Four Fun Things

Sleep well in the same bed? I’d recommend NOT sharing a blanket. Ever. :-) It’s the best having 2 of them.

My Dad was a very practical and down to earth farmer here in Australia. He died last year but visited me years ago in the city when I was in my twenties. I’ll always remember walking with him down Collins St in Melbourne (a gorgeous strip of beautiful architecture and very fancy stores). Firstly he was whistling! I don’t think I’ve ever heard an adult whistling as they wandered city streets full of pedestrians. Then after a lady with slightly bow legs had passed us he quietly muttered ‘she wouldn’t stop a pig at a gate’. Blunt and certainly not sensitive but visually descriptive. These may have been mentioned ‘a kangaroo loose in the top paddock’ and a ‘sandwich short of a picnic’. One that my family still use when they feel ignored or left out is ‘what am I chopped liver?’ Another phrase used when trying to round up wayward sheep was ‘dumb as a post’. Apart from the ‘liver’ one, these phrases were spoken privately and never meant to hurt anyone. Well I don’t think the sheep took it personally, they were called much worse as they scattered and broke away from the mob and did their own thing. Ps I wanted to say how much joy I get from Cup of Jo. Thank you.

My husband once said “He’s a few fries short of a Happy Meal,” and my siblings and I could not stop laughing!!

In downeast Maine, we’ll say, “He’s numb as a pounded thumb.” However, one of my friends thought it was “numb as a pound of thumbs” and was completely confused!

“Hit the road Toad Jack!” My brother and I are 15 months apart, so my mom spent more than the normal amount of time (it seems to me, in adulthood) finding insane (and inane) compromises to stop my brother and I from bickering. Case in point, the above. One morning we were trying to leave for somewhere, who knows. And one of us insisted it was “Hit the road, toad!” and the other insisted it was “Hit the road Jack!” Knowing, as an adult, that’s it’s both, and neither, my mom just combined the 2 to get us the eff out the door. I miss her. Als, “full as a tick.” That was my great grandma’s.

One I love, and which I had not realized was not universal till telling it to a younger colleague who was dealing with a very difficult opposing counsel, is, “Don’t wrestle with a pig in the mud. You’ll get dirty and the pig likes it.”

“No ha molto sale in zucca” is an Italian version—there’s not much salt in the pumpkin.

I like “she’s not knitting with both needles” to describe a foolish person. Or the classic Aussie one “he’s got a kangaroo loose in the top paddock” Which describes someone who’s a bit crazy.

My former mother in law would say her teeth were swimming when she desperately needed to use the restroom. Gross but so descriptive!

My family has two good ones: “He’s a quart low and leaking,” like the “sharpest tool in the shed ” one, and “More nervous than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

My family always says that we have to get up at the “butt-crack” of dawn rather than the more formal, “crack of dawn.” For my entire life (up until about a year ago) I thought the former was the actual phrase, and was always confused why people laughed so much when I said it. Does anyone else say “butt-crack” of dawn or was that just my crazy family?!

A Swedish saying is “He has elves in the attic” or “Not all his horses are in the stable”. The horse one is quite similar in tone/quality to Not the sharpest knife/brightest bulb, but the elves one is reserved for someone who is not necessarily unintelligent but definitely a bit more … special than most 😉 The elves are ofc Christmas elves, what el(v)se! And when someone has done something clever (not ironically but for real), you can say in admiration “That guy was not dropped behind a wagon!”

I usually say about myself when I’m frazzled or just can’t get it together – “I don’t know my head from my ass right now.” I honestly don’t know where I picked this up but I say it (and feel it) often!

When I lived in the south my coworkers described our office as busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest!

I once used the two birds with one stone idiom in a board meeting, and a lovely trustee who is not a native English speaker looked around the room like “you’re doing what to the birds?”

In response to Kelsey’s rec: maybe a post on how couples manage difficult/different sleeping arrangements? My husband is a snorer who tosses and turns all night and if we had space I would opt for separate bedrooms in a heartbeat. I feel like this is somehow still a little taboo though? Also curious where that quilt is from—beautiful!

Alyce (momcomnyc) is the best. Should we all go see her 9/15?! https://www.instagram.com/p/DboOF6hpiUq/

Maybe a decade ago, a Québec politician, Manon Massé, declared: « ce n’est pas le pogo le plus dégelé de la boite », literally, this is not the most unfrozen pogo in the box. This as now found it’s place in daily conversations.

The kids love “have you lost your marbles?” when someone is being ridiculous or asking for something they know they can’t have. They think it’s hilarious and usually forget about the thing they do desperately wanted.

If you’ve never seen (or not lately) the mattress store sketch from SNL is so worth a watch!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfva6ETW8e8

My freshman year of college there was a girl in my dance group who i was slowly getting to know, but felt like we hadn’t quite sealed the deal on the friendship yet. In the midst of a very busy show weekend, i turned to her in the dressing room and said “do you wanna be best friends?” And she said “yes!” The older girls all balked at us saying “that’s the cutest thing ever! Why don’t we do that any more?” To this day she’s my best friend!

My dad would say, “that’s about as funny as a screen door on a submarine.”

I’m Australian, and many years ago our Prime Minister said about the Opposition Leader “Well, the thing about poor old Costello, he’s all tip and no iceberg,”. What a burn!

Haha I’m French and I’ve never heard that before. Maybe it’s regional?

I’m french and never heard of the chif but I’ll make sure to use it now. We usually say “He is not the sharpest knife of the drawer” or “He is not the most sharpest of the pencil”.

Australian/UK hybrid here- I’ll always use “ a sausage short of a Barbie ( bbq)

I love that about adult friendships! I’ve made a new friend recently and I was giddy. I also was wondering should I text? Should we get coffee? When she invited me over I was thrilled. It’s been a very cute and surprising friend romance. My daughter said to me, I’m so happy for you mum that you’ve made this new friend. You can really be yourself and it seems fun.”

Similar to ‘He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.’, we have a saying in Germany: “He’s not the brightest candle on the cake” :)

I think this one might be a very very local (even so local that it’s only used in our household) – but when a male has a very fancy/stupid haircut (think: soccer player) we say he looks like a pack of biscuits! Don’t ask me why, haha

In hungarian we say for example, BUTA, MINT A TÖK=stupid as a pumpkin or BUTA, MINT A SÖTÉT ÉJSZAKA =stupid as a dark night.

czechs have some good idioms! when you’re fed up, you say “i have my teeth full of it” (mám toho plné zuby); the equivalent to saying someone is ‘a sandwich short of a picnic’ is to say “it’s splashing on his lighthouse” (šplouchá mu na maják); and instead of ‘raining cats and dogs’, you say “wheelbarrows are falling” (padají trakaře).

Not an idiom, but a saying my dad says a lot is “if an if were a skiff, we’d all take a boat ride”.

Years ago I had a temp job one summer grading state scholastic tests, for English. Often students would need to read a story, show they could comprehend, compare to their lives, write a paragraph response. Every once in awhile, a response would make you laugh. This particular student misunderstood the story a bit, and his response ended with a comment about two of the characters, ” The two women had their bread buttered on the wrong side.”

Someone/something is as useful as a chocolate teapot.

My father (born in 1920) told me that when he was growing up if you bought an ice cream bar sometimes you’d get the special one with pink in the center, and that meant you’d get a free bar. He used to sign his anniversary cards to my mother with “I got the pink center when I got you”. I’ve continued to use “I got the pink center” with my husband and children. I think it’s lovely.

Once many years ago, a designer created an employee campaign based around puns. There was a woman holding a head of lettuce and the text said, “Lettuce celebrate you!” The problem is, I work for a global company. They realized their mistake too late, so in many areas of the world the poster said, “we celebrate you” pictured with the woman holding the head of lettuce. Nothing says celebration like a salad!

I’ve always liked expressing that something’s no big deal/ doesn’t matter with “small potatoes.” Germans also have a good one expressing when you’re indifferent to something: Das ist mir Wurst. A direct translation is ‘that’s sausage to me.”

“Wisdom chases you, but you are faster.”

Favorite little idiom/jest my grandfather used when someone said “well…” followed by a long pause: “That’s quite a deep topic for such a shallow mind.” SICK BURN!!

I love local idioms and how easy it can be to assume that everyone from anywhere would know what you’re talking about. I work for a company with lots of remote staff, and one memorable meeting with a colleague in South America I said something about not “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” and he was like, excuse me?????? hahahaha

I think my mom invented this: “well, that went over like a pregnant pole vaulter.”

From the old British sitcom Are You Being Served “he’s all mouth and trousers” I think that was Miss Brahms who said that. And a county old timer where I live said that one area is so dry “a grasshopper would need to pack a lunch to cross it” 😂. I love how you get the visual immediately on that one!!

I am LOVING reading all these different idioms/sayings. And that IG had me cackling. Also feeling hashtag blessed that my husband and I are such compatible sleepers. A king bed definitely helped, and the fact that he sleeps on the very edge of his side, like a perfectly still pencil. He runs hot, so I get the entire king-sized duvet to myself, which I make into a huge, fluffy nest, and he’s happy with his half of the king-size quilt. I’m glad because I’m too codependent and can’t fall asleep on my own (merp).

Not sure if someone said this yet but “they’re not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree”.

My late father always said, “Somewhere a village is missing its idiot.”

miss Mary Mack all dressed in black with silver buttons all down her back she asked her mother for 15 cents to see the boys pull down their pants??? tee hee hee! hmmm. I think I was too much of a “good girl” to have known the rest of the words!! something about….they went so high, they touched the sky, and didn’t come back, til the Fourth of July? I was also kind of a weird kid (now I realize I was ADHD :D)

I live in the PNW now but I grew up in Montana. My favorite phrase from there is “They’re all hat and no cattle”

My favorite one about dimwits is “if she or he was a rocket scientist there’d be a lot of broken rockets” and a dear friend would refer to a motormouth as being able to “talk a dog off a meat wagon”

“He’s not the devil, but he’s on the payroll”.

That Instagram link was spot on! 🤣 I said something in a similar vain to my husband recently and said how we should just be like “hey, you want to be my friend” like kids do to people we meet. Maybe one day…😉

I like “a few cards shy of a deck”.

swift as a puddle, sharp as a marble, the lights are on but no one’s t’home. (my dad is also from vermont. heh.) ps and i’ve heard, but haven’t been able to invest my/ourselves, that a king-sized bed with two separate comforters is the absolute solution to every couple sleep problem out there.

I know this was not the point, but Kelsey your cat is so gorgeous I love it so much.

I worked for a food company that worked with an R&D team in Italy. We worked in English but I was usually really careful to not use idioms, but one day we were discussing an upcoming meeting and I let slip that we wanted to discuss “low hanging fruit”. They thought we wanted to develop with fruit that HANGS LOW and spent days googling how low different fruit hung. Eventually they figured out that it was an idiom and shared the story with us.

My husband and I sleep in separate bedrooms and it works really well for us. He used the guest bedroom a couple years ago when he had a cold, and we ended up really liking the new arrangement. He started snoring a few years ago after never making a peep (went alongside training himself to sleep on his back) and while I’m usually a deep sleeper, I canNOT sleep through snoring. It helps that I am avidly not a cuddler and, now that I’m into perimenopause, I really appreciate not having any extra heat source in the bed :)

Married 14 years, and several years ago, we started using separate covers. We have a king size bed and each of us has a twin size sheet and comforter. It is so lovely to not be holding on to the blankets for dear life in the middle of the night!

In Germany we say: He/She is not the brightest candle on the cake. (Er/Sie ist nicht die hellste Kerze auf dem Kuchen.)

He doesn’t have all the dots on his dice is my favorite.

A friend once described my ex as “ten pounds of sh*t in a five-pound bag” lol

I’m obsessed with our Leesa hybrid mattress. The best!!!

I love “traveling with half a suit case” — out of it, ill-prepared, not all there, etc.

A couple I use regularly but rarely hear outside my family: “All their taste is in their mouth” (someone with poor aesthetic judgement) “Six of one half a dozen of the other” (it’s the same either way) In regards to a dull knife, my sweet, very mild grandmother used to say: “this is so dull you could ride it bare-ass to Dublin”. Like WHAT is that phrase? Definitely can’t google it because the results are well… as to be expected I guess. Has anyone else heard this before??

Was on the phone chatting with my Texan friend and she said “You hang out at a barber shop, you’re gonna get a haircut” referring to someone putting themselves in a troubling situation and surprised at the troubles their in. Just imagine her saying it with a sweet twang in her voice. Love idioms!

She’s a toy short of a happy meal.

I’m not a fan of any of these idioms that connotate stupidity. I imagine there are people who have heard these things said about themselves their whole life, starting as children. I feel like I’m reading a different blog as this seems different than the sensitivity and awareness often found here.

We need to know where Kelsey’s quilt is from!

Has only one oar in the water. A few bricks shy of a load.

I’ve got one – “not the fastest bunny in the woods.” I find teachers have A LOT of these turns of phrase ;)

My fave idiom is the crude but brilliant French ‘Il pét plus haut que son cul’ – ‘he farts higher than his own arse’ meaning one who thinks too highly of oneself. What a visual!

Describing people with BIG personalities: He or She is a strong cup of coffee! Not liking to dwell in the past instead of moving on, I frequently find myself saying, “the horse is already out of the barn” and “that train has left the station!”