We have a new person in our group, V.

On Friday I happened to have a conversation with another coworker about something and in the course of it used the expression "treated like the red-headed stepchild". Then I stopped myself, hand over my mouth, because - V is a redhead. Brilliant, flaming red hair. You can't miss it. She didn't hear me, fortunately. But here is another insensitive saying that has now been brought to my attention and must be struck off my list of expressions.

(I'm kidding. I doubt she'd care.)

Sometimes I hear one of my sayings from somebody I'm not used to hearing it from. My boss talked about something taking "ten forevers", which is one of mine and I don't know where I got it, and today R said we'd walked "all over hell's half-acre", ditto. At my previous place of employment I used to work with a woman who used a lot of black English, and was very expressive with it. Sometimes I would repeat what she said back to her, word for word. It always sounded so funny in my thin little white voice that we both would die laughing. I remember that once I had to call in because I'd hurt my back. My friend told me that she tried to impress upon our boss that it would be bad if I had to miss a lot of work, because we were understaffed as it was. She said that she told her, "If Laura back is threw out, we in deep sh-t." It sounded very natural in her voice, and when I repeated it - well, we laughed our heads off. Funny how that works.