only heard one side of this, and I wasn't trying to eavesdrop. older (60s+) woman seemed to be responding to an SOS from a good friend.
"Hey, it's me. What's up?"
"Yeah, it's okay. I'm in a public space though. Want me to call you again when I'm home?"
"What happened?"
"Oh no."
*long listening pause*
"You're still you."
I've just come across this idiom in one of John Sandford's novels (set in what seems to be Minnesota), and I'm entranced. it has the feel of a regionalism, but I'd like to check in hopes someone here can confirm.
usage: basically, any dismissive statement where just the word "fuck" or "forget" would have done. "fuck a bunch of that. let's do this instead." one character tells someone something about lawyers, and he says "fuck a bunch of lawyers" and punches the speaker, or tries to. you get the idea.
This is pretty much all I remember. I have an "English countryside by moonlight" vibe to my memories. There was probably a severe but kindly older adult who owned the house, like a grandmother or great aunt. Possibly a wise woman. I feel like the MC's name may have begun with S: Selina or Serena.
the animal's drawing was shown on the page in the book. another character interpreted it for her. the full message may have been "x *says* y is as safe as houses."
as always, it's driving me nuts so any help is appreciated. I read the book in the 70's but it could have been several decades older than that.
intriguing conversation between extremely old (but perfectly lucid) man and a middle aged woman who didn't seem like a date exactly, but certainly wasn't family either. at a local coffee shop.
him: so what do you want to do in life?
her: nothing much. I like the life that I've got.
him: you must have something. travel, adventure, something.
her: dude, you ask me this every time we get together. i don't have aspirations like that and if I did, I wouldn't be telling you.
him: h'mm. only reason I ask is just, I'm 30 years older than you and -
her: listen, it's not personal. *my entire life* people have been asking me things like that and then giving me advice that I don't need and didn't ask for. I'm not pissed off but I'd like to keep it that way.
him: (one of those yolo type "screw what others think, do what you want" type speeches)
her: well, yeah, you see? I've already done all of that.
him: okay, I won't ask that question again.
her: great!
next thing I know, they're talking about Kris Kristofferson and reciting the lyrics to Sunday Morning Coming Down to each other, trading lines and laughing. shots clearly fired, but nobody harmed.
so, as a lifelong single mother, and a long-term introvert with a very ancient landlord who could turn a leaky faucet into three days of futzing and fretting and calling in relatives ... I've always been pretty handy with a wrench. just for the sake of a quiet life I've changed my own sink washers and replaced toilet parts and even unscrewed a u-bend once and retrieved two chopsticks from the kitchen sink pipes. and I can plunge toilet plugs like a boss.
all of that in my old place. since moving into an apartment with actual official maintenance people though, I haven't dared. the plumbing here is not diy-friendly at all. the sinks don't *have* that useful little trap in the u-bend that you can unscrew ... and whoever plumbed this place didn't bother to make sure the horizontal sections would *be" horizontal.
upshot is my kitchen sinks have been periodically regurgitating water into each other for months. each time it takes a gallon of Drano to get to the block, and even then someone has to come in and insert the stuff directly into the pipes. it's a pain.
yesterday I invested instead in two mini plungers. blocked off one drain with the first one, set up a seal with the other, and put in twenty minutes or so of my usual basic-hydraulics voodoo, and ... magic! sinks drain so fast they make that slurping noise at the end. it's so satisfying I had to announce.