Suburban Noir

I've Moved

2009-05-28T12:11:00.001-07:00

I was enticed to move my rants to wordpress.com. You can find me at my website or in my new blog home:

My website: www.cathryngrant.com
Rants: Cathryn G-rant
Flash Fiction: Flash Fiction for the Cocktail Hour

That Stinks!

2009-04-14T09:54:00.000-07:00

The world assaults my nasal passages every day. I feel light-headed as the stink of fabric softener sheets wafts across a patch of grass and into my car window as I drive through the neighborhood, feel sickened as women doused in scent sit beside me in movie theaters and restaurants. I hate the acrid smell that's laced through most perfumes, colognes, body lotions, bar soaps, laundry detergents and air "fresheners".

Fill my nostrils with fresh cut grass, pine trees, eucalyptus pods, roses, a body of fresh or salty water, garlic simmering in oil, roasting beef, but stop invading my life through my nose with the bitter stench of perfumes that are supposed to smell "spring fresh", "outdoor clean" and other deceptive descriptors of synthetic smells that are nothing like their inspiration. I have no defense. If something gory appears, I can turn my head, if sounds grate on my nerves, I can pop in ear buds and listen to music. (Although small barking dogs and children shrieking well after dark might be worth another rant.) I can't defend myself from noxious odors that catch the breeze like a surfer catching a wave.
You get it - I hate strong smells. Obviously I can't rid the world of what other people find pleasing. But this leads to my real rant - they changed the scent of my leave-in hair conditioner. The shop clerk assured me - It's just new packaging. I took it home. I naively squirted it into my hand and stroked it through my hair without sniffing. It was disgusting. Perfume stunk up my bathroom and clung to my shoulders.

I'm a simple woman - I use shampoo, conditioner, a little firming lotion. I don't even know what "bodifying foam" is, or the difference between "spray gel" and "finishing freeze". A nice light fruit scent will do, I even find it pleasant. A hint of coconut is nice. This stuff was disgusting.

Part of the problem is I'm already the walking wounded from seeing my favorite style of jeans, my color of lip gloss, and the pens I like ripped off the market. Are my tastes marginal, or does every company anxious to put out something new and improved? I work in Marketing, I guess I should know the answer to that.

I'm on the hunt for a new product, if you know of anything with an "edible scent", let me know. Yes, they are called "edible" scents - a woman at the counter where I was moping that the only body lotion I enjoy was, yes, discontinued, told me that's what my scent preference is called. If it has a name, why can't more products fall into the category? They're hard to find, just start sniffing around.

~Cathryn

Fear - an unpleasant feeling

2008-10-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

One definition for fear is this: an unpleasant feeling of apprehension or distress caused by the presence or anticipation of danger.

I think about fear a lot. Probably because I feel afraid - a lot. Is my eldest daughter safe riding the subway in New York City? Will my younger daughter be hit by a drunken moron as she drives the curvy mountain road between Santa Clara Valley and Santa Cruz where she's finishing her last quarter of college? Will I lose my job in middle age and become a hunk of meat on the job market, competing with women fifteen years younger and men of any age? Will I save enough for retirement? Will I ever retire? Is retirement an archaic concept of the fifties, no longer offered to the middle class, but only to those who have fluffy golden parachutes?

These are just the fears I'm brave enough to put into words. They're the surface fears, the ones I'm willing to admit. You have some of the same, and we all have more. There are the shadowy terrors that wake us at night, and the tiny phobias ... spiders and food that might carry invisible salmonella.
I wanted to blog about fear because it stalks us in quiet ways. How else do you explain co-workers who don't want to forward an email because it might give you the same information they have, and if information is power, they are chipping away at their own power and giving more to you. Those of us that have information jobs hoard our secrets, emails and files and knowledge gleaned from meetings that others weren't invited to attend. We dole out our juicy bits of knowledge to make friends, build networks, to gain supporters. Bad behavior results from all the hoarding of knowledge - gossip and jockeying for position, taking credit for others' work and bloody back stabbings.

The past few weeks, fear ratcheted up for all of us. Foreclosures spiral out of control, financial institutions that seemed like granite, crumble like sand, the stock market takes a dizzying ride as people bark out their fear: sell, buy, hoard your money, rescue your retirement funds, but it's too late.

It's an eerie feeling to drive around town, walk into grocery stores, watch the flow of human life, buying food, running errands, shopping for goodies we might not really need, if things get 'worse'. We wonder what 'worse' is. Bread lines? Unemployment? Homelessness?

I wanted to blog about fear because my fiction depicts people whose fears have overcome them, fears that swell to monumental proportion, take over their thoughts and ultimately their sanity and drive them to commit acts that transform fear into reality.

Now I can't seem to write about my frightened characters because real fear is suddenly visible and tangible and out of control. It's in the erratic red line showing the stock market shifts for the day and it's in the crowds yelling ugly words at Republican rallies. (Or maybe I can't write about them because I'm afraid my novel will be less than perfect, a pesky little fear in the grand scheme of fears.)

My current reaction to the financial fear gripping all our throats, is to do nothing. After all, what can I do? If I re-jigger my 401k, I'm told, I'll lock in my losses. If I talk of nothing else, stocks and banks and sub prime mortgages and the G7 leaders unsure what to do and my company's future and layoffs, I'll become one of my characters, letting fears take over my thoughts, driven to erratic action. Life imitating art?

So I'll just keep going to work, urging the people that report to me to set goals for the new fiscal year - we'll all remain employed this fiscal year, right? I'll keep eating out and reading books, and writing. I'll keep hoping that what I'm feeling is only apprehension over the anticipation of danger.

Footnote: I'm not alone - Americans are stressed out and afraid. Maybe it will make us calmer with each other.

~Cathryn Grant

How many hours can a human being work?

2008-09-11T11:24:00.000-07:00

I really have no right to complain, but I will anyway.

My colleague regularly responds to email, reviews pricing proposals and preps for executive reviews at one o'clock in the morning. The industry is insane. He rides home in his carpool, spends time with his family and goes back to work when his son's in bed.

I worked three weekends last month, including the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. Which makes sense, in some perverted way. For two weeks, I worked from five a.m. until eight p.m. I ate dinner at the desk in my home office. Only once during those hours did I turn to look out the window behind my desk. I'm turning into a troll.
I used to play with trolls when I was a child, but I never thought I'd be one. Of course, that's a cute troll, a Barbie-like troll, a Kewpie doll-like troll.

Not the real thing, which is closer to what I feel like this summer as I miss the sunrise and the sunset because I'm staring at the bright screen of my iMac.

And because I love words, I had to know what a troll really is. Who knew ... it's someone who deliberately posts "false or controversial messages to gain attention for the sake of attention" (hmmm), or it's an Upper Peninsula term for people who live in the Lower Peninsula, below the Mackinac Bridge and it's dragging a baited line behind a slow moving boat, and a race of giants in mythology or a Scandinavian term for elf. I thought trolls lived under a bridges.

But I digress ... I look like the creepy guy above because my shoulders are hunched over a keyboard and everyone who sends me more email requests will get a virtual club over their heads. So I'm taking four days off. And I've only peeked at my email three times, I haven't responded to it at all.

That's the dysfunctional life of Silicon Valley. Checking email on vacation, working at night. I read about a woman who confessed she hid in the bathroom so her kids didn't see her checking email on her Blackberry. Is it dysfunctional? We think it is. I think it is. I'm exhausted. Everyone I work with has dark circles under their eyes and a rant of their own about the latest irrational request from management. But wait, what about farmers? Waking up before dawn and racing to beat the seasons? What about life before Blackberries and washing machines, refrigerators and cars, computers and cell phones, grocery stores and dry cleaners and on-line shopping and indoor plumbing? What about the 982,000,000 people who live on a dollar a day or less. I imagine they're more exhausted than I am.

Still, I need a day off. I need a nap. I'm tired of marketing slides and email and meetings and data analysis. I'm tired of being a troll. So I took an extended weekend - two extra days off, in September, when everyone else is back from vacation. And what am I doing? Sitting in front of my iMac like a troll, hopefully with a head of pink hair rather than a club in my fist.

--Cathryn Grant

Thanksgiving - the anti "holiday"

2007-11-17T17:03:00.000-08:00

This is a rant in disguise. I'm not ranting about pumpkin pie and stuffing - it's the Holidays I want to rant about.

I love Thanksgiving. No greeting cards. No music piped into your eardrums until your brain melts - music that would be pleasant once or twice, but I simply can't listen to jingle bell rock seven times a day without getting a little crazed. Thanksgiving comes without trees to haul home, decorate, undecorate and dispose of (how Green is that?), pine needles lingering under the sofa for another month. Thanksgiving comes without bumper to bumper traffic lurching through the parking lot at the grocery store for an entire month, and hot, cranky long lines for the simplest errand.

I've never understood why American culture feels compelled to take three and a half weeks at the start of winter to send cards to everyone they've ever known, photograph the entire family, attend parties with every group with which they associate, cook elaborate meals after making batches of cookies and buy gifts for everyone they feel connected to. And those gifts must be special - they must communicate everything you've forgotten to say all year long.

When you're a parent, the pressure builds ... the Christmas magic fades as children grow older, maintaining the "excitement" created when they were toddlers becomes increasingly difficult. Inevitably, they learn that Christmas is disappointing. Somehow it's not the same thrill to unstuff a stocking at the jaded age of fourteen as it was at age four.

Thanksgiving is four long days of nothing but eating, catching up with family, sleeping and reading. No ribbon, no plum pudding flaming on the table, and no frenzied buildup. Throw a turkey in the oven, open a bottle of wine and relax - you're going to need it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

It's hard to be green.

2007-07-16T10:48:00.000-07:00

I want to be green, I really do. I re-cycle newspapers, plastic, glass. I minimize car trips to save gas, although no hybrid vehicle yet, maybe the next time. Plastic containers, not baggies, a canvas lunch bag.

My company's been green and is now getting greener, consolidating servers, turning off monitors when we're not in the office, ramping up recycling programs.

But like Kermit the frog crooned, it's hard being green.

Which takes me to my rant today. The new plastic bottles from a bottled water company that will remain nameless. I'm reluctant to use plastic bottles and when I work from home, I don't. I refill glasses with filtered water from the tap. I should carry a refillable plastic bottle to work, I know, I know, but despite careful washing, they always end up tasting kinda funky. So, when I go into the office, I bring my plastic bottles.

And these new bottles are stealth water ballons. The plastic is so thin, it's impossible, okay very difficult unless one is completely present in the moment, to unscrew the cap without putting pressure on the absurdly thin, ridiculously soft plastic, and thus ending up with a splash in the face, or down the arm, or the center of one's shirt. I can't drink filtered water without mumbling curses? Why? If the plastic is recycled, why do they have to make this thin, nearly plastic-bag like consistency? I despise them. Oh, the bottles have a handy indentation now for improved gripping? Just try it, I dare you, grip the indentation and unscrew the sealed cap - see what happens.

And now that I've written this, and articulated all my excuses for why I'm even using disposable plastic bottles, I guess I've proven I'm not so green after all.

Kermit is right.

I've Caved

2007-06-16T16:37:00.000-07:00

After puzzling for years over the question, who has time to read all these rambling opinions, complaints, stories and journals - the endless stream of consciousness digitized?

Why am I blogging? Well, because I'm a writer, I guess. And along the twisting road of publishing on paper, I've become impatient or maybe curious about branching out. The freedom of writing without the editorial voice, ending that last sentence in a preposition, for example. Heck, I can sit down and type out every irritating and interesting and absurd event that pops up during the month.

What's the most irritating thing on my mind today? Air horns at high school graduations. I went to my nephew's high school graduation last night and had the inevitible idiot plasting his little horn because ...? Why? He can't articulate his excitement, clapping is too subtle for the 21st century, impossible to make it heard above the cacophony of reality TV, traffic, music plugged into our ears and cell phones ringing everywhere from the stall in the public restroom to the once tranquil bookstore?

So he blows his blasted horn in my ear, making my nerves twitch, my head ache and my ear go numb. And I want to punch him. Or at least confiscate his obnoxious toy.

I complain about this to my brother-in-law and my father and am hooted and teased into silence. "My liberal daughter wants to restrict someone's freedom of expression?!" Well, yes.

My ear still feels full of cotton balls the day after.