#SentimentalSunday

sen·ti·men·tal
/ˌsen(t)əˈmen(t)l/
adjective
of or prompted by feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia.

I tried to find an actual picture of the one my memory conjures about ice tea spoons but couldn't find one. Maybe it is so impressed in my memory that I have thought it must be an actual picture somewhere.

The picture is of my Grandpa Ashley and his glass of ice tea, always nearby and always with ice cubes in it and the spoon in it. The ice tea spoon. Long handle, teaspoon size - always present, at least in my memory. So present that I grew up with ice tea spoons in my childhood home and then had to have them in my home when I married. I never really thought about it or wondered about it until just recently. I was stirring sugar into a glass of ice tea with the ice tea spoon and the memory of my Grandpa and his always present spoon hit me. And I was flooded with nostalgia. I was transported back in time to the picture my memory holds.

Such a silly little item - an ice tea spoon. But isn't that what sentimentality is all about? It's found most often, I think, in the smaller silly little things.

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

Call it a Day

The literal use of this phrase hails from 1838 when the phrase originally was "call it half a day" to mean leaving work early. (source) The modern use of the phrase is to indicate ending something due to false sense of accomplishment.

More bang for your buck

This phrase was used a lot in 1953 but an earlier citation puts it at 1940 in a Metals and Plastics Publications advertisement. Read about it here . The phrase means you get more for your money.

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