I Need a Lifeguard Everywhere but the Pool

by Lisa Scottoline

  I bet no women like testicles.

  I bet men don’t like them, either.

  I mean, really.

  Do they own a mirror?

  Anyway, to stay on point, the male hormone shots worked, because they produced a pregnancy rate of 1.57 per 100.

  So apparently you can be half-pregnant.

  Maybe even one-and-a half-pregnant.

  This was great news for the people who ran the study, because it was the same level of effectiveness as the birth-control pill that women have been taking for decades.

  So far, so good, right?

  No.

  The study was halted because of the side effects of the shots. I did some research into what the side effects were, and some of the men complained of moodiness and depression.

  Just like female birth control.

  But evidently we handle it better?

  Or maybe we’re not used to complaining.

  Or maybe nothing happens when we do?

  Or maybe, just maybe, we’re more manly than the men getting testosterone shots.

  Which is pretty damn manly.

  But still, the news story didn’t make sense to me.

  So I kept digging to see what other side effects the men reported, and apparently, another one was increased libido.

  Hello.

  I’ve never known a man to complain of increased libido. Though I have known of women to complain of a man’s increased libido.

  Thanks, Viagra.

  Since that side effect didn’t make sense to me either, I kept digging, and I learned that the final side effect reported was acne.

  Hmm.

  I’ve never known a man to care if he has a zit, especially if there was a possibility of sex.

  Only women think that zits make sex more unlikely.

  Either way, I have a cure.

  Turn out the light.

  So then I dug a little more, and I found the one fact that wasn’t widely reported—the injection of the hormone shot had to be “just above” the scrotum.

  Now look, I admit, what I know about men can barely fill a test tube.

  But I have common sense.

  And my guess is that a needle in the balls was more than most men could deal with, and who can blame them?

  I tried to learn online about what “just above” meant, but I expect for most men, that might be a distinction without a difference.

  Notice I didn’t say splitting hairs.

  By the way, my research also showed that the injections were bimonthly, and I looked up whether that meant twice a month or every other month. And according to the Oxford Dictionary, it can mean either.

  What?

  Doesn’t that make a difference?

  Especially if you’re the man getting a needle in his balls?

  I think you might be able to turn his frown upside down if you said it was every other month.

  But if it’s twice a month, most men might say no, thanks.

  Now that would be a side effect that would end a study.

  So we have our answer.

  There won’t be male birth control unless we can find a better way to deliver it to men.

  Like in beer.

  In any event, the whole idea of men using birth control might be an exercise in be-careful-what-you-wish.

  I used to think that male birth control would be a wonderful idea, but honestly, I wouldn’t want to delegate my birth control to somebody else, especially a guy who always forgets where he put his car keys, socks, and phone.

  After all, if he makes a mistake, only one of us is left holding the bag.

  So to speak.

  Remote Control Freak

  Lisa

  My life has just been changed.

  How, you ask?

  Did I win the lottery?

  Did I meet a man and fall in love?

  More realistically, did I get another dog?

  No, I got a new remote control.

  And it changed my life.

  I’m still trying to decide if this means something great about me or something awful.

  On the Great side of the ledger is that it’s the simple things in life that matter.

  On the Awful side of the ledger is that remote controls are not what they mean when they say it’s the simple things in life that matter.

  And actually, what I think they say is that the best things in life are free, and let me tell you, Comcast is certainly not free.

  But for good or for ill, I just got married, and this time it’s forever.

  The deal was clinched by my new remote control, which is the latest and greatest incarnation that the company offers, and for that, I owe thanks to you, my beloved readers.

  How so?

  We begin our story when I do the laundry, which happens about once a month, no kidding.

  I will let my sheets rot before I wash them, mainly because ain’t nobody sweating in my bed, if you follow.

  You will recall that dogs don’t sweat.

  I hate doing the laundry and so generally I gather up the sheets and a blanket really carelessly, roll them up into a ball, and stuff them in the washing machine and get it started. Invariably, somewhere in the middle of the cycle, the machine will stop and its yellow light will blink UL, which stands for uneven load.

  I’m like, you’re telling me.

  My load in life has been uneven for a long time.

  And where can I find somebody to do mommy’s laundry?

  So you get the idea, I’m so careless with doing laundry that last week when I washed my sheets, I accidentally washed my TV remote, so it’ll be really clean for the next time I wear it.

  And if that’s not dumb enough, the next time I did the sheets, I washed the remote that I replaced it with, but miraculously, it still worked after. But the point of the story is that I posted on Facebook about the miraculous remote control that worked even after it went through the washing machine, and one of you genius readers posted:

  “Lisa, you have the old remote.”

  That was all I needed to hear.

  And now I have the new remote, which not only changed my life, but renewed my faith in American ingenuity.

  Uh-oh!

  Number one, it only has one button to turn the TV on and off, the way God intended.

  This is a little-known fact, but it was actually Satan who invented the idea that you had to press a TV button and turn that on or off, then press a Cable button and turn that on or off.

  The work of the devil.

  Or the cable company.

  Number two, the new remote control has voice recognition, so if you want to turn the channel to NBC, you just say, “NBC” to the remote.

  In other words, you can actually talk to the remote control and have it do what you say—when you say it!

  How many women have ever experienced that sensation?

  Not this one.

  Yet another reason I’m sure this marriage will last forever.

  Finally, and best of all, the remote control actually knows when it’s dark out and lights up if you pick it up at night, which if you ask me, is the reason science was invented in the first place.

  I remember writing long ago that I used to be jealous of Daughter Francesca’s remote control in New York City, which has a button that you could turn on to light up the remote. But now, here in Philadelphia, we don’t even have to press a button.

  Our remote controls just know.

  So it’s a brave new world for me, and for you too, if you get this new remote.

  It didn’t even cost anything extra, above and beyond my normal monthly cable bill of $2,938,749,399,393.20.

  Because the best things in life really are free.

  The Bridal Shower 2.0

  Francesca

  We need to talk about bridal showers.

  We’ve been kicking the can of this conversation down the last hundred years, and our procrastination has resulted in some stale, kinda sexist party games slipping under the rada
r.

  Gals, we can do better.

  Women used to get married a lot younger than we do now. At the turn of the century, when bridal showers first gained popularity, a woman achieved menarche and was ready for marriage.

  You know the tradition is old, because they still called your period “menarche.”

  Back then, you packed everything you owned—a mother-of-pearl hair-comb and a couple of pairs of hand-sewn bloomers—into a bindle and walked from your dad’s house to your husband’s.

  It was easy to throw a great party in those days. You didn’t have to compete with smartphones.

  Some of these bridal-shower games were amusingly quaint in the 1950s, they’re getting weird for a millennial bride.

  For example, we have to stop treating bridal showers like housewife job training.

  A.) Keeping house isn’t only a woman’s job anymore, and B.) chores aren’t that complicated or fun.

  I’ve heard of a shower game where the bride is blindfolded and she has to guess the kitchen utensil by touch alone.

  Unless this is prep for kinky kitchen sex, this game is past its sell-by date.

  Come to think of it, that might be a great update! Blindfold the bride and have her reach into a bag to guess: sex toy OR kitchen utensil?

  Hmm, is that a rolling pin or a—

  Okay, maybe we’ll save it for the bachelorette party.

  Then there’s the classic request that shower guests bring recipe cards. My friends and I love to cook, but as soon as you make it “womenfolk only,” you suck the fun out of it for millennial women.

  It makes me want to write, “ORDER TAKEOUT” or “WHAT’S FOR DINNER? I DUNNO, ASK HIM” in protest.

  And about the card part—I never have one, I always have to make a special trip to Staples to buy a pack of three hundred index cards, and, after using one for this recipe, promptly misplace the other 299. And I’m sorry, but no woman my age has a physical recipe box.

  Today’s recipe box fits in your pocket and it’s called the Internet.

  Maybe we could email our recipes to the bride and groom, unless email is too impersonal.

  But then the happy couple could store them on the Cloud along with their naked pictures.

  The Cloud is the most personal.

  And while old family recipes are worth passing down, older female relatives have a lot more to offer than casserole recipes. My friend’s shower had a great twist they called “words of wisdom” cards, where the married women read aloud their best marital advice.

  These grande dames got real.

  I found myself wanting to take notes on the back of my recipe card.

  Maybe I was so into it because all the women in my family have been divorced.

  At my bridal shower, only those divorced once can offer wisdom cards.

  The ones divorced twice will provide the business card of their favorite lawyer.

  Just for the prenup, of course. Do you really think I’d let Pip’s custody fall to litigation?

  I need pre-pup.

  Secondly, I completely understand the need for icebreakers among bridal-shower guests, often an intergenerational group from different families and social circles. But why are so many bridal-shower games vaguely humiliating?

  As a guest, I can’t say I love the toilet-paper-dress game. The one where teams of guests compete to create the best bridal gown out of toilet paper.

  Toilet paper stopped being hilarious when I turned ten.

  You TP the house of the neighbors you hate, you TP a wet public toilet seat, and you TP your actual butt.

  Don’t TP your friends.

  Every gown comes out looking like a lazy Halloween costume. Toilet paper is a really difficult material to work with. I’m pretty sure there’s a Project Runway episode to back this up.

  Not to mention the awkwardness of choosing teams, then choosing the “model” bride, and finally naming one team a winner and the rest losers.

  There’s enough tension among the bride’s friends as it is—bridesmaids vs. regular guests, Maid of Honor envy, the childhood friends and the college friends facing off like the Sharks and the Jets. We can’t handle any more competition.

  Although, if the games are going to put someone on the spot, I’d rather it be the guests than the bride. I once went to a shower where the bride was quizzed on trivia about her fiancé in front of everyone.

  You might as well rename this the “Future In-Laws Judge the Bride” game.

  I’m not a fan of quizzing the bride on anything, but if we must, let’s ask her questions about the hubby that are helpful for a wife to know.

  Questions like, how many drinks can he tolerate at a dinner before he puts his foot in his mouth?

  Does he really know how to fry a whole turkey, or is he going to blow himself up in the backyard?

  What’s his email password?

  Credit score?

  At least these answers could come in handy.

  Why are we giving the bride a hard time? The woman is planning a giant party to feed you expensive finger food while she herself is suffering through a yearlong pre-wedding diet. Do not push her right now.

  Instead, let’s ask the guests to play a game to see how well we know the bride. Maybe have everyone bring a favorite picture with the bride and share the memory behind it.

  Flattering memories, obviously. Not spring break ’07.

  Never spring break ’07.

  This would give the groom’s side of the family who might not know the bride as well valuable insight into the many wonderful facets of the bride’s personality and past.

  I basically want the whole shower to be one giant advertisement for the bride.

  The groom’s family should leave not only wanting her to marry their son, they should want her to run for office.

  The purpose of the bridal shower is to celebrate the bride, and to make two different families and many groups of friends unite in support of her marriage. That’s a tradition worth preserving.

  And I guess, if it really means a lot to you, TP me.

  House Dreams

  Lisa

  I finally figured out why I’m addicted to home improvement.

  It’s all Barbie’s fault.

  To give you some background, like most little girls, I had a Barbie doll. I remember her distinctly because she had a blond ponytail with weird curly bangs, red lipstick, and a strapless black-and-white bathing suit that could never stay up.

  Slutty Barbie.

  This was back in the days when kids only had one Barbie, but bought a bunch of different clothes for them and dressed them in different outfits.

  The Dark Ages, Toy-wise.

  Back when blocks were made of wood, books were made of paper, and a remote-controlled toy was one you pulled on a string.

  I had a Gaylord The Walking Dog, now sold online as a vintage toy.

  Oy.

  Anyway, to stay on point, though I had Barbie, I didn’t love her as much as I loved her house.

  Who can forget Barbie’s Dream House?

  It was a rectangular box of turquoise cardboard that unfolded to make a layout of a living room with a cardboard console television, squarish cardboard furniture, with a cardboard pink vanity on one wall, inexplicably.

  Or maybe not inexplicably, since it was Barbie’s, and God knows she was vain.

  Amazingly, I don’t have to remember what the Barbie Dream House looked like because I got my Dream House back as an adult, and like many things in my life, it came to me through the beneficence of my readers. One day I got an email from a wonderful couple in New Jersey, saying that they had found an old Barbie Dream House at a tag sale and that my name was inside it, and to make a long story short, they gifted it to me.

  And now I have my actual original Barbie Dream House.

  Which needs as much work as my real house.

  But I never made the connection between the Barbie Dream House and my real house until last weekend, when I got another harebraine
d home-improvement scheme.

  To wit, I decided to paint my front door.

  Maybe because the new garden room, still under construction, looks out on the flowers, which are so colorful, but whatever the reason, it started to bother me that my front door is plain white, like the front of the house. I’ve always liked houses that have a different color front door, so I became obsessed with the idea of doing something bold in my front door.

  I even found a paint company that will sell you a paint-your-own-door kit, complete with brushes, high-lacquer paint, and a bottle of wine.

  I’m only kidding about the wine.

  But the question is, what color should the door be?

  You may remember that I painted my shutters a yellow that turned out to be so bright I have to wear sunglasses, but mercifully, the color has faded over time, so now it’s merely radioactive.

  So I tried to think about what color door would go with insanely yellow shutters, and some of the choices were a lovely forest green, a cobalt blue, or even a bright red, which looked too McDonald’s.

  Do you want fries with that?

  But then I started to think about it, and I realized a door color is probably the most important color in the house, because it’s the first thing you see every time you come home. It should make you feel welcome and happy. So I asked myself, Lisa, what’s your favorite color?

  I chose a pink from a slew of different pinks and showed the paint chip to Daughter Francesca, who instantly said:

  “That’s Barbie pink.”

  I realized she was exactly right.

  And I made the connection between the Barbie Dream House and my real house, which I’m trying desperately to turn into my dream house before I die.

  So I’m painting my door Barbie pink.

  Why?

  Because we girls can do anything.

  SuperLisa

  Lisa

  I wasn’t born yesterday.

  So I have no excuse.

  But I am easily the most gullible person I know.

  How do I know this?

  For starters, I married Thing One and Thing Two.

  But specifically today, I’m talking about believing a lot of dumb food claims, which has resulted in me buying a lot of dumb foods that fill my pantry. All I have to do is open the door and I see evidence of my own folly, staring me right in the face.

  Let’s begin with teff.