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.