I've Got Sand In All the Wrong Places

by Lisa Scottoline

“Glass table broke. Service guy coming to clean this afternoon. Wear shoes on deck.”

  We looked outside. “Broke” wasn’t the right word. The glass table had exploded. A layer of glass shards blanketed the wooden deck like snow.

  Sharp, dangerous, foot-slicing snow.

  The beautiful deck we couldn’t walk on and the inviting pool with broken glass on the bottom

  There were even pieces glittering at the bottom of the pool.

  We opened the sliding door to get a better look and heard a beep.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Oh, it says, ‘child-safe alarm.’” My friend peered at a small box by the door. “I guess to alert parents if the kid goes out to the pool alone.”

  I nodded. “Smart.”

  Then a siren pierced the air with a wail so loud we ducked for cover.

  The beep was the warning; the siren was the alarm.

  Mercifully, we closed the door and it silenced. But it took trial and earsplitting error to figure out how the alarm system worked:

  If you opened any of the three doors leading to the back, you had ten seconds to exit and close the door again, or the siren would go off. And the kicker?

  The doors locked automatically behind you.

  An alarm system that forces you to keep an un-air-conditioned house hermetically sealed in July and forces you to lock yourself out?

  Not smart.

  The alarm struck me as more anti lawsuit than anti drowning.

  We couldn’t live with this all week, so we set about figuring out how to disable it without permanent damage. My friend has a head for engineering, so she performed surgery to the back of it.

  It was like the game Operation, with a more annoying penalty sound.

  On Independence Day, two of my friends, including our host, left for a thirty-mile bike ride. Exercising my American right not to exercise on vacation, I stayed back, along with the other two. We had heard of a lawn party nearby and decided to check it out.

  We were in the car ready to go when my guy friend realized he forgot something. He jogged back to the house while we waited. A minute later, we heard the burglar alarm go off.

  It was a tremendous sound from halfway down the driveway. We ran to the house to help, and at the front door, it was deafening.

  Our poor guy friend clutched his ear with one hand while frantically pushing buttons with the other.

  If the security system was like the one I grew up with, the next step was a call from the alarm company that we’d have to answer and explain it was a false alarm or the cops would come. I ran into the house to look for the house phone, but we’d been using our cells all week, I had no idea where they kept the actual telephone. God knows I couldn’t hear it ring.

  By now, the blaring alarm was causing brain damage. We bailed and ran out of the house.

  As soon as we landed on the lawn, the alarm finally stopped.

  “I swore I got the code right,” my guy friend said.

  “What do we do now, will the police come?” asked another. We weren’t afraid of arrest, but we didn’t want to get our host in trouble with her boss.

  I had the idea that we should call the security company and report the false alarm, you know, “get ahead of it.”

  I saw that on Scandal.

  I found the little lawn sign from the company and Googled the main number.

  Then I waited on hold for twenty-three minutes. In case of an actual home invasion, that response time seemed less than ideal.

  Finally, a representative answered; I gave her the address of the house and told her what happened.

  “What’s the name on the account?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure. We’re just renters.”

  “Okay, but who are you renting from?”

  “Um…” I looked to my friends, but they didn’t know either. “We’re not sure. Our friend is the main renter, well, technically her boss is, and they’re not here right now, so…”

  “I can also look it up with the home phone number.”

  I had never found the house phone, and I definitely didn’t know the number. “We don’t know that either.”

  It sounded bad. We had zero of the information a plausible renter would know. I began to doubt my wisdom of “getting ahead of it” by essentially reporting our own burglary to a security company in the shadiest way possible.

  We were guilty of breaking and rentering.

  The customer service woman asked me to repeat the address. I bit my lip as I listened to her rapid typing, almost certain she was forwarding it to police dispatch.

  “There’s no active account for that house. Sometimes people have our security system installed, but then stop paying for our services and leave the alarm.”

  I thanked her and hung up, relieved.

  Another clever alarm by the house’s owners. These hair-trigger security systems may or may not succeed in scaring off burglars, but they’ll sure as heck scare off repeat renters.

  Spaghetti and Salad

  Lisa

  They say you should never talk about politics or religion.

  But these days, politics is religion.

  And I think that’s a wonderful thing.

  This way, instead of not talking about two things separately, you can not talk about two things together.

  This is much more efficient.

  It’s like if you were going to have dinner of spaghetti and salad. In the old days, we ate them separately, but these days, we mix the spaghetti and the salad together and eat them that way.

  Doesn’t that sound delicious?

  Isn’t that better?

  This way, we’re doing two things at once, and we all know that that always yields better results.

  Except when you’re driving.

  The one thing we all agree on is that drinking and driving is not for the betterment of society.

  Neither is texting and driving.

  Or talking on the phone and driving.

  Or doing anything else but driving while you’re driving, but nevertheless, people do this every day.

  We love to combine things.

  That’s how we roll.

  Usually we’re rolling into a divider, but never mind that right now.

  It’s interesting to contrast today with the way things used to be. Because if you look back, history didn’t combine things the way we do.

  For example, our forefathers did not see the wisdom in combining things. They were old-fashioned that way, and I’m sure they didn’t eat spaghetti and salad together.

  They didn’t think politics and religion should be combined, and in fact they wrote that down on a piece of paper, like a Things To Do List for America.

  One of the items on the list was to Keep Church and State Separate.

  But what did they know?

  And who does everything on their Things To Do List?

  Overachievers.

  Obviously, we’ve improved on that separation-of-church-and-state nonsense this political season, when the first thing every politician tells you is which God he believes in, how much harder he believes in his God than the other politicians, and which God qualifies you to be the best politician.

  Good to know.

  By the way, just so we’re clear, both Democrats and Republicans do this.

  Which is all for the better.

  It makes politics a lot easier for everyone.

  Because then you can just choose the guy who’s on the same team you are and that saves the politician the time of thinking up anything good for the country.

  (Or you.)

  And it also saves the politician the time he’d spend talking about the economy, unemployment, war, education, health care, and other issues that are totally boring.

  I myself am going to vote for the most religious politician I can find. He should wave a Bible in each hand and balance one on his head at the same time that he recites from one.

  In fact, if he could juggle Bibles, he shou
ld be president.

  Automatically.

  That’s my religious test.

  Who can juggle the most Bibles?

  Anyway, in the midst of these extremely pious politicians comes Pope Francis, a bona fide religious leader.

  And he didn’t even talk about religion.

  True, he talked about God, but he didn’t speak only to his team, and he talked to people who don’t believe in God at all.

  Can you think of a single politician who will say something nice about atheists?

  Instead, the Pope talked about the golden rule.

  He said we should be closer to one another and support each other.

  He talked about how we should take care of the less fortunate among us.

  And he showed what he thought we should be doing, by hugging people, kissing babies, and visiting the sick and senior citizens.

  Others talked about religion for him, and they set up his stage with all the stuff, symbols, and signs.

  And all of the politicians who introduced the Pope talked about religion more than he did.

  The politicians pandered to the Pope.

  This can’t be helped.

  They wake up like this.

  They tell people what they think people want to hear.

  So they can get what they want from people, which is your vote and your money.

  But Pope Francis didn’t want anything from anybody.

  Except to send a message.

  And the message was love.

  I’ll vote for that.

  Holiday FOMO

  Francesca

  Why are we always so anxious to do something cool on a holiday?

  On any average weekend, I have my choice of movie dates, improv shows, and some friend’s band concerts to go to. But come Halloween, New Year’s, Labor Day, or Cinco de Mayo, I’m always scrounging for plans.

  This happened again this Fourth of July. I thought I was safe from holiday FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out, since I was spending the week with pals at that Hamptons rental. But then Independence Day arrived, gray and rainy—two of my friends had taken their bikes out early, while the remaining three of us, myself, a girl, and a guy, found ourselves sitting around the living room, half-reading, half-looking at our phones, experiencing existential crises via Instagram and Facebook.

  Codependence day.

  Even when I have plans, there’s nothing to do.

  But then that glorious sound, mechanical and yet angelic:

  A text message chimed in on my phone.

  It was from this guy I’d been crushing on, and it read: “Are you coming to the lawn party for the Last Chance Animal Rescue? It’s EPIC.”

  Not the typical adjective to describe a daytime charity benefit. I replied, “I’m imagining a DJ while holding a kitten with headphones on.”

  “That’s actually happening.”

  My friends and I were intrigued. Also desperate. At the very least, this sounded like something we could exaggerate on social media.

  We hopped in the rental car, and headed out.

  When we put the address into our GPS, the pin dropped in the center of unidentified green space. As we drove along on the winding, wooded road, we began to see cars parked along the street.

  “Is this for the party?”

  “It can’t be, the GPS says we’re still five minutes away.”

  But as we went on, more and more cars were parked, some dangerously close to blind curves, until the road was completely lined with them.

  We tucked our rented Toyota Corolla behind a red BMW convertible and walked the rest of the way. As we got closer, we could hear dance music thumping through the forest.

  “Seriously, what is this?” my friend asked.

  We were about to find out. We followed others to the base of a long driveway, the sides of which were clearly reserved for the prestige cars. Porsches were the most common, but I also saw a couple Bentleys, a Maserati, and lots and lots of these boxy Mercedes SUVs styled to look like military vehicles, presumably marketed to civilian men with small penises.

  Another thing that became clear as we hiked up the drive in our flip-flops was that we were not dressed appropriately for this “lawn party.” The women exiting these cars were dressed to the nines: hair blown out, false lashes, sky-high heels, designer duds.

  The men were dressed more casually, but they wore the women like accessories. A guy with a popped collar passed us flanked on either side by two model-thin women in those Herve Leger bathing suits that you can’t get wet, sheer chiffon cover-ups, and gladiator stilettos sandals. All three wore designer sunglasses, and none was smiling.

  “No, but seriously, where are we?”

  We walked over to an information table manned by a model-thin woman and about six burly bouncers.

  She greeted us, and said there was a donation to get in.

  I didn’t see any signage for a charity anywhere. “This benefits the animal rescue?”

  “A portion does.”

  I opened my wallet to see what I could give.

  “It’s fifty for women, two hundred for men.”

  I looked at her, aghast.

  She smiled. “We accept credit.”

  First off, charging different prices for men and women is demeaning at a nightclub, but at a charity benefit? And second, three hundred bucks to drink beer outside, and we wouldn’t even get to hold a puppy? She had to be out of her mind.

  We decided to bail. The whole way back down the drive, we giggled at how bizarre the scene was. The level of privilege was insane, and we said that knowing we were plenty privileged ourselves.

  My guy friend shook his head. “I’m just glad we parked the Corolla down the street.”

  But we were also poking fun at it to reassure each other that we weren’t missing out on the most glamorous, epic Pimp-My-Animal-Shelter Party ever.

  At the base of the driveway, an unusual scene caught my eye: a couple that had just exited a cab.

  “You are so adorable, you have to take a picture with me!” the woman squealed.

  The driver, an older Indian man, looked uncomfortable as the woman made a series of hot-girl poses beside him and her boyfriend snapped pics on an iPhone.

  I wasn’t sure what I was watching, but it gave me a bad feeling in my stomach.

  “Ohmigod, thank you, you’re so cute,” she said and scampered away. The driver got back in the car, and the couple walked up the driveway toward us.

  As they passed, I overheard the girl snicker. “He smelled so bad.”

  It sucked the glamour out of the scene for sure.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the town, getting fancy with our recipe plans for our July Fourth feast, buying fish and clams right off the dock. The three of us got a head start on the cooking before our amazing cyclist pals got home, and we all finished dinner in time to get a primo fireworks-watching spot on the beach.

  While we were lying on our backs in the sand, we tried to describe the party to our other friends, but they didn’t believe us. So, I Googled it, and I found an article with the following details:

  No FOMO here

  The property where the party was held was the home of TV Hercules Kevin Sorbo, rapper Ja Rule was there, a small fire got started, two people nearly died from alcohol poisoning, and the cops shut it down less than an hour after we left.

  If we didn’t know better, we would’ve been afraid we’d missed a great party.

  Game of Thrones

  Lisa

  If you read me, you know that I get jazzed about certain products.

  And then I spread the word, herein.

  I’d like to do that right now, with a short preface before I get to the point.

  This, instead of my usual endless preface before I get to the point.

  Getting to the point isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

  So here we go.

  First, my favorite product in the world is my books.

  And thank you for your supp
ort.

  Second, any one of my books would go very nicely with the product I am about to recommend, but this is where we come to another preface. The following is for mature audiences only.

  Also my readers.

  If you like what I write about, and the way I write about it, you should feel free to keep reading. I say this with confidence because if you meet all of the above criteria, then you have endured stories about bunions, gray chin hairs, and adult diaper rash. And through my misadventures, I’ve recommended products I love, like Boudreaux’s Butt Paste, ThermaCare, and Bradley Cooper.

  In other words, you know way too much about me and you don’t mind. Maybe you can relate.

  Or you have a strong stomach.

  And a great sense of humor.

  Even if your breasts sag.

  So what?

  Unsaggy breasts aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, either.

  I mean, we get it, girls.

  Soon you’ll be us.

  Anyway, to inch closer to my point, there’s an ick factor to the discussion of my second-favorite product, so if I haven’t cured you of your prissiness so far, check out now.

  Because we’re entering the throne room with my favorite new throne.

  The Squatty Potty.

  I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but it’s my new love.

  I heard about the Squatty Potty on the radio, and I thought it sounded like an interesting idea. Bottom line, and no pun, it’s basically a stool that fits around the base of your toilet, and so when you sit on the toilet, it raises your legs into a squatting position.

  Still with me?

  Good. Either way. You can’t please everybody, and the people who continue to read will have their life changed.

  Or at least their colon.

  By the way, I have no problem in the bathroom.

  Only in the bedroom.

  In that I sleep with five dogs and a remote control.

  Plus I’m no doctor, but I believe the Squatty Potty website, which says that squatting relaxes the puborectalis muscle, or basically, a kink in your colon. When you use your Squatty Potty, your colon gets unkinked.

  Again, not a medical term.

  I have a J.D., not an M.D.

  But I like the idea that a squatting position is more natural for your anatomy. It may be a sign of the times that I’ve fallen in love with a toilet, but I don’t view it as being about elimination. I view it as being about my health and by my health I mean me living as long as humanly possible and then some.