March 29th 11:10pm - Drunken Hair Dye

My senior year in high school, my hairdresser dyed my hair black-brown. Like a gorilla. I wanted something different to the blonde highlights my mom had been paying for me to get since I was thirteen and my hair turned light brown. My mom cried when I came home with dark hair. Months later, the dye had lifted and my hair color resembled rat's fur. When I asked my friend Nickle to dye it dark again, she replied in the affirmative, saying it couldn't be hard. After twenty minutes and a box of dye, she said, "Oops."
Oops was because the instructions read to start thoroughly with the roots and progress down the hair. Nickle had been too thorough.
"You just have too much hair. But it'll be fine, I'll massage the rest of your hair into your scalp and the dye will go everywhere."
It didn't. When I washed it out, the dye concentrated in my roots and then deteriorated. Three-quarters of my hair was the light brown of a rat's ass. The top quarter of my hair was maroon. I had wanted to go darker, but Nickle had selected a maroon box. I hadn't known. My mom cried.

As female college students, paying to have our hair cut and dyed cost the equivalent of three kegs and a damn good party. I have the hairdressing prowess of Donald Trump. My friend Fi-T can cut hair in a straight line. Fi-T consented to dye and cut Twat's hair.
As with most activities, preparation is a prerequisite.
Twat and Fi-T prepared by going to Albertsons. They bought hair dye and four forties. On the drive back to our apartment, they purchased a sack of weed. Once at our apartment, they each took three Vicodin and three bong rips. After each knocking back a forty, Twat sat in the living room on one of our kitchen chairs with a towel around her shoulders. As Fi-T patted dark dye into Twat's long brown hair, she drank another forty. Fi-T ran out of dye four inches from the bottom of Twat's hair. The dye coupled with her subsequent hair cut and her hair looked like it could be a frontrunner in the annual world's ugliest dog contest.

March 26th 3:00pm - Massive Baby Balls

I don't know what size kid's balls are supposed to be. I don't frequently floor little boy's pants to analyze scrotum size. I'm not a pedophile. An adult male's hanging brain scarcely appeals to me.
Today, I Quasimodo-hunched onto the carpet because the stench slipping from the five-month-old's diaper resembled old-man-anal-cavity.
The song, "Fuzzy wuzzy caterpillar humps along, humps along, humps along," rocketed from the CD player as I detached the velcro and whacked down the diaper to reveal the baby's microscopic penis.
The seven-year-old shrieked and pointed.
"His doodle is really big. It's just too big."
Her screams backlashed from the walls as she ran from the room, repeatedly crying, "It's too big."
I surveyed the five-month-old. The penis was the size of my little finger's fingernail. The testicles were the size of my fist. When I detailed her daughter's reaction to the mom, she confirmed: the baby has abnormally large balls. The mom considered taking him to the doctor for his massive baby balls.

March 23rd 8:40pm: Do you Have a Rubber

The first time I went to the beach with the family, the mom told me, "Grab your togs, jandals, and if you could grab the pram too, that'd be great." She was speaking Arabic. I stood there as confused as if I had just seen a cat strutting the street dressed as a hooker. The mom sensed my perplexity and interpreted togs, jandals, and pram into my language: bathingsuit, sandals, and stroller. I selected New Zealand because I thought they spoke my vernacular.
Tonight, as I sipped Chardonnay and washed the volcano of dishes from our standard eight-person meal, the dad bomb-barreled into the kitchen. He ransacked the desk and beat the pen holders.
"Kara, I need a rubber," he divulged, eyes frenzied and rabid.
Wine fired from my mouth.
"Um. Seeing as you have five kids... ya, I'd say you need at least one," I replied.
He raged through paper, scotch tape, and pencils.
"Do you have one? I can't find a rubber anywhere."
"No... sorry. I don't happen to have one on me," I said, a clown smile glossing my face.
The clock told me it was eight at night.
"Here we go," he rejoiced and discharged from the kitchen.
Five minutes later, I entered the dining room to see if I could assist with the seven-year-old's homework. The nine-year-old's math homework decomposes my sanity and frontal lobe. So, I help the five and seven-year-olds.
"I got a rubber," the dad said and erected an eraser. He was aiding the nine-year-old with his math.

March 21st 5:23pm - Quotebook: Five Kids

* 5-year-old: "I saw an Egyptian mummy and daddy today!"
She thought the mummy at the museum was a mommy, not a corpse.

* 5-year-old (on a plane from the south island to the north island): "We're going back to New Zealand!"
Me: "Hunny, we're actually still in New Zealand, we're just in the south island."
5-year-old: "But we're going back to the real New Zealand!"

* 3-year-old: "Poos come out of the baby's belly button."

* 5-year-old: "I know why you can see."
Me: "Why's that?"
5-year-old: "Because you have eyes!"

* 3-year-old: "I have a butthole."

* Me: "What's the name of a girl you like? What should we name the princess?"
3-year-old: "Mummy."
Me: "Okay. Princess Mummy."

*3-year-old (bending over while I wipe his ass): "There's a bubble! There's a bubble!"
Me: "Where's a bubble?"
3-year-old: "Behind my doodle."
Me: "Those are balls!"
The mom (five minutes later after I've recounted the conversation): "Baby, where's your bubble?"
3-year-old: "In my pants!"

* 5-year-old: "You become a lawyer by pooing on your teacher's face."

*3-year-old (prodding my breasts): "You don't have milk. Mummy has milk."

* 5-year-old: "I found a hair clip at school today! It's in me."

* 5-year-old (wanting to go to her big sister's birthday party): "I'm going to be good on the bus today. I'm going to keep my tongue in my mouth, my hitting arm by my side, and my head-butting head to myself."

* 5-year-old: "I forgot to take off my undies when my class went swimming today. I wore my undies swimming."

* 5-year-old: "It's not good to breathe out or drive. It causes pollution. Tell your adult friends not to exhale or drive."

* 5-year-old (to the four-month-old): "You are such a pain in the ass."

* Me: "I'm going north for the weekend."
5-year-old: "Are you going to the North Pole or North America?"
Me: "No no, just four hours north of here."

*Me (after the three-year-old stamped his four-month-old brother on the forehead and belly with a dinosaur stamp): "You can't stamp your brother!"
3-year-old: "But he looks pretty."

March 18th 9:30am - Bottom Blast

New Zealand's Prime Minister lives five houses away from the family I au-pair for. The newspaper the New Zealand Herald recently named a man the most powerful in Auckland. One quarter of the country's population lives in Auckland. The most powerful man in the city lives next door. I regularly pick up the two girls I au-pair for from St. Cuthbert's all-girls school with hair up, no make-up, wearing sandals and sweats. All the moms wear miniskirts, heels, and look like they daily get their hair professionally styled. I resemble a vagabond stalking little girls.
For the baby's christening, I shed my sweatpants and horse-harnessed myself in suitable clothes - one of the mom's dresses - and make-up. The christening guests included the country's leading medical professionals, politicians, and lawyers.
Ninety-nine percent of the guest list owned vacation homes and boats. My ninety-year-old eyesight can't distinguish between Target and Louis Vuitton, but I overheard words like Armani and Gucci as much as I had to sprint after young children screaming, "Noooo!" There were forty kids. New Zealand's elite spawn sociable,
pleasant little muffins. Put them in a forty-kid mob, and they devour my sanity.
Wiping faces, cuddling crying four-year-olds, requesting ice cream from the caterers, locating soccer balls, overseeing face-painting, and standing in Violet the Clown's balloon animal line for young children who lost interest in the line after six minutes equated no bathroom break for me.
These, coupled with my stealth ambushes of the beer supplies, equated a vulcanized pressure on my bladder and bowels. I needed to feed the toilet.
I tried to Merlin-relocate myself to the bathroom after I organized a twenty-kid soccer game. I was halfway up the grass-covered backyard hill when shouts, screams, and cries violated my eardrums. The ball was over the fence. Excreta clustered like a church congregation. I attempted a covert toilet retreat when the parents toasted the baby and its life. They mentioned my name in the salutation. I righted myself from dodge-the-aristocrats to smile and wave. Fecal matter blistered my rectum.
I put on a movie for the kids and endeavored subtle maneuvers towards the toilet under the guise of getting plates of food. When the grandma advanced towards me with a request to find her husband, I replied that I was compiling plates for the parents. Grandma told me that the caterers assembled their plates.
When the parents delivered a second address to the crowd thanking everyone for coming, shit fumes leaked from my butt. I strained for a cushioned fart, a concealed anal salute. However, what exuded from my pooper was a beer stutter fart. I looked around, smiling. The thirty refined individuals outlining me were too polite to glance over or comment. But, the two-year-old's height coincided with my ass, so he screamed, "Kara, you just farted!" People in Liberia heard.

March 14th 10:45pm - Weekend Ridiculousness

I don't have a set group of friends in Auckland yet. So, I drink and make friends. Although Ms. Bartender and Captain Morgan and I have an intimate comradeship, I make other friends too, with plausible life-long companionships looming. After last weekend's monkeyshines, friend additions in my cell phone comprised Viking, Homer, and Cmfsda. After this weekend, Air Force, Kiwi, and Shmrck boosted my friend count to sixteen. Nine of the sixteen: nicknames. I think five of those were females. When these probable best friends text me, they oftentimes have to describe themselves, where they met me, what I was wearing, and if I referred to them by a Booze Name. For example, I called someone Keggers for our two-hour drinking acquaintance in Boogie Wonderland. He wasn't drinking beer. That was Friday night.
While I was at Boogie Wonderland for a friend's birthday, Poolman texted me, telling me to meet he and his friend at BK. It wasn't until two blocks and three harassment accusations by bouncers later that Poolman told me BK isn't a bar or a club - it's Burger King.
I had met Poolman and his friend Playa at quiz night a few weeks ago at The Bog, an old church converted to an Irish pub a seven minute walk from where I live. A pipe organ suspends above the door to the bathrooms. Stained glass windows ornament the bathroom walls. Quiz night concluded at ten-thirty.
"I would give anything to be in a body of water right now. Seriously. This is the third day where all I want is to be in an ocean or a lake or a pool. That's all I want."
"There's a pool where I live," five beers responded for me.
"Oh, sweet as! Can we come over so I can swim? Just for five minutes?" Playa asked.
"Of course! I don't mind. Come over and go swimming!" I responded.
It wasn't until we were half a block from the house that it occurred to me that it was eleven on a Tuesday night. The parent's room overlooks the pool. The parents snag sleep as often as I enter bars sober. They have five kids. The youngest is four months. Despite my quasi-hesitations, Poolman and Playa went swimming, and splashed like drunk seals.
I met Poolman and Playa at Burger King and we went to A&M bar, and then to a late-night bar on the Viaduct. An hour later, Poolman and Playa wanted to leave. I stayed. I wasn't aware that it was 5am. As soon as the two guys left, everyone loved me. Men in suits made obscene gestures towards me, girls approached me to say their male friends thought I was the most gorgeous woman they'd ever seen, and some Irishman told me the Gaelic tattoo on my back means fuck me hard. Another Irishman said it translates as, I'm a whore. My Mac's beer bottle roared to the floor, and I believed them. The tattoo means loyalty, truth, strength.
I was as popular as if my nipples were spouting vodka.
Then the three hard alcohol drinks, bottle of wine, and five beers accumulated into me being a drunken destruction. I went to the bathroom to discover that my eyelashes were stuck together on one eye, my shirt was loose, glimpses of my breast were eminent, and stumbling wasn't a strange occurrence. The bar's men saw alcohol swimming in my eyes and wanted to capitalize. Hopefully my eyelashes hadn't been glued together the entire night.
I left the bar, caught a cab, and got home at 7am.
That night, I went to the Lady Gaga concert with the mom I work for and her sister. Lady Gaga is the clinically insane veiled by a stupendous voice. She donned masks, wigs, wings, prostitute make-up, and foot-high heels. She continually referred to the backup dancers as her "gay boys," and the audience as her "monsters." Fake blood filtered onto her white dress. She lit herself and the piano on fire.

March 10th 11:30pm - Dear Breasts

Dear Breasts, I do not comprehend your insistence that male monkeys have breasts more sizable than you. I score as much sensation from a nightdress as I do from caresses, clasps, grapples and grasps. I have more nerve endings in my feet than in you, my frost detectors. I apologize that I daily suppress you with Scotch tape or Duct tape. Perhaps if you didn't protrude the nipples out like a male erection of the breasts, I wouldn't have to stifle you. Perhaps, if you were the size of an ordinary twelve-year-old female, I could wear a bra. Instead, my ribs pouch out as much as you, my jogging partners.

Dear Breasts, I tolerate that you are in competition with my head for sprouting the most hair. But I do not appreciate your insistence on blossoming miscreant black hairs, as they spawn male comments such as, "You have hairy nipples!" This is not pleasant. I recognize your anorexic need for attention, as I don't fondle, cuddle, love or hug you. However, when 95.3% of males have larger Congo bongos than you are, they grip their own knockers more than they grope you. The appeal of the unfamiliar woman boobs is lost when a McDonald's three-year-old's zonkers are more walloping.

Dear Breasts,
You cause mocks and jests,
You have won smallest-breast contests,
There have been fake boob requests,
Innumerable molests and grabfests,
Augmentation quests,
Much male disgust and detest,
And, while I'm unstressed,
I will deem myself blessed,
If only you will stop
Sprouting black hairs like a goddamn crop

March 6th 9:15pm - Cricket

* Note to Self: Do not get shit-housed with random thirty-something males I met on the street, jump in a circle with arms around our shoulders in a bar, go to a strip club, and get home at 5am when going to a cricket game the next day. The short cricket games last nine hours.

The cleaning woman at the house I work for is rabidly insane. She has lectured the mom (also her employer) on her ill-placed flower arrangements. She's informed her employer of a previous position cleaning a whorehouse, how she misses the job, especially making the beds, and how she can't believe she got fired. Crazy physically obliged me to befriend her on Facebook, and then told me that she has an account because she enjoys stalking people generations younger than her. She divulged that her thirty-five-year-old son deejays and floods with drugs.
"Drugs are inspirational. I know because I've tried," Crazy has educated me, her arm taking a cleaning break on her paunch while her hair decamped from her hair-tie. Crazy may be derailed and domineering, but through the deranged sentences, good intentions spill through. She set me up on a date.

A week ago, Crazy walked out of the house to see me and the two-year-old in the hot tub. He was tormenting my boobs. One of his favorite hobbies is seizing my jugs and informing me that they're not as big as his mom's. His dad has larger man-pillows than I do.
"Hi Kara," Crazy said, and waved at the two-year-old. He cried.
"Hi, how are you?"
"Great. I partied hard at beach parties all weekend. What did you do?"
Crazy is fifty-three years old.
"I went to Devonport with a friend," I replied. I failed to mention that on Saturday I was so boozy that instead of giving the bartender my debit card, I handed her my California driver's license.
"Okay. Well, I want you to meet people. There's a wonderful man who's about your age. I think he's single. Anyway, I've arranged for you to meet."
"Um. What?" A mute humpback whale could spawn a better response.
The two-year-old shrieked, "You don't have milk. Mummy has milk," as he prodded my cans with his pointer fingers.
"He's in the Navy. He's into soccer and outdoor activities like you are. He's really nice," Crazy continued.
"I really appreciate the thought, but I really do have friends. I have people to do things with," I replied.
"He's taking you to a cricket game. He got tickets. You'll really like him."

The Black Caps cricket game at Auckland's Eden Park stadium sold stubby beers with 3.5% alcohol. The beer ad posters proclaimed, "Go running later!" When I go to a sporting event, I eat hot dogs and drink beer. I want at least 5% beer. And I don't want to go running later. I want to get sauced.
The cricket game had Halloween in the stands. Fans dressed as Chewbaccas, pigs, Mexicans in sombreros and panchos, babies, and the American Air Force. Some men wore only paint. It rained. The paint streamed. One man bulldozed his way through the crowd and to his seat donning a wedding gown and veil. He wore heels. The guy Crazy set me up with informed me that it was the man's bachelor party. To array the groom-to-be in a homeless person's bride outfit is normal. To steal the groom's wallet, keys, clothes, and cell phone while he's in the ensemble is recommended.
Over the game's nine hour endurance, I acquainted myself with the game and the guy. He was over a decade older than me, shorter than me, and expected me to have cricket knowledge. I'm American. I'm more familiar with the Abominable Snowman than I am with baseball's subordinate. After five hours of wickets, overs, bowling, and leg byes, I thought the game was over. It was half-time.

March 1st 11:30am - Broken Knees and Debauchery

"Love the college students and hobos of San Francisco with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Punish them not, as they are smashed. Do not be afraid or terrified of them, as the are sloshed and know not what they do. The Law shall descend upon murderers, thiefs, and rapists."
-San Francisco Police Department 1:3

The SFPD have encountered me and my friends while stammering down the street with nothing but fake ID's and unintelligible utterances. The police did nothing. Because of complaints, the SFPD were required to search my friend's apartment. They discovered marijuana and a bong. The police did nothing. The SFPD observed as fifty-five underage college students played sloshball in Golden Gate Park. While we heckled and howled the hoots of the hammered, children's four-year-old birthday parties fringed us. The police did nothing.
Two friends and I heralded one Saturday morning sun by visiting one of our foremost friends: Safeway. We purchased Vodka. By eleven in the morning, we had each drained six shots of Vodka down our tracheas. We put pygmy-sized drops of lemon juice in our shots, so the crippling mutilation to our throats and stomachs was caused by lemon juice and not something that tasted like rubbing alcohol. A Washingtonian had transmitted brilliance to us through the lemon drops. His most notorious quote: "Elephants have the largest penises... No, no, wait, what are those black things... Oh, right, African Americans."
By one in the afternoon, my friends and I were in Golden Gate Park playing our first game of sloshball. Sloshball is kickball. With kegs at second and home base. You have to chug-a-lug an entire beer at second base and refill before proceeding to third. You restore beer supplies at the home base keg. Result: Oftentimes second base is populated by legions of girls struggling to down twelve ounces of piss water. My teammates and I prided ourselves more on our drinking ability than on our soccer skills. We played Division-1 in both alcohol and soccer. As this was our first participation in sloshball, we marched with our standard operating procedure: get drunk and then go out. It hadn't occurred to us to arrive sober at a drinking event with a noon start time. This was a rookie mistake. Sloshball is called sloshball for a reason.
While everyone else was on their fifth beer and warming up their alcohol intake, extravagant loss of coordination, balance, and logic handicapped me and my two friends. When we were up to bat, or kick, we made mistakes. I kicked the ball and sprint-swayed to first base. I arrived, collapsed, righted myself and celebrated my first base run by dancing like a crack fiend. I hadn't realized that Sober Jackass had caught the ball and I was out. When my friend Twat kicked the ball, instead of darting to first base, she shot across the pitcher's mound to second base. She planted a hand on either side of the keg and ninja-kicked her legs in the air. Nobody was on base to hold her legs up for a keg stand. Fifty-five college kids watched as she persevered with the double-legged-donkey-kick for three minutes before someone assisted her. Twat repeated the bat-and-scurry-to-second-base two more times. Hours later, I staggered into two male soccer players.
"I really want to tackle someone," I announced.
"Um, okay. Tackle her," one of them said.
I lowered my head and declared my dominance by football-linebacker tackling the designated target. My target was Twat. I injured her knee.
The remainder of the afternoon and night remains a magoogled blear. Twat, Fi-T, and I recall finishing the Vodka handle before going to a seven o'clock basketball game. Our coaching staff was there, as was one of our friend's older sisters and a few recruits. We passed out through the entirety of one of the biggest games of the season, and then went to a party hosted by the baseball guys. Fi-T threw a bottle out of the apartment window at someone. We went to bed at four in the morning.
We were told the next day that on our return from sloshball, we stopped at our friend's apartment. We jumped on our sober friend's bed in our shoes and slathered her bed with mud from our knees and feet. Another friend saw Fi-T standing in the middle of the food court, a tray taxed with cereal, a sandwich, brownie, toast, banana and peanut butter, pasta, milk, and cake. The tray tilted in her hand while her eyes were paralytic-closed. Our friend righted the tray and guided Fi-T through the cashier and to me and Twat. We sat in the cafeteria and chanted about how much we loved sloshball.