Yeah nah: Hoooooy boy do I have some “yeah nahs” today. I’m actually going to give them to you in bullet point form so you’re aware of just how many “yeah nah” bloody moments I friggin’ had today.

• I forgot to buy more soap yesterday, and paid the price for it today. Just now I had a shower with a piece of soap thinner than a chunk of butter I’d slice off for a piece of normal toast (it was waaaaaay thinner than raisin toast butter, which may as be a block of Bega cheese for thick those wedges of salty, fatty delight). So my shower was yet another reminder of how poor I am at managing life admin and my finances.
• I missed most of Come Dine With Me. By the time I’d switched on the television they were already up to the fourth dinner and I had no idea which person I was supposed to hate yet.
• I wrote something in my diary that needs to be whited out, which is deeply unsettling as the paper in my diary is an off white. The brightness of whiteout jarring against it and that hurts my soul a little bit.
• I wasn’t hit by an extremely wealthy person while crossing the street in a legal manner. Therefore, I am not entitled to a gross overpayment of hush money to keep the scandal out of the media. Devastating.
• But this the biggest “yeah nahs” of all. My lunch went missing from the staff fridge. I don’t know what happened to the contents of my container, but when I found it on the washing up pile, there were only a few smears left of the grand lunch I had planned for myself. Someone or something had emptied it. Sure, it probably was a major misunderstanding. Maybe there was a fridge clean out happening today that I was ignorant of (I wouldn’t put it past me, because I am terrible at reading emails and am chronically incapable of paying attention to informative notices). Maybe it was a ghost. But the most likely theory was that somebody innocently mistook the container for their own and didn’t realise the lunch wasn’t theirs until they infected it with their germs and hastily threw it out in a fit of shame. I feel for them, I do, because I’d probably panic I was in the same situation. But whatever the reasonable explanation was, my lunch was gone. That was a sad fact. Yeah. Nah.

Nah yeah: As cruel of a twist of fate it was to have packed a lunch I would never eat, I am determined to find a light in this darkness. And there is one.

I’m off on a mini-break this weekend and wanted to have my column written ahead of time so I could come back happily sloshed on Sunday night without having to be coherent.

And because I haven’t done anything that exciting lately, I really didn’t have any ideas for my column in mind. I really had nothing.

That was until I saw that sad, empty container sitting by the sink.

I’m not going to call this white-collar crime a blessing in disguise, but I have taken something away from it.

I just rattled off a 794-word rant about lunches in under an hour.

And not only that, but I’ve also managed to turn this negative experience into a second spin-off blog post, which serves as a teaser for my initial column. You can read all about it next Wednesday’s Clifton Courier: coming to a newsagent near you*

* Unless you don’t happen to live on the Darling Downs, in which case I recommend you to spring for a subscription.

Nah yeah: Moving my bod so quickly in a repetitive fashion that sweat actually dripped down my back and my face was so red it looked like had an allergic reaction to something.

Yeah nah: It started with the second breakfast and ended with my eating several inches of salami pepperoni and half a special edition duty-free jumbo sized packed of peanut M&Ms for lunch… #gainz, and such.

Yeah nah: Starting yet another conversation at work with “want to hear something gross?”, after which I explained to someone who should be viewing me as a competent professional how I had found a small drop of vomit dried to my bathroom floor close to my toilet basin over the weekend.

Yeah, dried vomit is pretty unpleasant, but that’s not the gross part.

This is the gross part:

Nah Yeah: I haven’t vomited in that bathroom for at least three months.

Yeah nah: In isolation, that last fact is probably something to be proud of, indicating that maybe I’ve developed some sense of self control, limiting my drinking to the point just before I have to evacuate my stomach. If you read that fact as a stand-alone statement, it would seem that I am experiencing personal growth.

But when you add that little bit of trivia to the initial statement about dried vomit, what you are instead faced with is the grim reality that I clearly am comfortable wallowing in my own filth.

That wasn’t event the grossest part.

The grossest part, and something I neglected to impart on my colleague, was that I saw the vom on the floor and just left it there. I saw it, told myself I’d clean it up after I finished showering and then completely forgot about it.  I just allowed my own bodily juices to fester in the place I go to clean myself a little longer until this evening like some kind of maniac. The fact that I was able to forget about it tells me that there is such a things as being too comfortable with yourself. Love the skin you’re in and whatnot, but you have to draw the line somewhere and that line should be drawn somewhere before preserving flecks of vomit on household surfaces as some form of sick tribute to yourself.

They say that bad things happen when good people do nothing, but even one of the most terrifying observations about humanity (I always think of that quote in context of the Holocaust) was not enough to move me to wipe my dehydrated stomach bile encrusted with a chunk of indistinguishable vegetable matter away. I accepted its presence for a further two days. I thought I was a good person, but I did nothing.   I’ve learnt a lot about myself over the last two days, and I don’t like it all.

Nah yeah: Having someone tell me “I like your top,”.

Yeah nah: That “top” was actually a dress. I suppose when you catch yourself saying something like “yeah, this is a cheeky Supre number,”, you’re already confirming that you probably shouldn’t be wearing said “top” as a dress in public.

It doesn’t matter if a trashy clothing chain marketed that flammable piece of fabric to you as appropriately-lengthed to adequately cover enough front and back bum to maintain a certain level of esteem in the public sphere – that’s a charade you’re supposed to be able to see right through after you’ve got two decades and the odd university degree under your belt.  Somewhere along the line you’re suppose to pick up on whether a four-year-old dress you used to wear in college is exposing so much leg it’s cruising right through upper-thigh territory and on the cusp of arse cheek terrain.

I have business cards for goodness sake.

Nah yeah: Clocking up two free bowls of potato wedges.

Yeah nah: Finding out that trivia about how far back my cervix is isn’t generally considered good small talk over said deep fried potato shards. Apparently wedges don’t set the tone for chat about how finding my cervix was like a game of cat and mouse for my doctor.

I would like to know who wrote this rule book and where they credit their authority to make such decisions.

Nah yeah: Being able to restrain myself from smuggling a whole fucking bowl of gravy/the ooze of eternal sunshine out of the pub when my boss treated us to a platter of deep fried nibblies for the big race.

This is a pretty huge deal for me. I mean, I love gravy. Give me the choice between a lavender-scented bubble bath and a simmering tub of gravy and I’ll bomb dive into that beautiful brown goo every single time. I may even dedicate a longer post to the stuff in the coming months.

So the fact that I didn’t tip it into my empty cider glass and smuggle said cup out of the pub in my cleavage or even ask the bar staff for a straw so I could sip at that salty, vaguely-meat-flavoured goodness for the duration of the Melbourne Cup festivities is a huge personal victory for this gravy guzzler.

I would have happily shunned my coworkers and the excitement of horses running around in circles to hide in a dark corner to savour the secret joy snorting roughly half a litre of gravy.

Yeah nah: Realising I had classily waltzed up to the bar with a battered fish fillet in my hand and unconsciously used it was a pointing stick. Wasn’t. Even. Drunk.

Nah yeah: Taking a personal day for a long weekend by the sea. 

Nah yeah: Having to take the bus to my sunny destination on account of my inability to drive with a cast on. 

There’s a guy on the seat opposite me with double denim, an earring, a cap and sunglasses. 

He is continuing to wear the sunglasses despite the fact he is staring at the screen of a chunky black laptop, choosing to keep his fly look by simply pushing his glasses down his nose so he can see over them. Because taking the sunglasses off would be just ludicrous. This guy looks like he still says “yo” and “whack”.

I am sitting next to a lesser-known member of NSYNC.

Oh goodness. I just saw his gold chain around his neck.

Nah yeah: Starting to make aquaintances around town who aren’t forced to regularly be within close proximity of me for the majority of the week at The Office.

Yeah nah: Those particular acquaintances are the staff at a corner shop who serve multiple variations of cheese fries and burgers that weigh more than a two-month-old baby (and, let’s face it, you have to cradle in your arms with the same, if not more, care as an infant. I mean, babies are pretty resilient and will bounce back from being dropping into loose gravel, but a burger will fall apart. Disastrous!). For the third time in less that ten days, I have taken part in ordering so much food from these magnificent people that they needed a massive cardboard box to carry said calorie-laden, gravy-smotherd goodness.