, by Piero della Francesca (ca. 1460–70)

Although, speaking of breast cakes, this summer I was amazed to discover that eating boob confections is actually a religious thing in Spain as well as Italy. Seems Agatha of Sicily was a third-century martyr who refused to submit to her Roman admirer. As rejected suitors are wont to do, he had her breasts pulled off with pincers (and no, we won’t be making any 50 Shades jokes here). She is usually depicted with a plate holding her severed breasts. And (taking cosplay to a truly disturbing level) in Europe they eat little cakes called Minni di Sant Aita (Saint Agatha’s breasts) in the poor saint’s honor. (Really, truly no 50 Shades jokes, although it’s almost killing me)

Minni di Virgine or St. Agatha’s Breasts [click here for recipe]

PS: If anyone would like to give me the third-best birthday present an author could ever receive (I AM still waiting for that message from the Booker Prize committee and my letter from Hogwarts), you could pop over to Amazon and post a rating or review for one of my books.