Roomies

When you're 32 and have lived alone for two years, you tend to be a little picky when comes to choosing a roommate. Deal breakers include:

1. Owning a rat and two parakeets. The possibility of the vermin escaping from said roommate's room is less of a concern than the thought of what kind of care, grooming and quality time happens between the adult female and her rat behind the closed door.

2. Being quarantined to my bedroom during meal times and Jeopardy! Having space is one thing. I also get being old and finding solitude in your favorite programs. (I too enjoy a quiet, uninterrupted evening with a jar of Nutella and The Jersey Shore.) But only being allowed access to my bedroom and the bathroom is a little extreme, especially since my favorite home activity is eating, and eating only happens after a mess is made in the kitchen.

3. Having friends over to play online video games. A group of twentysomething dudes sitting on a faded sectional sofa, huddled over their laptops, screaming, "Slay the droid!" is not only irksome, but downright emasculating and a discouraging glimpse into the future of the male species.

4. Being against your roommate getting laid. When "no overnight visitors" is the first demand out of a potential roommate's mouth, you can't be surprised when she adds, "and no cooking meat." No sex and no bacon equals misery and no one wants to live with misery.

Fade

My iPhone forecast for the last week I was in Hawaii: 82, 81, 80, 80, 81, 80.

My iPhone forecast for my first week in New York: 21, 26, 29, 20, 27, 19.

By the time my monthlong stay ended in Hawaii, my friends and family were applauding my tan, saying that my current state was the tannest they'd ever seen me. (Note: I went through a goth phase in college.)

Let's see how long it takes for my tan lines to fade:

Week One in NY

(Thought I'd spare you the more obvious tan line options.)

Merrymaking

Christmas at the Machados' has always been anything but traditional. (For years, our most honored ritual was drinking pina coladas on the beach on Xmas morning. The simple reason being: "cuz we can.")

This year our family decided to forego buying presents for each other (with the exception of my 18-month-old nephew), as well as sitting down for some cliched turkey meal. (This was after conceding that no other food could possibly interest us as much as the shortbread cookies sitting on our kitchen counter, and therefore, we'd be wasting our time pretending to care about protein.)

All in all, it was a wonderfully self-indulgent Christmas. See highlights below.

- My Christmas Eve dinner: A few slices of processed ham and a handful of Doritos. And of course, shortbread cookies.

- My favorite present that wasn't mine: My nephew's rocking horse. It has the mechanics of a mechanical bull (i.e. it's bouncy and creates a rubberband-like, circular, back-and-forth motion), and is therefore, ahem, very pleasurable.

- My Christmas day entertainment: Two hours of "Teen Mom" on MTV. My stepmom, brother and I gathered around the television to critique the disfunction of the reality show's characters, relishing in the fact that they put our own disfunction to shame.

- My Christmas evening: In lieu of a crackling fireplace, my family and I sat in front of a 70-foot screen at the Ward Center Megaplex for the new George Clooney movie, followed by wine, maitais and a discussion about cougars (the women, not the cats).

In conclusion, it was a very blessed holiday indeed.

Farmhand

Because I too have to prove my worth on the family farm, these are the tasks I completed yesterday:

1. For my dad: Downloading an agriculture land use form off the Internet. (He just got his first email account this year and finds the whole Interwebs thing a hassle. This was a fitting assignment for me, having been dubbed "the brain" of the family, i.e. the only one to finish college.)

2. For my stepmom: Baking a rum cake. She was throwing a holiday party and needed a dessert. Naturally, she thought something that involved booze would be my forte. She was right. I added some extra Bacardi and licked the bowl.

3. For my dad: Keeping him company at the mall. His goal was to avoid the dozen or so of my stepmom's friends while they talked about babies, grandbabies, men and PMS and blew through 13 bottles of wine at the house. We came back at 10 p.m. to find most of them still chatting away in the living room. But at least I was able to steal the last piece of rum cake.

Farm

A few months ago my parents moved out of the family home where I was raised on Oahu. They now live on the country side of the island, on a farm in Waimanalo.

This is quite a change from the police sirens and mopeds that buzzed up and down the main drag of our old neighborhood of Kalihi Valley--chaos relegated to the background, and the price of living close to "town."

If my parents' removal from city life is an indicator of age (or maturing priorities), then their everyday life on the farm is concrete evidence of the give-a-shit, laid-back attitude that comes with age. This is not to imply my parents are cripples or inactive; my dad spends most of his day putzing around on a fork lift, while my stepmom cooks rum cakes and does paperwork as she overlooks the Koolau Mountains. But here on the farm, life, and therefore conversation about life, is indeed simpler, and often straight to the point.

Day 2 of my month long visit home:

[I walk into the kitchen to get a bowl a cereal. My Dad is staring out the window by the stove.]

Me: Good morning, Dad.

Dad: [Turns around.] I've got the runs.

Yesterday, 6:30 p.m., when the day is done but it's not quite dinnertime:

[My Dad, Brother and I are sitting on the front deck watching our two dogs hump each other.]

Brother: You should get Waldo fixed, Dad.

Dad: He is fixed.

[Waldo, a plump Dachshund, mounds Bandit, a slender, graceful Boxer, again and again. After several successful attempts, he eventually jumps off.]

Me: Dad, I don't think he's fixed. He's rockin' a boner.

[My Dad picks up oblong-shaped Waldo and turns him upside down. A pink, rock hard protrusion is indeed jutting out perpendicular to his body.]

Dad: [With deep, hoarse laughter.] Holy shit. Waldo's got a hammer! Look at that! That turkey! I thought he was fixed.

[More laughter. My brother, 23, buries his head in shame. Waldo prances around in front of us.]

Dad: [Still laughing.] Waldo, you've got quite a hammer for a little shit!

[My brother grabs the dog--from the front half of his body--and carries him around the corner of the house.]

Brother: I couldn't take it.

Purge

Since I'm leaving Portland for good in three days to head to Hawaii for a month, and then from there, moving straight to New York in the new year, I not only had to strategize wardrobes, but I had to scrutinize how much of my crap I really needed.

At first I planned to get everything I owned into 6 boxes, plus suitcases. I ended up with 15 boxes. Still, I didn't do too badly in the purging department.

Final count dumped:

- 12 large garbage bags shoved in my apartment's trash bins

- 5 bags of clothes, shoes and bags sold to Buffalo Exchange

- 3 boxes of books sold to Powell's

- 2 chairs, 1 sofa, 1 coffee table, 1 end table and 1 TV stand sold off of Craigslist

- Every pot, pan and appliance owned (except espresso machine and blender - Americanos and smoothies are necessities; baking, frying and boiling are not) donated to thrift store

- 1 Jeep Cherokee sold to a man who figured out within 48 hours that it was a piece of shit. (Too late sucka!)

One last view of my studio. Emptied and clean.

Of all purged items, these were the most internal dialogue-provoking:

1. Shot glasses. When it came time to individually wrap these suckers, I realized that I should be past the age where people (as in 20 people) come over and we all do shots together--no matter the circumstance, whether it's before heading out the door to go to a bar or after four beers. At least, I want to be this person, so I threw them away.

2. This brings me to the 9 wine openers I found. If I was to be judged here, let me say that I had only 4 shot glasses and 9 wine openers, therefore my mature drinking habits beat my immature ones. But honestly, these only served as reminders of how many waitressing jobs I've had. Most of them had a winery's name etched in them, a gift to restaurants from wine reps that are usually passed on to servers. I kept 4 of them. They didn't need to be individually wrapped.

3. Discman. I was about to throw this into a box with all the other junk stuffed in my desk drawer when the thought occurred to me, "Under what circumstance will I ever need to use this?" Even if my iPod died tomorrow, I would not find a way to strap this to my body and start running. I would not pack this my carry-on, mostly because then I'd have to carry around a bunch of CDs. Even if I did have a bunch of CDs I'd want to listen to, I'd have to go through them all and plan accordingly what I think I'd want to listen to several hours and days from now. And I'd have to buy some back up AA batteries. If I can get rid of an old cell phone, I can most definitely get rid of skipping, portable CD player with a "fuct" sticker on it.

4. Fondue set. In theory, melted cheese or chocolate would make the ideal dipping sauce for just about anything I like, such as bacon, pears and more cheese. But I never opened it. Sure, using it would take work, like buying the right chocolate and plugging it in, but I think my aversion to the contraption had more to do with the name: Nesting Fondue. I cannot stand the word "nesting"; it's almost as vomit-inducing as "settling," like "settling down." When I think of chocolate and cheese, and pouring such decadence over salty goods, while drinking a glass of a wine, toddlers, mortgages and 401Ks don't come to mind. Maybe "Fornicating Fondue" would've been more enticing.

Dopey

I, Jessica Machado, fan of pre-marital sex, alcohol and caffeine, spent Thanksgiving with 30 Mormons.

As far as setup goes, I need not say much more, except that my Mormon aunt and uncle were sweet enough to offer me a full turkey spread at their friends' house, and I spent the night prior to T-day drinking wine until 2:30 in the morning, putting me in a next-day social haze and further adding to an already awkward situation. In other words, I was a little slow when I shook hands with 27 strangers and tried to explain what I do for a living (freelance writer for a dying paper; long-term grad student; income scrounger) and why I'm moving to NY in a month (No, I don't have a job lined up or a place to live). Although I can usually find common ground with most people, my state at the time, coupled with excessive stuffing and spoonfuls of green bean casserole, made it a little challenging to animatedly explain my existence to a room full of parents, grandparents and charitable folk who give 10 percent of their income to God.

However, in the end, I think I pulled off a fair amount of sociability, and they were none the wiser about my subtle hangover. (The fact that they may have no understanding of such a concept also helps. However, I did give one woman my business card, so she could be reading this right now and busting me.) And yet I didn't necessarily pull off not being a general douchebag.

On the drive home, my uncle made the comment that it was interesting to see me talking to so-and-so, a very nice woman dressed in J Crew, who's about the same age as I am. "It's weird because she has three kids, a house and a family," he said. I joked how she's "so adult" compared to me, to which my aunt innocently replied, "Well, Jessica, some of us are just late bloomers."

I was too dazed to come up with snarky retort.

Bureaucracy

Turns out that writing, recovering, editing and defending a thesis is not enough to earn you the right to say "I turned in my thesis." There is a process, a very specific process, one that involves formatting guidelines and $80 worth of paper, just so three copies of this document will sit in a basement unread for eternity.

While I sloughed through the graduate office's bureaucratic rigmarole, I did manage to find a few "little joys." For example:

1.) I had to come up with a title and abstract for my thesis. I took this to mean I should come up with a catchy title for my memoir and a snappy synopsis for my imaginary book jacket, clever little hooks that will get my non-existent hardcovers to fly off the shelves and on to the NYT Best Seller List. But there was just one problem: Somehow in the four years I thought about writing a memoir, I never gave much thought to what I would call it.

So strapped for time, I went the cheesy route.

In the vain of all the current memoirs on the shelves--Leaving Dirty Jersey: A Crystal Meth Memoir; Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together; and Going Rogue: An American Life--I was very inclined to use a colon.

Failed ideas:

- Project Runaway: One Woman's Determined Journey to Escape Paradise for the Recklessness of Hollywood

- How to Regret Your Twenties: A Guide to Excessive Drinking and Avoiding Your Mother

- Wah!: A Twentysomething's Refusal to Grow Up

The Winner:

- Under the Covers: A Memoir of Reluctance

(Sadly, this really was the best I could come up within a week.)

2.) In a thesis, anything copyrighted that's quoted or described in detail needs to be cited. I had two things listed on the "Works Cited" page of the most important paper of my academic career:

- Motely Crue. “Girls, Girls, Girls.” Girls, Girls, Girls. Elektra, 1987. MTV. 11 May 1987. Music Video.

- Crane, David, and Marta Kauffman. "The One with the Jam." Friends. NBC. 3 Oct. 1996. Television.

3.) When you turn in your thesis, you get a mug that reads "I just turned in my thesis." No joke. I filled it with beer and took four aspirin.

Props

Portland: The City that Accommodates

Baggery

I'm not quite sure when you're too old to be carrying a flask to a party, taking shots of Goldschlager, or begging the convenience store cashier to let you buy a case of beer at 2:03 a.m., but I'm pretty sure it's sometime before the age of 32.

Now, the above scenario would be somewhat excusable on Halloween (which was when this occurred), but when you find yourself playing a drinking game called "Moose" at 3:30 in the morning one week later, you start to wonder if growing up is even plausible.

Because I don't mind further exposing my blatant immaturity and sharing what I learned this weekend (when other "kids" my age were changing diapers, or doing more sophisticated things like the New York Times crossword puzzle or lines of blow), I've created a handbook to playing Washington state party favorite, "Moose." (Being from Hawaii, in college, I only played games like "quarters," which involved, simply enough, flipping a quarter into a shot glass. I didn't even see a beer bong or a keg stand until my midwestern ex-boyfriend demonstrated such classics at a holiday party one year.)

Moose rules:

1) All players pour some of whatever they're drinking (at this point in the morning it was whatever crap beer was left in the fridge - Hamm's, Olympia, PBR) into a mug.

2) Prop up an empty ice tray onto the mug.

(And take inaccurate documentation of such a display. I apologize for the missing mug. It was 2:30 in the morning after all.)

3) Players then take turns bouncing a quarter off of the table and into the ice tray.

4) If the quarter lands in the left column, the "bouncer" (aka the one who threw the quarter) drinks the number of cube spaces reached from the bottom of the tray.

(In this case it was four spaces. And four very long gulps.)

5) If the quarter lands in the right column, the bouncer gets to delegate drinks to whichever player he/she wants based on the number cube spaces reached from the bottom.

(In this case it was five and the player delegated them all to himself.)

6) Whenever a player gets the quarter into one of the very top two spaces, all players race to bring their hands to their heads like antlers and call out "Moose." The last player to call "Moose" has to drink the contents of the mug.

7) If the quarter lands in the mug, the bouncer also has to drink whatever's in the mug. (Depending on how you look at it, I was either the night's biggest winner or the biggest loser. I Moosed every single time. Hence, the lack of photos after this first Moose.)

On an unrelated but oh-so-related note, today, I overheard a woman old enough to be my mother explain the meaning of the word "douchebaguette" to her colleague. Hint: It was the inspiration for this post.