Shot Down

MAYRAV SAAR

Register columnist

I'm not a bad-looking woman. My face is fairly symmetrical; I have nice hair. But future Mayravian scholars won't know this because my husband hates me.

Most husbands - at least I need to believe this - grab their cameras when their wives are all gussied up and looking ravishing. Mine lies in wait, taking aim in the early morning hours when I've just stumbled out of bed, hair mussed, glasses slipping off my greasy nose.

He's like a sniper, shooting when I least expect it - and when I so, so, so don't want it. While brushing my teeth. When blowing my nose.

While pummeled into the couch by the world's nastiest flu.

Bowers could host an exhibit titled "My Ugly Wife"; that's how many unflattering photos he's taken over the years.

I've asked him what motivates him to shoot me when I'm down, and he swears it's a symptom of profound love. A blindness to my glaring flaws and bright red pimples. "You look cute!" he says, which I've taken to mean: "I hate you."

It started in college, when he made fun of photos that some ex-boyfriends had taken, "The Mayrav sitting on rocks by the sea collection" I think he called them. He vowed not to add to the portfolio, not to perch me atop a tide pool and ask me to say cheese.

His photos of me would be different. They'd be real.

They'd be ugly.

I used to have romantic notions of what it meant to be photographed by your lover. Soft lighting, intimate moments. We got the intimate moments, I guess. Nothing more intimate than a close-up of my tonsils as I yawn into the camera while breast-feeding at 3 a.m. But that's not what I meant: I wanted Annie Leibovitz. I got Robert Capa.

There isn't a married woman alive who hasn't sacrificed her girlish fantasies on the altar of "Oh well." After we'd been dating awhile, I dropped the glamour-shot expectations and all but ignored the flashbulb. (This is in direct contrast to Sis, who has this preternatural awareness of cameras. I don't care if she's being photographed on the toilet by an NSA-trained housefly, when the film is developed, she'll be looking right at the camera and smiling gorgeously.) Since I was pregnant with Zev, though, I feel as though every bad pic is an affront to my legacy.

One of my favorite photos in the world is a black-and-white, 8-by-10 glossy of my mom as a 22-year-old. In it, she's a lithe redhead sitting on the floor of her sparse apartment, a cigarette poised between her fingers. Her eyes are lit up like she's just heard something interesting and her lips are parted slightly, as if she's ready to respond. Her pantsuit and shoes are fabulous.

Many, years from now, some woman I may never meet will take this photo off her mantel and tell a friend, "This is my great-great grandmother."

"Wow," her friend will say. "She was beautiful."

"Yeah," she'll muse, pointing to one of my Hubby-taken head shots. "But somehow she had this pock-marked troll for a daughter."

I've tried to explain this to Hubby. I'm not sure he gets it, but I can tell he's trying.

While driving along the coast the other day, he told me I looked great. Then, despite my protests, he reached behind his driver's seat, into his bag for the digital camera. The photo he took could be titled, "Woman worried her crazy husband (who hates her) will get them killed by taking an (expletive) photo while driving."

But, I have to admit, the lighting is nice. And you can hardly see the dark circles under my eyes. Provided he doesn't get me into a disfiguring accident, Hubby might, one of these days, make me look good, after all.

This column appeared in the Orange County Register.

"For Sale" Doesn't Say It All

MAYRAV SAAR

Register columnist





I'm staring at a sign right now. A big, ugly red sign that should read, "Go Away," but instead, for whatever reason, says, "For Sale."

I know it's just a few pieces of wood slapped together and painted, probably against its will, but I can't help deeply loathing this sign.

It is, as they say, a bad sign. I wish it ill.

Behind the sign sits my house. My home. Which, at this writing, has been "for sale" for exactly 12 hours and has already garnered an obscene number of interested callers. I had to flee my own home for half the day with my dog and baby (a lot harder than it sounds) so that some cruel and nasty couple could tromp through it.

Through my home. My house. Which is soon going to be "my old house," or "that place where we used to live."

Forgive me if this sounds quaint. I know Orange County's maddening market has yielded many home-flippers. But this is our first house, which means it's our first time selling a house. Which means this is the first time I've had to come to grips with my home as a commodity, and I don't much care for it.

This is the first place I've ever lived where I could sit peacefully and read for more than a few minutes without fidgeting. We've thrown great parties here. Had our son here. Done a ton of therapeutic gardening here. And now we're going to leave it. Sell it. To someone else.

We're doing the right thing financially and psychically: We're moving to an apartment to cut expenses, and we're moving closer to Hubby's work so he can cut his commute. But I am feeling gutted. And since I can't hide under my covers (our agent says potential buyers are put off by unseemly lumps), I am going to buck up and put together a listing - I mean a list - of things I have learned so far in the process. (You choose your coping mechanism, I'll choose mine.)

1. The previous owners were not as tidy as I had thought. When we first saw the house, I marveled at how Dwell-magazine-like everything looked. They had a 4-month-old baby, a dog and a cat, but the house looked like no one lived in it. Now I know why: Their agent told them it had to. I'll bet you a cramped Accord they stuffed laundry baskets, family photos and baby toys into the back seats of theircars to give their home a more spacious appearance, too.

2. My mother is odd. Aside from suggesting that I bake a cake every time someone is scheduled to come look at the house ("It gives off an inviting smell," she says), she is under the impression that we are not moving, but rather, "running away" from her. "No, Mom," I tell her. "We're moving because it's better for Zev. The fact that you'll be farther away is just an added bonus."

3. Real estate agents eat bunnies for breakfast and wash them down a kitty-puppy puree.

4. My friends are terrible liars. "That's gr that'll be really I think you guys are doing the right thing. I think. Really," has been the predominant reaction.

5. As much as I hate them, "For Sale" signs are entirely too small. Those little placards don't have enough room on them to tell the full story of the homes they advertise.

On the inside of our home, the story is one of a family in transition.

Of a young couple taking a risk and praying it pays off. It is a story both terrifying and exciting - and, at turns, unbelievably sad.

But from the outside, it's just another single-story home, just another house. From the outside, it's just "For Sale."

Driven to dining on food in plastic

MAYRAV SAAR

Register columnist

I’m sucking in the fumes of a white Ford Escort, cursing its pert-looking driver for ordering whatever it is she’s ordered that is taking so long, when my jaw goes slack.

The woman is tossing trash from her car into a garbage can just outside her driver’s side door: One McDonald’s bag. One fountain cup from Jack-in-the-Box. One Starbucks iced frappaccio cup, sucked dry of its contents. Another McDonald’s bag, this one slightly crushed.

"That is just disgusting," I say to my son who is asleep in the back seat. "Who lives like that?"

I feel my nose starting to run and grab an In-N-Out napkin that had been wedged into my cup holder beneath an empty Peet’s coffee cup. I’ll just toss it into that trashcan when I get up to the … Oh. My. God. I’m One Of Them.

In the movies, you know when the zombies are about to eat your brain and turn you into their brethren. But in real life when you join the Drive-Thru People, the change happens gradually, insidiously. One day, you’re just cutting a corner because you’re late for your son’s doctor’s appointment; the next, you’re recognizing the voice of the kid who works the In-N-Out intercom as though he were your brother. "Hi, Dave. It’s me, Mayrav. I’ll have the usual. Is your grandma feeling better?"

Like all things related to my waistline, I blame my son. Zev falls asleep so easily while I drive – and wakes up so easily when I take him out of the car – that I’ve started scarfing my lunches at drive-thrus between his increasingly shorter naps.

I’m stunned that this has happened to me. I was always the health nut of my group. I spent four years as a lacto-ovo vegetarian. Spent the entirety of my teen years eschewing fried foods. There was a time that nothing prepackaged passed through my lips. Now look at me: I’m planning my daily driving route based on where I can most easily find someone to thrust ground meat into my car.

And you know what? I like it. Sure, food tastes better when eaten at, you know, a table. But I’m an American. I demand convenience. What are those men and women fighting for, after all, if not my ability to drip ketchup on my steering wheel? (Seriously, I’ve lost track: What is the reason we’re fighting?) I ain’t getting out of my car unless you got a warrant – or I run out of gas. (Oh, wait! I remember now.)

I’ve decided that everything needs to cater to Drive-Thru People like me. Supermarkets. Dry cleaners. Even friends’ houses. How many more people would you keep in touch with if you could just drive up to their living room window, chat for a few minutes and then motor off? Maybe with a latte for the road. Bet you a bag of Pampers Britney Spears wished her Starbucks was a drive-thru.

I bet this could even fit in with Schwarzenegger’s transportation plan. Eliminate the need for parking lots! Use the extra space to build more roads!

It’s brilliant.

The woman in the Ford Escort gets her sweaty, frothy, iced thingy and drives off, while I inch forward to take her place. I order only a tall coffee. Black. Nothing else, thank you very much.

The chipper barista stammers, "Sure I can’t interest you in a reduced fat blueberry coffee cake?"

"Just the coffee."

"That’s all you want?"

Well, no. I want a complete overhaul of our commercial marketplace. A drive toward isolating convenience at low, low prices. A capitalist capitulation to car culture. A revolution. A dining car revolution!

But, for now, coffee will do just fine.

Pink is the New Black

MAYRAV SAAR

Register Columnist

You can't tell from reading this, but my nipple just popped out of my blouse.

Boop! There it is, all pink and powdered and camera-ready. I'm usually a little more careful with my body parts, more discreet. But a girl like me can't afford to fall behind - and so, instead, I must fall out. Out of my shirt. Out of my dress. But never, ever, out of the camera's view.

When Ms. Jackson had her famous wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl two years ago, the exposure scandalized the country. These days, however, a slipped nipple is all the rage. Forget puggles. If you want to be somebody, you've got to pop out.

Rachel McAdams, Tara Reid, Keira Knightley, Lindsay Lohan. They've all flashed their headlights at paparazzi's flashbulbs in recent months.

It seems pink is the new black, and I am not one to pass up a trend.

I've been out of the public eye now for seven months, and I figure I have a lot of catching up to do. Instead of a subtle "pop," I'm going to have to expose myself round-the-clock.

So if you see me at the grocery store or standing in line at the bank, the answer is, "Yes. I know you can see my nipple. Now go tell a friend."

I can only hope to be as successful as Mischa Barton. Her little Skittle made its primetime debut on - this should make us all proud - "The O.C."

Now, I stopped watching "The O.C." when they killed off Caleb (the show just doesn't pack the same punch without the Donald Bren-like uber-villain). So I missed an actual viewing of Mischa's bobbing boobie. But, boy howdy, I didn't miss hearing about it: television, radio, newspapers. Mischa's mammaries were everywhere. No publicist in the world can get a girl as much exposure as, well, exposure.

I could use some semi-scandal buzz right about now. Stay-at-home mommyhood doesn't pay much, and no velvet rope bouncer cares how many diapers I changed today. I guess I could try to write more. But that's so Alan Greenspan.

These days, it seems, everyone is using her nipples to gain the kind of acclaim once relegated to those other twin workhorses, talent and perseverance.

I'm relieved that a simple slip has come along to free us all from the burden of "hard work" and other nonsense. Woody Allen said he didn't want to achieve immortality through his work; he wanted to achieve it through not dying.

Me, I'm taking another route. Why try when all you have to do to get ahead is pop a little pink? So, girls, put down your math books. The game is over, and our breasts have won.

Still, I am a little confused. I know I've been gone awhile, but wasn't Kabbalah the key to cool not too long ago? Are we supposed to study the 72 names of God andflash everyone we see? I can't keep up.

Or maybe a whole new trend will come along soon. Me, I'm as eager as a beaver to see that day come.

After all, the weather is changing and it's getting a bit too nippy around here.

This column appeared in the Orange County Register

She's got a new full-time job: Being a mom

MAYRAV SAAR

Register Columnist



"Are you going back?"

That's the question all my friends have been asking since I gave birth seven months ago. It doesn't matter that I have declared myself on maternity leave. No one ever asks, "When are you going back to work?" But, "Are you?"

Nick asked most recently. And, as I was feeling particularly honest at the time, I told him the truth.

"I don't want to."

"Of course not," he said. "It's not natural."

I was going to get all raging feminist on his butt. I was going to raise my voice and say things that can't be printed in a family paper.

But I didn't. I couldn't. He's right.

I grew up thinking I could be president. Or an astronaut. Or a firefighting race-car driver/beauty-pageant queen. I'm of the generation of women - maybe the first - who couldn't conceive of a world in which women had fewer opportunities than men.

What no one ever told me was that all those opportunities are really meaningless when squared off with the huffing, sexist drag queen that is Mother Nature.

I was supposed to return to my job as a Register medical writer next month. But something has happened to my very chemical composition that has made returning simply impossible. I don't know what it's like for men after they have a child, but for women the feeling is insane. It's as though the little alien who hijacked my body spent the entirety of his nine-month probe altering every cell in my bloodstream, turning me into a into ... into a mom.

My son had a rough ride into this world. It took six years, a few failed medical procedures and two miscarriages until he finally got here. And then when he did, he almost died. Thanks to the amazing, amazing doctors and nurses at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center and Children's Hospital of Orange County, my son was able to come home when he was 1 month old.

I carried Zev across the threshold of our home, introduced him to his dog, his room, his world and realized that I didn't want to introduce him to his nanny or day-care center provider - or whatever - any time soon. I am madly in love with him, and I want to spend every waking minute in his company.

What kills me is that I know my mom probably felt the same way after she had me.

In my mother's day, women who didn't marry rich were encouraged to be either teachers or airline stewardesses. At least that's what Mom told me. She was a teacher. If she ever wanted to stay at home and raise Sis and me, she never mentioned it. She worked two jobs, supported the family through Dad's various failed business ventures and gave us the space to grow into competent, successful women.

So it shouldn't have been surprising that her first reaction when I told her I was going to quit my job was to exclaim, "You can't be a stay-at-home mom!"

But I can.

Last week, I made it official. It was strange, abandoning a career I love after giving it so much of my energy. It felt a little as though I had stood up in a crowded room and yelled, "I'm a goldfish!" And instead of men in white coats locking me up, suddenly I'm in a bowl full of water with people flinging little pinches of briny flakes at me. I feel like saying, "Wait I could just do that? I could just decide to quit and stay home with my son? Wow."

It'll be tough financially and scary psychically. But among the myriad opportunities I have Mom didn't is to accept these powerful mothering instincts as more than nature's sucker punches. I'm a mom.

I'm Zev's mom. And I'm going to be Zev's mom full time now.

So, no, I'm not going back. Not now, anyway. An incredible opportunity has come up that I just can't pass by.

This column appeared in the Orange County Register.

Poor Bella, caught in the jaws of justice

MAYRAV SAAR
Register columnist

She totally didn't do it.

There is no way that the defendant in the latest trial of the century is any way guilty. I'm not just saying that because she's a well-heeled hipster. I happen to think most celebrities who take the stand are guilty as all get-out - I mean, you went back to the restaurant to get your gunbut you didn't do it? C'mon!

The celebrity in question in this case simply couldn't have done it. Wouldn't have. She's too mild-mannered. Too good-natured. Too waggly-wonderfully furry.

Bella, the 7-year-old border collie mix with the adoring doggy smile, is the latest defendant to fall into the salivating maw of a media all too eager to sink its bared teeth into a juicy story.

It is not enough that Bella's name has been besmirched in the L.A. County Court system; now she has to suffer her whole sordid story being told in print by everyone from well, OK, I'm the only reporter writing about it, but you get the point: Not even a sweet border collie mix can escape the celebrity-trial machine.

I have never shared a bed with Bella, but had I, she wouldn't have laid a paw on me. Nor could she have possibly injured the woman who filed a six-figure lawsuit against poor Bella on allegation of severe ankle biting.

Yes. Six figures.

The story goes something like this: A professional celebrity dog-walker strolled two Weimaraners past the Hollywood Hills home of dear, old Bella. Bella's human, Keith - one of the greatest men on the planet - was not home at the time, and the housekeeper was taking the girl for a walk. According to the lawsuit, Bella, "without provocation or reason," "viciously and savagely" gave Dog Walker's ankle a good crunch, causing the kind of damage that will require plastic surgery and, apparently, a decade's worth of dog-walking fees to ameliorate.

We're supposed to ignore the fact that Bella's covered under homeowners' insurance and therefore has some deep doggy pockets from which to pick. Dog Walker refused a settlement offer and has decided to take this thing to trial, even if that means hiring a doggy behaviorist to evaluate Bella's personality and - I'm not making this up - subpoenaing the Weimaraners to determine whether their jaws better match the wounds on her ankle.

"This is dog-biting 'CSI,' " said Bella's barrister, Laguna Beach attorney Thomas Quinn.

"I've had people transported from the men's colony in San Luis Obispo to appear for trial, but I've never had to look into subpoenaing somebody's dog," Quinn said. "When you take the totality of the circumstances surrounding this case, it's a little goofy."

Goofy? Bella has an attorney. No kidding it's goofy.

Not only that, but Bella has a character witness list two pages long that includes actors, the bartenders at Birds, Hollywood moguls and, if needed, my dog, Sketch. Sketch, who has been known to cavort and snuggle with Bella, refused comment for this column because she doesn't speak to the press. (Actually, she doesn't speak at all. But she can flop her ears in front of her eyes in a way that would make your heart melt. And that should be good enough for any jury.)

I know Michael Whatshisname and Phil Spectowhatever will likely dominate the news for a few more months. But next spring, when Bella's trial is set to start, the media will be looking for a new celebrity nose to rub in the stink.

When it invariably turns on poor Bella, just keep in mind that the sweet fuzz ball has never shoplifted, killed a spouse or participated in insider trading. I don't want to see her mug on "E! True Hollywood Stories."

I just hope that once this winds its way through the justice system and through the court of public opinion, Bella will no longer have to measure her every bark. She will be free to beg at a table without being construed as manipulative. She'll be able to bite the fleas on her bum without someone arching a brow.

She'll have her life back. She'll have her good name restored. And like every defendant who licks her privates in public, she'll have her dignity.

Coming clean about loathing baby showers

MAYRAV SAAR


Register columnist

Imagine you get an invitation in the mail that reads:

"Please
join a group of people you only kinda know for three excruciating hours
of finger food and small talk. Feign a smile as a woman you work with
eats melted chocolate out of a baby diaper! Other games include:
Peppering fertility-challenged women with insensitive questions!
Indulging the bug-eyed lady who insists on showing you her C-section
scar! Pretending to care as someone you spent too much money on opens
presents that she chose herself and basically made you buy! RSVP by May 19."

Baby
showers are weird. There's no getting around that. There is nothing
normal about sitting in a circle, passing around the pajamas of someone
you haven't yet met and cooing.

So I let everyone know early in my pregnancy that I don't want a baby shower.

You would have thought I told them that I plan to become a mermaid and raise my child to speak fluent flounder.

"What do you mean you don't want a baby shower?" every woman in my life has asked.

I want to answer: "Well, I mean that I - the person standing here in front of you talking- feel a lack of desire for - meaning a wish to avoid- a baby shower - which is a type of party that, if I'm not mistaken, you nearly always complain about having to go to."

Instead,
I blame my superstitious Jewish heritage, in which we don't celebrate
anything that hasn't happened yet because, as a friend of a friend of
mine put it, we really are a gloomy people.

It's customary in
Jewish tradition to forgo baby showers, with all their
you're-just-asking-for-trouble anticipation. We have much more sane
baby-related gatherings. Like a bris, in which we invite our family to
nosh on chopped liver while a hairy man circumcises our sons. (OK.
Maybe I'll have to drop that argument.)

The truth is, there are
plenty of Jews who have baby showers. I just don't want to be one of
them because: 1. A large part of me is legitimately superstitious; 2.
Baby showers suck; and 3. Baby gear is creepy.

I know I'm
supposed to outfit my house with Binkies and Boppies and Lord-knows
what-elsies. But try spending an hour at Babies 'R' Us and tell me you
don't break out in a cold sweat. Maybe I saw "Rosemary's Baby" at too
young an age, but baby strollers seem to portend evil. Mobiles are like
little circular horror movies complete with their own soundtracks. And
highchairs look like they could come alive in the night and kill your
dog.

Hubby and I have long wanted a baby. But neither of us really wants baby stuff.

I
know we're being unrealistic. Babies need stuff. They need a place to
sleep, clothes to wear, colorful dangly things to activate their
imaginations.

We get it. We are excited to provide it. We just
don't want to get it all before there's a baby around to employ any of
it. We don't want it to sit in our house with its maniacal
cheerfulness, like a porcelain clown doll calling out to us from
another room, "I want to play a game. If you don't play with me, I will
make up my own game."

Now, the pop psychologists out there will
likely write me all kinds of letters saying I'm simply projecting my
anxiety about impending motherhood on inanimate objects. Maybe they're
right. But I ask you to consider, just consider, the possibility that
I'm right. That baby fetishizing smacks of foreboding, baby showers are
interminable and baby stuff is eerie. I mean, even women who don't much
like me have offered to throw me showers. That right there tells me
there's an element of sadism in these things.

Sit with that for
a little bit. Contemplate it. Let it gestate. If you still think I'm
wrong, gift-wrap some onesies, break out the Huggies and pop that
Snickers in the microwave. Just don't expect me to show up to the party.