In my role, I’m constantly coming into contact with people whose jobs are cooler than mine.

Police seem to have it sweet: they don’t have to worry about what they’re going to wear every day, they get to carry guns and they have something to say over a two-way other than banging on about that shit pie at the last servo. These guys even get to appear in parades.

I really like wearing riding boots to work (apparently it’s no longer acceptable to wear riding boots and sparkle sleeves whilst draped in a blanket at work: what kind of world is this?!) so I wouldn’t mind being an agronomist. They also get to lean on fence posts and Hilux trays, which isn’t something just any old person could do.

ICU nurses get to wear scrubs and carry clipboards, which is a combo of ultimate comfort and don’t-mess-with-me-I’m-a-big-deal that works on so many levels.

Teachers get holidays. Lots. Of. Holidays.

Politicians get to carry briefcases and have more than Nutella, cashews and a butter knife inside.

Doctors get to have pagers without having to be in the ninties.

And don’t even get me started on fantastic it would be to be a judge.

It just seems that everyone has it cooler than I do. Better outfits, ripper accessories and so many excuses for manila folders: the grass is so much greener on their sides. It makes me picture myself in their shoes. Last week it was a gynaecologist after watching The Mindy Project, this week it’s a tourism executive. These flimsy whims of mine have me wondering: what else could I actually do with my life?

I mean, I’m barely into my second decade, you’d think there’s something I could re-train for. Unfortunately, the wealth of knowledge I’d built up after I peaked in primary school has been replaced by thoughts I have everyday such as: “if you spell your name wrong over the phone, that email will never make it into your inbox”; “if in doubt, control, alt delete”; “this is how you get ants” and the classic “try not to swear in this interview”. All that I’m left with is the historical facts I’ve gleamed from a lifetime of watching The Simpsons, the difference between a simile and metaphor (I once got into a heated argument with a poor work experience kid about it, and would have literally rubbed his nose in it had my boss not have been around) and some Spicegirls lyrics. Getting back into uni doesn’t seem plausible, so I’d have to approach a job with the goods I’ve already got.

But it’s a tough sell when your only marketable skills are your personality and being able to make fart noises with your neck when it’s sweaty. The only thing I’d be qualified to do is to line up people’s highlighters in a neat fashion that also replicates a rainbow.

So what else could I pad out my resume with? From my past working history I have gained the knowledge of how to pick a good onion, that being overly polite to an already-engaged customer will have hilarious results that won’t get you in trouble with management, how to kick arse in a junior cattle judging comp (“I picked number three because it has good, even fat distribution, which I like to see, and a nice thick base at the tail here” ) and that chairobics is a thing. It’s not really a narrative that makes much sense, and isn’t likely to get me very far.

Thankfully, I like my job.

I get to use puns on the regular, highlight things with different colours and have the occasional conversation with a deputy premier about the NASA remix tracks he added to his road trip playlist. Instead of dedicating my life to just one task, like studying the movements of black–tailed cockatoos, I get to have a taste of everything. My job is like being at a really fancy party where the canapés are more than Jatz, kabana and Bega cubes: I get to sample a wide mix of everything. My career essentially can be equated to one of those “taster” dip packs with hummus AND tzatziki. I get to find out about methane gas emitted into the atmosphere, talk funding agreements and meet the Arlenes and the Joyces of the world who just want to make people smile with their baked goods. And while sometimes I’ll want to hog the metaphorical party pie tray, there’s plenty more on the table to keep me from hiding in the coat check room. I may not get to carry a taser, but I’ve got it pretty damn good. So I’m thinking I’ll just stick with it, no matter how tempting carrying a stethoscope around my neck can be.

Well, at least until I answer my phone with “I wake up with Today” and that creepy block of cash comes to my door (he actually has an Instagram account, you might want to add him).

Earlier this week I had an epiphany while wearing a shirt that read Merry Christmas ya filthy animal.

It had nothing to do with McCauley Calkin or whether fleeing the country and leaving a child to face to criminals could potentially result in an episode of Law and Order: SVU – it was about active wear. The sudden and life changing realisation? It’s a thing.

The shirt in question was one I’d picked from the top of my “old shirt” pile, as all the other free/cheap/wouldn’t wear them in public under normal circumstances shirts that are rotation for gym wear were dirty. Yes, it was a shirt that can usually only be worn when Jesus’ birthday approaches, but it also was just the right length to cover my moving torso. It also was hilarious. But I found myself wondering if it was appropriate to wear to the gym. And that’s when this whole thing (i.e. this unnecessarily long rant) dawned on me.

As someone who once wore sequinned sleeves with riding boots to work, I’ve always been a denier of dress codes. Just because those shorts were bought from a specialised sleepwear shop, doesn’t mean you can’t wear them into the city. Just because your entire outfit cost less than the sandwich you ate for lunch, doesn’t mean it’s not suitable to wear to court. I could go on, but for the interests of wrapping up my rant in time to watch both Sister Acts before bedtime, I’ll leave it there.

The point I’m trying to make is that there is a dress code for the gym now., and I am disgruntled by it (another thing to add to the running list of Things that are vaguely irritating but become major life issues due to overthinking – it goes right under the sultan to bran ratio in cereals) There are sections in department stores, and hey, entire shops dedicated to this tight, flouro clothing which announces to the world that the wearer is either about to, or has just finished, moving their body in a vigorous and/or strenuous manner. If you look around a gym today, everyone seems well-dressed. There aren’t any more shirts that are too big to reveal the contours of your chest, but too small to give you the “wearing the man’s shirt the morning after look”. The old pair of track pants with holes in them are gone. And the faded sloppy joes from school are nowhere to be seen. Everyone looks like a paraody of the Oz Fitness girls, but nobody’s joking.

I don’t understand when tank tops that have cuts outs to prove to the world that you have on sensible underwear that adequately supports your mammary glands when you’re engaged in physical activity became a requirement for exercising. I mean, it’s great that your breasts won’t stretch to the point of being able to be tied behind your back, but that’s more of a personal victory – it’s not something you have to broadcast to the point of cutting out two dinner-plate-sized holes from the back of your singlet top so the person behind you knows you have appropriate support.

And when did it become necessary for people to exercise in leggings? People are actually altering their underwear so they can continue wearing these opinion-dividing pants (oh yeah, I just called leggings pants because technically they are – they aren’t trousers or slacks, but they are a type of pant. You apparently can’t wear briefs under those bad boys, because they are so tight a knicker outline is visible. So people are wearing g-strings with their leggings. How do I know this? Being a constant near-the-back- loiterer in a class that has many, many squats puts you in a uniquely judgemental position. I can’t tell you how many middle-aged-arses I’ve seen due to the elasticity of legging material, which incidentally, becomes somewhat translucent when stretched. Call me an underwear Nazi, but wearing g-string to the gym is kind of ridiculous. Because having a thin strap of polyester separating your butt cheeks underneath hyper-compressing polyester while your arse sweats sounds like a thrush pie in the making. You’re going there to improve your body, not give yourself a yeast infection.

I’m not bagging out the Lorna Jane addicts (although I am judging the fuck out of that inspirational slogan). I’m not saying that we live in a conformist society. I’m not even saying people like to publicise that they exercise to impress people. I’m just asking: where are all the other bags of shit at?

As someone who still wears their severely-frayed college ruggers from five years ago with free t shirts and occasionally novelty socks, I’m starting to become an outcast.

The gym is a sacred space where you can smell like a second hand gorilla’s armpit and be coated in a thick mist of bodily fluids while making orgasm faces less than a metre away from a complete stranger. It’s a beautiful thing. And surely a place in which you feel comfortable enough to thrust your butt out into the air without trying to look sexually appealing is a place where you can wear that gravy-stained t-shirt with the hole in it.

As powerful as you might look in those booty pants, don’t be afraid to look like a slob. Let your dressed-like-a-bag-of-shit-flag fly people!

Tomorrow I am getting a hair cut.

Currently, my hair is so long I look that girl from the ring, but if she had a middle part. Why? For many reasons: I’m lazy, incredibly stingy (the last hut cut I paid for involved an exchange of vodka, and before that my trims only costed $13), and also because I’m the kind of person who likes to hold on to things for an unnecessarily long amount of time in case they come in handy. And this is often because the things I keep DO come in handy.

At this stage, I think it’s pretty clear that I have an over-active imagination to the point where it almost becomes unhealthy (“almost” meaning “without a doubt”). And sometimes I imagine how handy my long locks would come.

Sure, the fact that it occasionally gets stuck in the armpits of strangers on the dance floor is mildly inconvenient and grossly off-putting, these strands of mine do more than disguise how misshaped my head is.

For one, I can use it as a scarf/shawl. Nothing helps you make a decision on how to dress for the day than knowing you have a back-up plan for unexpectedly chilly weather growing from your scalp. It also looks really fancy. Secondly, it’s a great shield to strategically put between me and another person I don’t want to talk to. More importantly, if I ever get into a kidnap situation I feel I would be able to use my hair to strangle the baddie, and then, if things get really serious, I would be able to pull out strands and weave them into a rope. Snigger if you want, but I’ll be the one laughing when you and your cute crop are in a Saw situation and I’m selling my survival story to Sixty Minutes (well, I probably wouldn’t laugh on-camera, because that wouldn’t do wonders for my public image).

But tomorrow, I’m getting the ‘do did. Technically, I’m getting the ends trimmed, but because the last time someone cut my hair was two Septembers ago, I feel like I’m going to walk out with a buzz cut to get rid of those split ends. And so there goes my back up scarf, my excuse for ignoring people, and my chances of having Tara Brown pretend to be interested in my life.

But I can’t help but feel that it’s more than my lust for fame and desire to avoid morons that’s plaguing me. Because, when I really think about it, my hair is all I have. Like Jo March, my hair is my one beauty, and the only thing that can distract people from my dysfunctional ways. My hair is my identity, and even though people might question whether the length signifies my membership of a cult, I wonder what people will refer to me as when they don’t know me. Will it be “that girl with Bret Tate’s chin” or “that girl with the glasses” or will it be worse: are they attempt to identify me by my personality traits? Because that is one troubling thought.

“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.

Going to a friend’s wedding is a little bit confronting.

As every good female-targeted movie involving a nuptials that aren’t the heroine’s will tell you, watching someone legally shack up inevitably and undeniably forces some rather harsh comparisons to come to mind. Particularly when it’s the first wedding you attend as an adult guest in your own right (now more “…and family” invites for me!) and not as a family member. I have held the humans farmed in the bellies of my friends, and visited the shared homes of long-term lovers I went to school with, but I have never before attended such an outwardly permanent event in my double decade of life. Until the weekend.

There I was, wearing horrendously impractical footwear and an un-washed (I got busy, and it’s not like it was a pair of used underwear…) three-dollar skirt from Vinnies’ sinking in the sand (literally) without a life partner to prop me up while a girl born just days before me was the picture of put-togetherness (with her entirely functional shoes) nonchalantly melding her existence with another person. To add insult to injury, this other person also had a six-year-old son. Given I still sometime harbour the urge to knee a toddler in the face (purely because they’re the right height, and I may or may not have some underlying problems with aggression, but that’s another story for another time) and I still scramble over my family members to snag the best piece of chicken, I would say that my nurturing skills aren’t exactly up to scratch yet.

This isn’t a post about my current relationship status, and I won’t be listing neither the pros nor the cons of being some form of romantic agreement with one or more other actually existing parties. This isn’t a post about making New Year’s resolutions to change my life for the better. This isn’t even a post in which I miraculously come up with some vaguely sensible solution/perspective on my problem that feels like an oddly convenient ending hastily concluded due to impending sleeping/reprimand for pushing a deadline.

It’s just bloody strange to stand at the somewhat public declaration of an intention to enter a lifetime of legally binding affection and eternally required kindness with another person. Especially when said friend is the girl who lost their camera down a drain at Schoolies, used the phrase “a bit sag” to describe her underwear and almost definitely smoked a cigarette in a boob tube.

It makes me wonder about the particular journey I will take from scrag* to sophisticated, and the kind of stark comparisons people will draw from Future Dannielle to Koala-Poncho-Wearing-While-Riding-A-Bucking-Bull–Dannielle. Will I suddenly become adept at making decisions? Is the day coming that I know how to come off as a normal person capable of not being terrible for the duration of my life? Will I suddenly stop being so selfish about all aspects of my life, namely food, and start genuinely offering the white meat of a roasted chicken to people without secretly hoping they’ll opt for a thigh instead?

This thought process, as all thought processes of mine almost certainly do, led me to scrutinise every aspect of my life, reading far too much into every detail of my existence.

While my friends were posting on social media about their life-changing trips overseas this festive season, I was merely content to have received a shirt that read “Merry Christmas ya filthy animal” from my brother-in-law. When most people were relishing in their week-long getaways at various coastal regions, I was over the moon about being able to read the Sunday paper almost from cover-to-cover. I don’t own an iron. I can’t regulate my bedtime in a responsible manner. At said wedding, I was double-fisting glasses of champagne filled to an unquestionably un-classy level in fear the bar tab would run out. Earlier this evening my dinner consisted of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets.

As I said before, I’m not going to draw any conclusions, but I feel that you, dear reader (hi Phoeobe!) may have already reached some of your own. Apparently, I have quite a climb in front of me.

* I am in no way implying that my friend was a scrag, although she DID wear a raa raa skirt. I was referring to my general state of scragginess in the past, which may or may not have involved heavy eyeliner, severe side fringes and an un-explained attraction to Trevi… a love which continues to this day.

So obviously the whole daily thoughts thing didn’t work out. But I have a couple of very reasonable reasons as to why I shirked my self-imposed and equally self-indulgent writing responsibilities that really benefit nobody. Number one, I had to make a trip interstate over the weekend, and my Saturday night involved somewhat overly-hydrated chips with strangers, my Sunday morning involved free eggs and the always-fantastic Bad Santa, and my Sunday night involved n RACQ patrol vehicle and a very late homecoming. Number two (this is perhaps the most forgivable of the reasons), it’s Christmas.

And it wouldn’t be Christmas if I wasn’t over-tired and baking at inappropriate hours of the night (it’s currently 11.10pm).

And so, in an act of solidarity with you, dear reader (Phoebe and Mum) I am letting you join in with me, in both spirit and olfactory sensation. And as I have exhausted all creative ability by using alliteration with “writing” and “responsibilities” (I’m very impressive), I can’t be arsed to write an actual column at this time.

So here’s a recipe I prepared earlier just for you.

Maybs clean up the filthy words if you’re showing it to your mum. Or not, if she’s a cool mum. If that’s the case, tell her I have BOTH Richard Gere and Julia Roberts and send her over.

You will need:

2 and a half cups of plain flour (before we start, I adapted some measurements from weights because the scales take too damn long to operate and they cause for a really annoying putting away measure in the Maguire kitchen. So there may be a time when you need a little more flour, or a little less. Usually it is more, because I a pretty godamn gluttonous when it comes to the butter measurement.)

1 cup of brown sugar

5 heaped tablespoons of margarine

1 heaped tablespoon of butter

1 beaten egg

4 tablespoons of golden syrup (this shit is sticky and you can never fully get the full tablespoon off the tablespoon, so I just throw in about an extra spoonful to balance that out. But that is your call to make, you may just find a better way to measure out the syrup.)

2 teaspoons of ground ginger

2 teaspoons of baking soda

half a teaspoon of nutmeg

half a teaspoon of mixed spices

half a teaspoon of cinnamon

an oven

a big bowl

a saucepan of a just bigger than small size

mixing implements

Christmas cheer

A sifter

Trays

Baking paper (because foil is a foolish alternative)

The Home Alone soundtrack to play in the background (Mariah Carey’s or Bing Crosby’s Christmas albums will also suffice. Rod Stweart is fine, but I wouldn’t go for a So Fresh Christmas Hits because they allow any kind of smut to fill the gaps. Sure, they may have Destiny’s Child and maybe ONE classic, but the rest is shithouse and you don’t want that vibe to go into your gingerbread – it will make the biscuits flat, just like the sound of someone killing Santa Baby (someone who is either Eartha Kitt or Kylie Minogue. Kylie actually nails the slutty Chrismtas songs).

-1) I forgot to put this in, until I got to step 11, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to go through and change all the numbers now. Pre-heat the oven. Very important!

1) First thing you’re going to want to do is turn the oven to about 170 degrees Celsius. Now, I have a fan forced oven so perhaps you need to go a little hotter.

2) Crack egg into cup. Ensure egg is not stillborn chicken. Beat unfertilised chicken egg with a fork. Set aside.

3) Grab your big ass bowl and start sifting dat flour into it. Then mix ONE teaspoon of the baking soda. The ginger goes in now too. I always take the opportunity to spice up my life a little by being less than gingerly with the ginger. Meaning, I sprinkle in a little or a lot extra, depending on my mood. I also throw in the spices, the nutmeg and the cinnamon. Obviously, this is a recipe and not a binding contract, so please don’t feel like you have to stick to the ticket – go with the gut if it tells you things. (Actually, this is FILLED with gluten, which means that your gut may just speak to you a lot. I’m concerned. I take NO responsibility for any discomfort you may feel after ingesting this gingerbread.) Beat this gently with a fork until just combined and then make a bit of a well in the middle. Put that to the left (next to the box with everything you own).

4) Now it’s time to break out the saucepan, and by that I mean, grab the saucepan and your butter and imitation butter. Butter up that saucepan boy! Then add the syrup and the brown sugar (I put the butter in first in case the saucepan is too hot and burns the sugar products. That’s not good. The butter forms a gentle, fattening layer of protection, which cushions the blow for the sugars and helps them to succeed in dissolving. I guess the butter is the wind beneath sugar’s wings, which would make butter the Hilary Whitney from Beaches and the sugar would be C.C. Bloom – clearly because Bette Midler’s hair is bright orange for most of the movie so it’s an easy way to remember. This story much less sad than Beaches. I suggest you watch it if you haven’t already seen it.)

5) Gently heat up the contents of the saucepan on a medium/low heat. I turn the dial about a quarter of the way round. Keep stirring that bitch until the butter is all melted and the sugar is dissolved. I want that heart attack-inducing broth to be smooth, you hear!

6) Sprinkle the second teaspoon of baking soda into the saucepan, and turn the heat up a notch or two. I put it up to a whisker off half way (on the lower side of half, not the hotter). Keep stirring, but much more slowly. After a while, the mixture will start to get a little lighter in colour, expand and feel a little airy. This is a good thing. Keep stirring gently until you get to a point where you’re a little nervous to let it continue.

7) Remove the saucepan from the hotplate and pour about half of the mixture into the water-less well you made in you bowl of flour and friends. Then tip in the egg. Stir that for a little bit immediately in case the egg starts to cook in the mixture (this has never happened to me, but I have imagined what it would be like and I imagined a broken Dannielle in it’s aftermath).

8) Pour in the rest of the saucy mix and stir completely.

9) Here’s where you need to use your best judgement as a baker. Sometimes, this is all you need to do, sometimes, the mixture is a little on the runny side and will need more flour. It should form a dough, but it shouldn’t be overly stiff – it should be flaccid enough to feel like a biscuit and not bread (because gingerbread is not really bread – it’s a massive misrepresentation of the product, but that’s what it’s called and I can’t change that). If you can’t grab a bit off without having it run through your fingers, I’d suggest adding more flour. But only sift in a bit at a time. Now is the time for gingerliness.

10) Forget that shit you saw mothers doing on Christmas movies where they roll out the biscuit mix and get fucking flour everywhere. Those women were dickheads. All of them. Because all you need to do moisten your hands with a bit of water and roll clumps of dough into balls and place them on a tray. I know gingerbread men are cute, but fuck me they are way less fluffy and delightful than a ball of the stuff. And if we want to get all feminist here (which I almost certainly always want to do), all we really need from men are the balls anyway.

11) Set your timer for about fifteen minutes. Check after about 12. They should start going a bit brown at this time. I wouldn’t say that you’re aiming for golden brown, but more of a tan. Think about three or four shades darker. You don’t want to go to far because you can’t exfoliate burnt off.

12) Cool the little bastards. Now, if they feel a little soft, don’t be concerned, they should be super spongy. They WILL firm up. Just try not to handle them too much or they will be indented and scarred for life (daddy issues, commitment problems, the works!)

13) … you know what to do.

When you’re loosing your enthusiasm for Christmas, you need to bring in the big guns.

It’s that time of the year when I would be shovelling evidence of the festive season and my inevitably over-thought interpretations of it down the throats of people within a 30 kilometre radius of me via an ever-so-slightly compacted column space in a free publication, however, given my current location and slightly more serious (I did drop a Ghost reference in an intro recently) role, I haven’t had the capacity to do so. This, in combination with overbearing lack of the pressure of an actual enforced deadline and an incompetence to enforce a proper bedtime, my festive writings/rants have been uncharacteristically absent.

Alas, the world has been pardoned of unnecessarily wordy ramblings of a mind reading far too much into insignificant occurrences, utterances or cognitions tainted with a festive slant. But in light of recent uneventful events (watching three Hugh Grant movies in less than 24 hours), I have resolved to do something more useful with my time. And, as I have no real marketable skills and have an inflated sense of importance and self-genius as a result of peaking academically in primary school, I deemed recording the workings of my mind in such a manner that they can be communicated to others on a potentially global platform as a useful use of my time.

But as I began to peck at the keyboard in a satisfyingly noisy manner, it dawned on me that perhaps the current impending festive season hadn’t been exciting enough to blow out of proportion in my mind. Perhaps my literary laziness is matched by the insignificance of which I had attached to the season. It’s not from alack of trying: I spent a good portion of my paycheck on a fake plastic tree and glittery, coloured balls of commercialism, I’ve wrapped gifts, and I’ve even baked a batch of gingerbread for my colleagues despite misplacing my recipe and not having measuring spoons (Jamie Oliver doesn’t need them, but apparently I do). But something feels off this year.

Perhaps a diminished excitement about Christmas is a symptom of passing years, and that, much like getting letters in post, the joy of such an occurrence in our youths is overshadowed by the attached cost and unhappy obligation. Perhaps it is the opposite, and I have only just reached the mental age of a seven-year-old Cindy Lou Who in The Grinch who airs her disenchantment with the festive season via song. Perhaps it’s because Christmas, in my aforementioned new role, is less of an excuse cool the boilers and rest the Linotype, and more of a logistical nightmare due to the rest of society’s selfish tendency to value family time over distributing words and pictures collated on low-quality paper. Perhaps it’s because my only friend close by is my smoothie maker.

But I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with the frightening lack of Christmas movies in my personal collection. Don’t know how it happened, but the only Christmas films I have are Diehard and Die Harder. The great festive flicks in my past are currently in an “entertainment cabinet” more than 300 kilometres away. The first two Home Alones, The Grinch, the few Christmas episodes of Girls of the Playboy Mansion… all the classics are beyond my viewing pleasure.

Without the John Williams musical scores, the bright green Jim Carries and a no-knickered blonde sledding down imitation snow, my heart apparently can’t be merry. The joy of Christmas cannot swell my heart without first having been re-affirmed for a character in a predictable plot with unexplained church bells. But, desperate times call for desperate measures. And in a bid to rid me of my festive indifference, I have resolved to re-ignite my passion for a collection of dates that used to be met with much anticipation and was the bringer of great joy in the most passive way possible: sitting down and staring at my TV, milking my existing DVD collection for any skerrick of festivity. Because if anyone can teach me the true meaning of Christmas, it’s a bare-footed, dirty-singleted Bruce Willis. Yippe-kay-yay.

You is your own worst enemy.

Pressure. David Bowie and Freddie Mercury wrote a song about being under it, and a friend of mine made a Facebook page about it being inside his undies (while the play on words was exceptional, I don’t really know if I liked the definition enough to recommend it to my friends). We’ve been taught that pressure plus time can create diamonds in the right circumstances, but in the wrong circumstances, all you get is wet pants (in case you were wondering what “Undie Pressure” was actually referring to).

There are lots of different kinds of pressure, such as water pressure or the force of a house brought in on a wind from Kansas landing on your torso (I went with a fictional case just to make sure I didn’t jinx myself – I don’t want to die alone in my own house crushed under a ten-year-old pile of stacked newspapers). And while both those kinds of pressure I was referring to can have pretty dramatic outcomes, there’s a another pressure that can produce outcomes that are also not agreeable but rarely involve death (let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, death isn’t the greatest outcome). It’s the kind of pressure that is maximised by the fact that it was applied by yourself. The pressure you put on yourself to achieve something; to make something of your pathetic snivelling self.

While a teacher, friend or inspirational fridge magnet may compel you to do something, the who whom hurts the most when that something wasn’t a thing is yourself. You can get a medi for your teacher, apologise to your friend and throw that smug piece of junk Lorna Jane fridge magnet (I don’t know if they do fridge magnets, but it would make sense because the fridge door is the gatekeeper of fattening food items, and a condescending message printed on a magnetic strip would be an excellent way to remind people to “never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up” on your diet.) But you can’t buy Yourself some “soz brah” frozen yoghurt and call it even, because Yourself is a dweller and holds grudges like you wouldn’t believe (except you would, because you know what You is like).

So when you set yourself a goal and fail to meet it, that hurts. You is reeling and you don’t know how to shut You up. You is so loud, You can’t hear yourself think! You doesn’t hear reasoning that the goal was pointless or that bung-knee is something to worry about or that Better Homes and Gardens had a helpful special on. You will keep reminding you that you didn’t do what was promised to You, no matter what reasons you come up with. This cycle gives you the gripes, but still you find yourself pledging things to Yourself. It might be conquering that pile of laundry, contacting your real estate agent, going to that gym class or responding to that letter. You tell yourself that you’ll do it, but the problem is that while you might have forgotten it during the day, You will remind you of it as the clock strikes bedtime, and you will feel the wrath of Your guilt.

This is something that usually happens on a Sunday. Because nothing has more promise at the beginning while proving to be a complete waste of time quite like a Sunday (well, except Adam Sandler’s recent movies – wow, I’m being mean tonight). The pressure of a Sunday goal can be heavier than a house that miraculously managed to stay in one piece despite being lifted miles into the air to be slammed down into another dimension/delusion – because you have nothing planned on that sacred Day of Rest-wear (because that’s the closest link I could get from “rest” to “pantlessness” or “pyjamas”) why the heck should you not achieve your goals?!

And so, you fall into a trap, because you might set yourself one Original Goal and then to take the pressure off that goal, you set a myriad of others so you’ll feel super accomplished, and if you didn’t happen to achieve the Original Goal, you have many other things to hang your hat on so You’ll take it better when you don’t achieve it. While you might think you’ve fooled Yourself into not caring about failing the Original Goal, You never forget, and You is a relentless bastard. You don’t care that you did the laundry, contacted the real estate agent, went to the gym or wrote that letter, because You knows what you didn’t do.

And You will punish yourself for it with weird stomach sensations and repeated vision of future you suffering from obscenely over-blown consequences as a result of failing to achieve the Original Goal. So eventually, You is so harsh on yourself that you give in, and do a laight-night slapdash job as accomplishing the Original Goal so you can go to bed. Because You don’t care if it was half-arsed, You just wants to tick off the first thing on the imaginary list so you can go to sleep.