“I promise I’m not actually drunk.”

A lot of us have said something along those lines before, and it’s usually a lie. It’s usually when you’re about to text someone just an hour ago you declared to your friends you’d never speak to again, or when you’re running around in just a t-shirt at 4pm after sleeping for five hours trying to convince your friends to let you drive 162 kilometres on your own. In my more recent paraphrasing of this seemingly universal utterance, it was the case that I laughed for a good five minutes about a dog’s name. Now, to be fair, I find pets with common and almost middle-aged-human-like names such as Susan or Jonathan wildly amusing at life’s most sober moments. So I was thrilled when the Pet of the Week’s name was Karen.

Although looking back, doubling over in laughter perhaps was a bit of overkill. There was a point my diaphragm decided that expressing my amusement over said name was more important and drawing air into my lungs (it was an executive decision on their part – I like to think the board would have never allowed such measure). I had to explain to my perplexed, and, let’s face it, somewhat concerned colleagues that I had not in fact down several jugs at lunchtime, but I was merely low on iron.

We all know a thing or two about iron – it keeps our houses dry, it flattens crinkles in our clothes, and it helps us play. But surprisingly, it’s Rodd and Todd Flanders who have the most scientific and medical definition. Except, replace “play” with “function as a proper adult who doesn’t hunch over with a blank stare, grinning at the corner like they’ve just had a piece of brain removed via their nostril”. Yes. Iron helps me to do those things.

Without enough of it, things start to get weird. Namely me. I get weird. For one, my spelling is even less up to scratch than usual. I also don’t do the gramma very well. I also discover that my decision-making skills take a massive dive, and I find myself watching re-runs of The Nanny until midnight when I’m already exhausted. As such, this can make getting through a day at work tricky. It’s very hard to appear professional when you’re giving the stink eye to inanimate objects.

But as someone who has been hit with the low iron stick a couple of times, I have learned to recognise when I need meat. Only last night I found myself licking a plate that was resting an under-cooked piece of steak before I threw it back in the pan. Yep, I literally drank blood. This is usually a fairly subtle sign that something must be done.

This isn’t something completely foreign to me, having grown up with a mother who nibbles at the spaghetti bolognaise while she’s making it, before the sauce tomato paste is added, before the onions are thrown in and before the saucepan hits the hotplate. Essentially, the woman eats raw mince. She also picks at everyone’s leftover barbecue scraps. On more than one occasion I have caught her literally gnawing on a sheep’s leg bone (granted, it had been cooked in a hygienic setting before, but it was no less Neanderthal-like).

When things get hectic, I need a steak like a Year 3 teacher needs a coffee after the spending the night making paper mâché angel wings before a full day of dress rehearsals for the upcoming Christmas play. In fact, my local butcher could tell when I was having a rough day, because she would instinctively get ready to bag me a large piece of porterhouse when I’d drag my slouched, shivering body into her doors. This is because the signs of a borderline anaemia are clear as day – light-headedness, fatigue, decreased ability function coherently

So next time you see me holding on to light post for balance looking at a post box like it just called me the b-word shouting about why that Jeep ad is what’s wrong with Australia (that family doesn’t need a bigger effing boat, the one they have now is fine and greed is what put the world into such financial trouble not so long ago damn it!), please ignore the overpowering scent of goon wafting around me, and hand me a rack of ribs.

For the past 48 hours, my only house guests have been members of the New South Wales police force.

No, didn’t throw a wild po po party and I haven’t drop-kicked a living being across the room in a public place and the law has finally caught up with me (and by living being, I mean animal, because I don’t think the police would get involved if I kicked a mushroom – although if it was an oversized fungi, it would probably be just as satisfying), but I had to make statement.

The last time I made a statement to police I was working at a fast food restaurant and had just refused a purchase of the most half-arsed criminal in the world after he produced a counterfeit $50 note that looked like it was made using Microsoft Paint. I had to spell my full name to the officers, and stumbled on my middle name (according to the extensive and, until now, useless testing in Years 3 to 5, I’m a kinetic and visual learner, so spelling out loud has never been a strong point of mine). As a fast food worker who couldn’t spell her middle name, I didn’t make a great impression.

Which was perhaps one of the reasons I wasn’t stoked to find my back windscreen shattered to a thousand pieces, much like my reasonably respectable reputation after I took to the mic at karaoke night at my local bowls club during one of my final nights in town (I wrote an apology Letter to the Editor on my last day working at that paper). But then, there are many reasons to be the opposite of happy when discovering your back seat is full of glass.

The fact that you don’t currently own a vacuum cleaner to safely remove said shards, those dark rain clouds that are building up, that now you definitely won’t make it to Civic Video before closing time, the bare minimum level of insurance you have. The List of Superfunhappytimes is lengthy and surprisingly contradictory to its name.

Having just transferred my registration to another state and being faced with the realities of being a car owner I have felt remarkably shielded from for most of my adult life, I was contemplating upping my insurance. Just 12 hours beforehand, I was debating whether I should upgrade said monetary coverage on my vehicle, particularly noting the windshield cover. As I drifted off to the sleep, with the vision of purchasing insurance after my next paycheck floating over my head, irony was looming. Irony, in this case, was the name of either a classic small-town-bad-arse-kid who wears Etnies and plays music on their phone out loud on public transport wanting to look cool in front of their mates or some disgruntled drunk skunk wanting to get at he bright red sombrero I had foolishly placed on the rear window. Either way, Irony will not be getting a personalised Christmas text from me this year.

Needless to say, I didn’t have a great day yesterday. But, in an effort to perk myself up and to wrap up my column, I venture to search for the silver lining.

For one, the policeman didn’t ask for my middle name. Irony and associates didn’t rifle through my personal items after smashing my back window (which was probably just as much as win for them as the only loot they would have walked away with would have included an embarrassing stash of “legit” Ray Ban sunnies from Thailand and some tasteless phallic cookie cutters I forgot I had and can’t explain why I thought the glove box in my car was the appropriate place to store them), and the policewoman implied I was not scummy. But perhaps the silveriest lining of all is this right now. *

Because while having a rock smash through your window with insufficient insurance isn’t the bet way to start the weekend, I have an extra level of cover. I may have been the opposite of thrilled, but at least I didn’t have to think of a column topic. No matter what stupid things I say, or what ridiculous situations I get myself into, I know I will be reimbursed with column fodder. And the only premium I have to pay is my dignity. Maybe one day I might generate actual income from my lengthy verbal complaints and then I can write the fiscal consequences of my bad luck off on tax. Hurrah.

* The ancient proverb is true, for every “nah yeah”, there is a “yeah nah”: an officer said that my neighbourhood perhaps wasn’t the best place in town. He went on to say, “but this place is quite neat,” as he looked around my living room taking in my flair for decorating. I could pinpoint the second he internally retracted this statement, as his gaze aligned with a poster on my wall I’ve had since my college days which consists of wrapping paper covered in galloping ponies and a postit note stuck to the centre. I’m hoping that his poor vision blurred the handwriting of my friend, who wrote, “you don’t wanna root some grot, remember that!”, but given my terrible luck this weekend, I wouldn’t bank on it.