[in the silence between words]

There are some terms I don't have good English for, either because I don't know the word or I don't think the English is as good as the German so I don't bother remembering it. Here are some of the things I am most likely to say:

Basta, fertig. Enough, finished, sufficient, done.

Biomull. Green waste/compost/recycling. Usually used when I am helping with cooking and therefore asking what to do with vegetable odds and ends.

Egal. Yes, French via German; lit "equal"; used as the shortest way available to me of communicating "I have no preference between the options you have offered me".

Falsch! Lit wrong/incorrect; muttered at myself when I've made a mistake.

Erstens braucht es immer länger zweitens als man denkt. First: it will always take twice as long as you think. Only with a nicer play on the numbers.

Spatzen. Lit sparrows; more helpfully, this appears to be a local dialect term that probably wasn't only used by my grandmother in the 50s, which seems as of late to be called "delayed onset muscle soreness" in some varieties of English.

Ein/der Teufel sitzt darauf. There's a devil sitting on it, or the Devil is sitting on it: of something that is lost or mislaid, causing strife and frustration and anxiety.

Unterlag. Lit "underlay"; specifically, the thing you put hot pans etc on top of to protect the table/worksurface.

Was man nicht in Kopf hat, muß man in den Füßen haben. Lit "what one does not have in one's head, one must have in one's feet"; more helpfully to Anglophones, expanded as "if you don't remember to bring it with you, you have to go back and fetch it", usually muttered to myself in exasperation as I disappear into another room to fetch something I failed to bring with last time I was there. When directed at other people it is done with affection and sympathy. (I have the regional variant that uses "feet"; other variants use "legs".)

Ich bin ganz satt, ich mag' kein Blatt me-e-e-ehr. I'm stuffed - I couldn't eat another leaf. (It's funny because you say the last word like a goat bleating.)

Immer aufhören wenn's am Besten schmeckt. Always stop eating when it tastes the best.

Wer nicht kommt zur rechten Zeit musst essen wass da Übrig bleibt. If you don't arrive on time for dinner, you get to eat the leftovers.

(There are others, of course, but these are the most common.)

oops

kaberants
***

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest:

Only samples collected and stored by the British Museum since 1927, are affected by the contamination[.] (McDonough & Chauvel, EPSL, 1991)

... OKAY THEN I GUESS IT'S TIME TO WORK OUT WHETHER MY WEIRD SAMPLES WERE STORED BY THE BM SINCE 1927.

[brain prodding] recovery-shaped things

it is okay to have feelings.
Feelings are the language of your body
the self that runs ahead of thought
like an eager dog
the reservoir of your vital rhythms
it is not that your body wants
to command you, control you, confuse you, overwhelm you, no-!
it just wants you to listen
because feelings are information
and your body, your most personal of assistants,
in its own awkwardly earnest way
really wants to make sure
you get all your messages.

-- from Sensuum, jjhunter

( Noodling about PTSD, )