I just ate eleven-day-old raw pastry dough.

I don’t really know if I should be proud of my iron stomach for being able to keep the slightly-greying solid goop down for the past seven minutes. In any instance, it’s a mildly impressive feat. It’s like being able to insert a USB right the first go or having multiple novelty ice cube trays – the level of impressiveness on par with weak country-school-bulk-sized-water-bottle cordial. In the time it took me to think of the liquid equivalent of “whelmed”, I still haven’t violently ejected the buttery mass from my body. I kind of feel like I could do anything but I also feel like I’m one cereal dinner away from becoming a novelty-nightie-wearing ball of “how the fuck did I become this?!”.

I’ve been living alone for less than three solid days and I’ve already reached this point. I can’t wait to see what I’m like by Day Fifteen.

But I can already tell where this is headed, and it’s absolutely going to be well and truly within the first ten minutes of Bridget Jones’ Diary territory. And not just because it’s near Christmas time and I have an obsession for stationery that is matched only by my unfaltering reverence for my own thoughts, but because I have a DVD in my collection that both scares and delights me.

It’s called Celine.

I found it in the “true stories” section at Civic Video (yeah, I live in a magical place that still supports a thriving DVD rental shop) while browsing on Sunday night. I was feeling a little down, you see, and whenever I’m in my darkest days I turn to movies starring Nicole Kidman that critics would rather eat the physical copies of the remaining DVDs than watch again. My go-to movies Stepford Wives and Bewitched are both remakes staring the Australian goddess, and both are motion pictures I find rather fabulous (I don’t know who these critics are, but if they don’t approve of Bette Midler being snarky about pinecones or an engrossing scene about self-wiring VCRs, then I don’t know if I can back their opinions). But because I started the Is She Kidmanning Me?! movie marathon nice and early, I had to dash out to get another title. First on my list was Grace of Monaco, because of all the headlines cleverly referencing the Oscar winner’s fall from Grace. I couldn’t find it in the new release section, so my next bet was the “true stories” shelf (which was silly, in retrospect – having watched the movie I can say with confidence that it definitely didn’t belong in that section as there was absolutely no evidence the “story” element required to be sorted in such a category).

As I walked up to the shelf, my eyes were instantly drawn to a blue DVD cover with a poorly-etched photo of a woman with a microphone haphazardly laid over blurry picture of a stage. There were backlights drawn on with the same graphic detail as Mario Kart for a Nintendo 64. There was a PG rating sticker telling me to expect mild themes. The fancy cursive writing told me the title, but it was two decks of capital letters at the top of the cover that told me I was in for a magical experience: THE FULL LENGTH FEATURE FILM ON THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF CELINE DION.

Obviously I couldn’t walk past something like that.

But I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch it yet. Partly because of time restraints (I’m a career woman, after all) and partly because I’m not sure if I’ll be mocking it or enjoying it. There’s a very fine line between the two, and I really don’t want to fall on the wrong side of said line. The last thing I want to do is find inspiration in the French-Canadian songstress’ story. As someone who regularly imagines themselves being interviewed by the likes of Oprah, I would hate to have to sit on that yellow couch and tell the Queen of Television the reason I climbed that mountain/opened my own porridge and scone café/started an online jewellery business making friendship bracelets out of my own hair was because Celine made me believe. If Oprah asked me where my success came from, I’d have to reference the movie. I’m a terrible liar at the best of times, and you just don’t tell a furphy to the woman who called out Lindsay Lohan on her shit. “After sobbing on the couch for 4.56 days, I was so touched by Celine’s dramatized story that I realised I could be my own strength when I was weak, Oprah. I mean, after I waded out of a sea of tissues and empty wine bottles and blinked into the natural light, I realised I could be my voice when I couldn’t speak – I had my love, I had it all. So I became a wellness blogger.”

Five weeks ago I would have never dreamed of saving a hardened ball of butter, flour and sugar for a well-earned treat, and here I am telling myself this current satisfaction is worth salmonella poisoning. So I think it’s a legitimate fear that I may become emotionally attached to the life story of the powerhouse behind My Heart Will Go On. Even my deep-seeded cynicism and relationship-killing sarcasm is no match for the Sin curve of feelings that is It’s All Coming Back To Me. That song is like the audio equivalent of Julie Bishop’s icy glare – it’s powerful and frightening and tunnels right through your composed exterior to your weak, unworthy core. You can’t help but be shaken by it. And so I worry that now, as a woman living alone, Celine’s story will seep into my soul and colour my every move for the rest of my life.

Maybe I am living in fear. Maybe I don’t want to be the girl living alone, thinking of all the friends she’s known, watching Celine Dion blossom into stardom. Unfortunately there’s no turning back. I’ll face another $1 late fee if I don’t return this by Sunday, and I’ll be damned if I pay good money for a weekly rental without watching it.

Anyway, this 1000 word rant is really just an obscenely long teaser to tell you (yes, I mean YOU, my two treasured readers) to expect a review of Celine: A true story form rags to riches in the coming days. Have your emotions ready.

Christmas can bring a family together, but a drunken toilet mishap is often the real catalyst for unbreakable connections.

I have been tasked to recall a Christmas memory for work and work it into a succinct story to warm hearts. Unfortunately, I’m known for being short but never brief so the tale I came up with is far too long. Plus, it inevitably explores gender roles and references reproductive organs multiple times, rendering it largely unsuitable for the masses.

So like a slogan singlet from Supre that’s too embarrassing for public use I’d feel bad about throwing in the bin, I’ve recycled the story and treated this website like a Vinnies donation bin. Enjoy rummaging through my musty-smelling memories at a bargain-basement price.

IT WAS Christmas morning in the Maguire house, which always starts much earlier than any other days. Me and my siblings seemed to be internally programmed to wake with the rising sun when Christmas rolled around, and this day was no exception.

This was the Christmas we were given the go kart: a motorised speed demon on four wheels which would later crash through barbed-wire fences and severely bruise more than one foot thanks to its irresponsible drivers. It must have weighed a tonne in Santa’s sack, so it was left outside on the pergola, right in the line of sight from any bedroom in the house.

But when the four Maguire children woke up that morning, we didn’t notice its careful placement. The coolest of Christmas presents just metres away form us, separated only by a screen door and, and we ran straight past it. It didn’t help that there was a Barbie Picnic Van under the tree, which was the most exciting thing ever for childhood Dannielle (it was a bright brink station wagon with a barbecue as a tailgate, which meant our Barbie dolls could finally combine her love of the outdoors with grilled plastic meats).

This perplexed my father, who couldn’t understand why a lump of pink plastic with multiple choking hazards was trumping an actual moving vehicle. He motioned towards the go kart with all the enthusiasm he could muster at that time of the morning telling us “look at this!” and was only answered with my uninterested munblings as I attempted to free a pink tray of sausages from its plastic casing. This is probably a good signifier of the end of my days as a doting Daddy’s girl and the beginning of my journey to adulthood – that pink station wagon was about to take me over some bumpy terrain.

My father always wanted a son.

I’m from a family with four girls, and while it was a big win for my Little Women-loving mother, I have a niggling feeling that he would have preferred least one of us had our reproductive organs growing outside our bodies.

A real man’s man, my father (who forgoes his Christian name for the ever-blokey Macca) loves his NRL and boxing, is rarely seen without an Akubra on his head and often wears a pocket knife on his belt like he is a hybrid of Batman and Peter Pan. His heroes are the Bush Tucker Man and Slim Dusty. He would have loved a flesh and blood son to impart all his manly ways on, but instead he ended up with four darling daughters. And while this saved him having to deliberate over removing our foreskins or having to hide the moisturiser during our teenage years, he would have loved for one of us to need to stand up to pee, with sheer masculinity dangling between our legs instead of the eternal void of disappointment.

This isn’t just a view I formed after hearing countless people exclaim “your poor father!” when they were told of Macca’s four blessings, it was once explicitly conveyed to me straight from the horse’s mouth.

Rosy-cheeked and brown-ringleted seven-year-old Dannielle (I can’t remember exactly how old I was, needless to say it was a pivotal, personality influencing age) skipped through the kitchen to find Macca holding a fancy-looking bottle by the fridge. The shelf above the fridge was where all the fancy-looking bottles were kept, and because they were so fancy they were rarely touched. So it was unusual for Macca to be holding one of them, and it was even more unusual for my father to look so forlorn. The details are a little fuzzy now some fifteen years later, but from memory the look my father was giving the bottle was how someone would gaze at a portrait of a loved one killed in The Great War, or a piece of cake while they were on a strict diet. My father’s sad, longing look got the better of me, and I chirped a, “what are you looking at, Dad?”, in what could only have been a sickeningly sweet manner.

Without looking at me, or even tearing his gaze away from the fancy bottle, he said something that most child psychologists would sternly advise against telling a young girl as a precursor to puberty; it was mildly soul crushing and absolutely impacted my future development.

“I was saving this for when I had a son,” he said.

Cue the next few years of my trying to be pull off the tomboy act while being absolutely appalling at anything sport-related. This was of course fraught with failure as obviously sport is a boy’s thing, but as an-ever growing chubby lump of a girl, sitting down and looking pretty was also out of the question. This set the tone for a few angry, heavy-eyelinered years with increasingly strained relations with Macca. There were many feelings, and even more Simple Plan songs played on repeat. As my vocabulary grew, my levels of sass increased and horns were locked. Macca was a FIFO worker for much of my childhood, which meant he didn’t “get me” as well as my mother. A constantly closed bedroom door kept things that way. So my father based his assumptions about me on stereotypical “girly” stuff to plug his knowledge gaps and it rarely ended well. My views of his tyranny and his Women are from Venus ideals kept us both from recognising our glaring similarities, and ignoring this fanned the flames of our furiosity at each other when fights flared up. I’ve been told I’m quite loud and imposing, and since I’m a near exact replica of my father, things became quite thunderous when tempers did ignite. Family occasions were not exempt from the occasional verbal scuffle, even Christmas. Because the event called for extended face-to-face interactions, it wasn’t long into the season before he would get on my nerves and other family members had to step in and suffocate the metaphorical fires with distractions and balls of things rolled in coconut.

Thankfully, after nearly three decades of living solely in the company of women, we’ve finally become used to each other. But it wasn’t until the Christmas I was legally allowed to drink in public that we realised just how close the apple fell from the tree.

With a population of roughly 1500, our little town often tried to pool everyone together for celebrations to build “community”. While the annual show was an obvious ringer, the Christmas Street Carnival was a very close second. Council workers put up road closure signs on either end of the main street and a prime mover pulled a stage into position on the road (and by “stage” I mean “trailer with one canvas side removed”). Lights were strung up, the Lions Club fired up a barbecue and the fire captain would impersonate Santa Claus on elaborate “sleighs”. And the pubs filled pretty bloody quickly, spilling out on to the street. The first year I was able to get as sauced at the mums and dads of my childhood friends. I hit the Vodka Cruisers hard. Macca smashed the XXXX Golds and we exchanged banter as the gang of parents from my old primary school marvelled at how old I was. We were partners in crime and it was glorious.

But our newfound friendship was truly forged the next morning, after neither of us could remember getting home. A toilet roll holder had been ripped from the wall, and no one could say with any authority whether they had or had not destroyed the important piece of bathroom infrastructure. An unspoken agreement ensued that it was both of us, and none of us. Bound by the shared guilt of an act we otherwise would have roused on each other for. It’s odd that a drunken toilet mishap could be the catalyst for a shared understanding between us, but that’s apparently how most of my friendships start.

I’ve started treating my friend’s baby pictures like Pokemon battle cards and it’s beginning to get weird.

Recently, one of my high school kindred spirits (we once had to tackle a 5 kilometre walk home from a party during which we stopped being friends, ate microwavable hotdogs from a 7/11, became best friends again and thought mixing blue Cruisers and strawberry milk was a fantastic idea – so yeah, kindred spirits) squeezed life out of one of her more malleable orifices. Five days overdue, the little sucker came out looking like an actual baby, not a half-formed pink chicken-armadillo hybrid. Not only was he healthy, had all four limbs, twenty phalanges and apparently an incredibly large scrotum – but he was also actually cute.

Obviously it was marvellous for his parents, but also a huge relief for me: I didn’t have to pretend the offspring was cute when it looked like something the cartoonist who made Ren and Stimpy would have drawn.

I’m not known for my sugar coating. I’ll either call a spade a spade and then be forced to furiously back peddle or, if I’ve given actual thought to my words, I’ll avoid the digging implement all together. While I’m not as bad as my older sister who walked into the bathroom of our other sister’s new house and tactlessly articulated her opinion of the room with a great big “yuck”, I’m not much better. I’ve been known to rant about the crapness of Transition Lenses to a person only to see their of spectacles darken as they exited the building that afternoon, complain about smokers crippling our health system to table of a pack-a-dayers and tell someone that flat-brim cap and white sunglasses wearers are scum of the earth only for a subsequent Facebook stalk to reveal they had heartily dabbled in both (although that last discovery has only fuelled my mocking of said trash accessories in their presence). Most of the time, people can laugh off my stony comments or simply join me in pretending it never happened. There are the occasional painful silences that follow, but usually it’s something I can bounce back from.

But I feel like making fun of the human being someone brewed up inside them and squished their bladder to make room for is something of a kick to the guts (or a slap on the freshly-stitched area between their vaginal opening and their anus – whatever hurts the most). It’s something you wouldn’t plan on doing, and it would be very hard to explain to anyone that it “just happened accidentally”. An assault that painful wouldn’t be forgiven easily.

So I was absolutely thrilled when the image my friend sent through to me (which, by the way wasn’t on Instagram – hashtag exclusive!) was bloody adorable. I didn’t have to dance around the ugliness of her offspring with “oh, he’s so tiny” or “look how … alert he is”. I could genuinely comment on his pleasing physical appearance. The only faux par was when I was foolishly allowed to nurse the infant and didn’t really know how to support his head (pretty lazy on his part if you ask me – I mean, I don’t do much either, but at least I don’t expect people to keep my airway clear).

Since the initial meet and great (I brought cob loaf, obviously) I’ve been given a few more pieces of photographic evidence that my friend was able to keep the new human she now owned alive, but also fully clothed and even clean. Sometimes, I found myself furiously scrolling through our text conversation just for a hit of baby-induced oxytocin. And I haven’t stopped there. I’ve become one of those people I used to roll my eyes at, showing people images of a baby they’re completely unrelated to and totally uninterested in (I know that sigh, because I used to be that person).

But my annoying baby photo assault has kicked up another gear, as I am apparently reaching the competitive stage. No longer content with boring people with offspring imagery and anecdotes about my friend’s power cervix, I’ve started trying top other people with similar infant connections as if they are Digimon game consoles. Like a 12-year-old with a regular income stream of pocket money and access to a Big W, I am ready for virtual battle and always looking for my next opponent. It happened the other night, after The Office went out for drinks.

The New Uncle’s sister had just had a baby girl and eventually the conversation turned baby photos. Smelling blood, I pounced, quickly whipping my phone out like it was Pokeball (“picture of baby sucking fingers, I choose you!”). It was quite late in the evening by this stage, but the conversation went something along the lines of:

Me: I know you’re like related to her and everything, but look at my friend’s baby.

*implies that obviously, my Pokemon/official newborn representative is much better looking than The New Uncle’s weak attempt at cuteness.

Me: You know how babies look like bloody aliens when they first come out?

*again, implies that obviously, my Pokemon/official newborn representative is much better looking than The New Uncle’s weak attempt at cuteness.

Me: Well this one is like two days old and it actually looks like a human.

*finally, implies that obviously, my Pokemon/official newborn representative is much better looking than The New Uncle’s weak attempt at cuteness, winning the battle.

I don’t know where the conversation went from there, but it definitely involved me showing the poor people I work with multiple snaps of my victorious infant before someone no doubt deliberately steered the topic away from human reproduction.

The lesson in this is obviously that your appearance is the only thing that counts. That’s right, we’ll start judging you on your looks even if you’ve only just had the innards of your mother hosed off your skin and you don’t know what fingers are. You’d better learn now that your worth is based entirely on your facial features and physique even though you had no say in how they appear: welcome to the material world, Baby J.

A cup of tea made by another’s hands really is really a brew of disappointment and lies.

Yesterday a friend of mine made a Facebook post about a fear of a poorly-made cup of tea and I practically commented a fucking novel in support for this claim. Because while people tell themselves that they’re doing you a favour by fixing you a cup of love, in reality they’re constructing a no win situation for the drinker. That’s right, I’m turning making someone a comforting drink into a punch to the breast.

I never really understood my mother, who would get incredibly stressed when people did things for her. As a bright-eyed and horrendously chubby child, I was shocked to find that my mother didn’t react to me and my siblings’ offering of breakfast in bed of a Mothers’ Day like the women on the Suzannes ads did. Instead of waking up with perfect hair, unwrinkled pyjamas and a warm, loving embrace for the sheer perfections of human beings she brewed up in her woman cave, all we got were disgruntled sighs. I used to think it was because she was a heartless grump who scoffs at the selfless gestures of her love-starved offspring. But today I understand completely. What I now realise is that not only would we have left the kitchen in a mess and woken her up early with our toaster-getting-out-of-the-cupboard noises and poorly-hushed disagreements, the end result was about as underwhelming as opening a bottle of liquid whiteout. Tepid tea, smears of butter on all utensils and some form of toasted bread or pancakes which we never saw Mum eat for breakfast but were repeatedly told by Target catalogues that she would love so much her ovaries would swell to the size of medium grapefruits. If I were to see that little jerk of a human being putting someone through that and expecting a hug to the soundtrack of various versions of It Must Be Love, I would probably slap myself across the face. Mum doesn’t like crumbs in her bed. Mum doesn’t like unnecessary washing up. And she sure as shit won’t stand for a badly-made, lukewarm cup of tea. She didn’t overcome polio for a big old cup of disappointment, for fuck’s sake.

While my mother may sound like a cold, heartless diva (she isn’t, by the way. She still bakes slices and fruitcake for my old work colleagues, does meals on wheels and sends me Happy Unbirthday cards using the free stationary she was given as a gift for donating money to weirdly-specific charities) I think she was right to be disgruntled. Because the only thing worse than a shit cup of tea is having to feign gratitude to the evil creature who made it for you.

As much as I enjoy the thought of someone dedicating five minutes of their life purely for the satisfaction of my needs (hashtag relationship goals), that’s pretty much where it stops for me. Because no matter how many times someone tries to brew you a cuppa, it’s never going to be quite right. I’ve been through some stuff. I’ve experienced the highs and lows of life. I’ve stared at landscapes through public transport windows with a pensive look on my face; I’ve been on a journey to myself and know who I am. So don’t just assume that you know how much milk I want in my fucking tea. You’ll never get me. When Britney Spears’ backup singers sang “you’ve just got to do it your way” in Overprotected (wow, two Britney references in two weeks) I’m pretty sure they were envisaging me, sassily pouring boiling water over a teabag in the mug I always fucking use.

It’s for this reason (and the fact that I am apparently so full of hate my pimples are actually clogged with viscous distain) that I try to avoid making a cup of tea for someone else. Because I’m either serving them a steaming hot cup of I-have-no-idea-who-you-are-as-a-person or forcing my view of the world onto someone and trying to make them conform to my standards. If I want to dismiss all regard for a person’s worth or shape them into a mediocre version of me, I’ll usually do that with my words, not a beverage.

Inevitably someone will add too much sugar, not let the tea steep for as long, go too hard on the milk or assume you like some kind of wanky brew that doesn’t have a name, just an affect labelled in wispy letters over a adjective-laden ingredient list – such as “calming”, “energising” or “suddenly forgetting your life is a pathetic waste of resources because of these organic cranberry flakes”. If you think that literally condensing a person in a standard-sized mug is tricky, then doing it metaphorically is all kinds of impossible. Just like only you can decide if Blurred Lines actually offends you, only you can know how to make your tea.

We all know this, but are regularly cornered in a situation in which it’s good manners to take the cup of tea. You tell yourself how nice it is that you get to set comfortably in the couch while the kind soul fixes you a drink, but that’s just what they want. They lull you into an acceptance of their offer with your warm memories of tea you made yourself and then they piss all over it. They slap a teabag in, slosh around an unmeasured amount of water, dump in a non-descript sweetener and present you with a mug of insults. But they don’t just hand you the cup of tea and leave you be, they expect conversation and gratification. As if drinking the lukewarm piss of Satan isn’t bad enough, now this sadist wants to share things about their life with you and expects you to nod earnestly between over enthusiastic sips of gratitude. It’s kind of like when a lass is bought a drink at Da Clubz and is therefore expected to reciprocate with sexual rubbing of some degree, only instead of a watered down cheap vodka and raspberry you’re given watered down dreams and what’s being violently shoved down your throat is some dribble about their douchebag partner/frivolously pointless university to degree/vague career aspirations to set up a fashion brand in Bali/yoga. As in both situations, you can’t help but wonder how you, as the proud owner of a supposedly fully-formed brain, find yourself in such positions. But despite all your discomfort you grin and bare it, hoping that at least an offer of a sandwich will follow and make everything worth it.

Unfortunately, that sandwich rarely comes.

Nah yeah: Waking up at 7.30pm, giving me so many hours of potential productivity on a Sunday.

Yeah nah: Spending most of that potential productivity time watching old Britney Spears video clips on YouTube, and feeling incredibly inadequate. Britney had become an international superstar by 17, while I the only thing I had achieved by that age was the knowledge that extreme side fringes aren’t a great idea. At 23, instead of being a multi Grammy winner, I have become the person who dedicates a whole day to a former child star. Because this has transcended idle watching, now I’ve hit the obsessive researching phase. So far I’ve Googled:

“Does Melissa Joan Hart have a lazy eye?”

“Britney Spears wedding tracksuit”

and

“How old was Britney Spears when she shaved her head?”

Apparently she shaved her head at 26, which means that if I’m charting my life using the Britney Spears Life Events Scale (which everyone should be), I have three years to to go through a downward spiral and then a few more after that to put myself spectacularly back together and buy a mansion with a golf course. I’m also supposed to have killer abs right now and have frenched Madonna. Hmm.