Lately I've taken to Googling expressions that I have always suspected were unique to me and my friends and my family. What a disappointment.
As an example, when I was in college in the mid-60's in mid-Wisconsin, we moved the interjectory "hey" from the beginning to the end of a sentence: "Hey, wait for me!" became "Wait for me, hey!" Actually, I still do that sometimes. But unique? No. Apparently people in parts of the U.K. do it all the time. Darn.
Another oddball locution from those days was "Bug your bundies." That meant to hurry up. So far I can find no reference to that anywhere, so I get one point.
My grandfather liked to say that supper would consist of "slumgullion and essence of squadrops." I've heard slumgullion used a lot, and there are even recipes for it on line -- sounds kind of like do-it-yourself Hamburger Helper. Google returns nothing for squadrops, however, so Grampie gets half a point.
Imagine my disappointment, however, when I Googled something my mother used to say. When she'd see me exerting myself at some task or other, she'd say "Don't strain your milk!" Since I never heard anybody else ever say that, I assumed it was something of her own. No. The Urban Dictionary is all over it. But what really blew my mind was that I never even got the whole thing typed in the box -- I only got as far as don't stra:
Oh, well. Don't strain your milk. But bug your bundies.
My grandfather, whom I never knew as he passed away when my mother was but nine years old, was many times quoted by her in referring to an odor as the "sweet essence of squadrops." I still do not know whether that was a pleasant aroma or a sarcastic reference to a stench, but I too have googled it to see if I could find any clarification. You are alone. Have you found any clues yet? On to slumgullion? To us that was what my father called chili with added macaroni.
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