Minty fresh fix-o-mysteries

Caught a few segments of NPR's Crime in the City series interviewing mystery authors and the cities they know and love. Authors have laid claim to a huge range of locations, occupations, and avocations to reel in niche mystery readers: caterers, car-poolers, PTA moms, crossword puzzle addicts, genealogists, sled dog mushers, cat lovers, English teachers...

I've yet to see the beautiful dental hygienist (and amateur sleuth) with her latex gloves, sharp tools, and sharper wit, Floss Dailey, solve perilous periodontic puzzles. With a ghost writer and some technical advisors, I think we could milk this for twenty titles at least:

• Root Canal in which Floss discovers the naughty inspiration for her husband's tooth whitening overdose.
• Can You Feel This? Still numb from the divorce, Floss meets a cute neurologist and dreams of comfortable shoes.
• Baby Teeth Floss's duplex neighbors have teething triplets.
• Bite Down Please A "Shark Week" on cable t.v. inspires Floss to decorate the ceiling of her exam room with National Geographic shark pictures.
• Keep Wiggling Floss's boss, The Great Gummy Bear, a rotund dental softy, finds his personal cause, founding No Baby Tooth Left Behind, to provide cute plastic containers for low income kids whose teeth fall out at school.
• Canines & Molars Floss's ex, "The Glare," nicknamed for his serious overdose on tooth whitener and blazing inability to pay child support on time, gets a pit bull.
• Brush Three Times Floss wins a hygienist's convention door prize, a vacation to Las Vegas to see Tony Orlando and Dawn.
• Grit Your Teeth Floss accompanies her boss, The Great Gummy Bear to a dentists' convention in Atlanta.
• Swish & Spit Floss becomes friends with a gay novacaine sales rep.
• Overbite Floss starts selling her original line of hygienist scrubs on her website--in TRex, Arctic Wolf, Crocodile, Chained Pit Bull, Amazon Piranha, Shark, and Ankle-biter Toddler print fabrics, but finds she has no time left for her children.
• No Cavities Floss's precocious preschool daughter becomes the star of a rainbow sparkle gel toothpaste ad campaign.
• Panoramic X-Rays Floss cleans Tony Hillerman's teeth while taking a well-earned vacation across the American Southwest.
• Waiting Room Fish Floss finds dentures buried in the aquarium gravel.
• No Candy "The Glare" begs Floss to get back together so a sweet someone will pick up his suits from the dry cleaners.
• A Little Sensitive Floss's best friend from high school, a sculptress working in conceptual orthodontic wire, is arrested in a gallery murder case.
• Deep Pits Floss meets a mysterious informant when she calls the PayPal tech support 1-800 help number.
• Gingivitis Floss's ex remarries, but not to Mary Ann.
• Receding Gumshoes Floss cleans the teeth of a former police detective now suffering from Alzheimers.
• Plaque Fights Back Receiving an award from the National Dental Fashion League starts Floss on a race to prevent copycat designs from flooding the scrub market.
• Partial Plates Cleaning the teeth of a geologist leads to a seismic weekend in California with an underscoring tectonic romance. Carole King has signed to write the "I Feel the Earth Move Under My Teeth."
• The Fluoride Treatment Floss has to deal with an unethical, scandal-mongering tv station when she solves her latest mystery.
• Impacted Wisdom Floss communicates by a system of nods and blinks to help an elderly stroke victim solve a dental mystery.
• Caps & Crowns Floss's sullen adolescent son graduates from high school.
• Drilling for Gold Floss learns her ancestors filled cavities in the California Gold Rush and Texas Wildcat oil fields.
• See You In Six Months Soon to be a major motion picture with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
• I'll Love You for Efferdent A made-for-tv movie about high-school sweethearts who meet sixty years later in their dentist's waiting room.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

The Larry Book Festival

As it is not possible to spend this week floating on a chunk of ice about as far north as one can go from Texas, I have reached the only logical conclusion. It is time to host "The Larry Book Festival" in the preschool classroom.

This event won't be patterned after the Texas Book Festival I was fortunate to attend two years ago in Austin. For one thing, Barack Obama and Maureen Dowd won't be speaking. There won't be any authors signing books, or vender tents selling Lemon Snow and Brats-On-A-Stick.

"The Larry Book Festival" won't be McMurtry, either. Driving back from Lubbock in the fall of 2004, I went out of my way to visit Booked Up, Larry McMurtry's collection of stores selling used and antiquarian books around the town square of Archer City. To be honest, all Booked Up did for me was activate my dusty moldy book allergy with a vengence.

The namesake of "The Larry Book Festival" is the charming, smart, clueless, preadolescent polar bear creation of Daniel and Jill Pinkwater. Larry the polar bear is the lifeguard at the Hotel Larry, owned by Martin, Semolina, and Mildred Frobisher. Larry is the brother of Roy, one of the polar bears at the Bayonne, New Jersey zoo. Ever since Larry and Roy's polar bear mother hit each of them on the head and told them to "Get lost. Go and fend for yourselves," I have had a fond, chilled place in my heart for this fending bear.

I discovered Larry, Roy, and their mother polar bear at the library where I worked when my three sons were charming, smart, clueless preadolescents, more or less. It was a good reminder that a parent's job is to prepare teens to get lost and go fend for themselves for the most part. Nature is harsh. It makes sure parents and children keep that end goal in mind. Seems to me a lot of human parents these days need a hit on the head to remind them of the end goal, which is self-sufficient adult offspring.

So this week I'll be sharing a Larry picture book with my students each day, while I give my brain a little iceberg floating time. We started with Bongo Larry today, and practiced cool beatnik finger-snapping. Tomorrow we'll learn about blueberry muffins. Maybe on Friday we can have them for a special literary Larry snack!



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Zits Pierce Caterpillar

My world is small. My students are small. Our discoveries and surprises are pretty big, especially with a digital macro camera setting. It's amazing how much life is going on inside the fence of a little preschool playground.

This caterpillar reminds me of Pierce, the much-punctured friend of Jeremy in the comic strip Zits. I don't know if it is an adolescent version of the stinging puss/asp/southern flannel moth caterpillar we found last fall. Pretty sure "Stinging Flannel Moths" would be a good name for a garage band, though.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Swimming lessons for life

"I know I can do this because I swam a mile."

Each summer in the Sixties brought group swim lessons at Eastridge Pool. The last Friday of a session we took a skills test to pass that Red Cross swimming level. The lifeguard instructors didn't cut us any slack. They weren't afraid to say we didn't pass. I didn't pass Beginners two or three times, being unable to blow bubbles or back float. The girl next door was happy for the teasing ammunition.

Then one summer I passed Advanced Beginners on the very first try. My parents were so pleased that we went to Lee's Restaurant to celebrate. My parents were not nearly as impressed with my accomplishment as I was. For a skinny, wimpy kid who was always called to run over during Red Rover, this was a major triumph. I was motivated to work hard to pass Intermediate class on the first try the next summer. I knew that I could swim. Unfortunately, my thoughts were, "I'll NEVER be any good at recess, but I can swim. The kids will ALWAYS tease me at recess, but they won't tease me at the pool."

Each June we added strokes, built endurance, and perfected the skills from the previous level. There was a golden moment the year I managed 100 yards each of crawl, backstroke, sidestroke, and breaststroke, and finally mastered a basic dive. I found myself swimming and diving for FUN, and being invited to play Marco Polo by the same kids who shunned me at recess on the playground or picked me last for the kick soccer team.

Then one summer the ranks of swimming lesson students was culled to the serious. It was time to swim a mile, and to also swim 25 yards under water. Mastering the mile swim forced me to pull all my gumption up from my toenails and focus on a goal. Strangely, I remember thinking that if I could just survive the mile, I could take a hot shower then bike home for a lunch of hot dogs in Spaghetti-Os, followed by sitting on the carport fence eating bing cherries and reading about Minoan archaeology.

I was old enough to ride my bike to the pool by myself wearing goofy cover-ups I sewed myself out of faded and frayed pink bath towels. I could ride to the pool in the morning when it wasn't crowded to practice my dives and swimming underwater. It was wonderful to take turns diving or making the biggest cannonball splash with the other kids.

I could even stay after five when most families went home to supper. That was the best time to try back dives and flips off the board, or to just enjoy the great feeling of propelling myself through the water for lap after lap.

The summer after the mile, everything changed. The pool was a place for wearing a two-piece, rubbing on CopperTone or Sea&Ski for tanning, and talking to boys. Girls only went into the water to cool off, but the guys in their Speedos showed off their dives. Somebody brought a paperback of The Godfather to pass around with the page dog-eared for the horse head in bed. Guys told jokes about sea men. The kids who swam fast or dived well joined competitive swim clubs.

The group of guys focused their efforts toward luring the least parentally-supervised girls "down to the creek" behind the pool. Rumors flew from beach towel to beach towel about what happened there, and what was done to whom by whom with a hairbrush. It was good to still be skinny, wimpy, uninteresting and clueless, but also sad. It was better to get into the water and just swim alone with my perfected strokes and endurance and the silver turquoise water under the golden sun.



When I've been afraid about hurdles in life, I've told myself, "I know I can do this because I swam a mile." Since I knew I could swim a mile, I believed I could do natural Lamaze childbirth. Since I survived natural childbirth, I knew I could run a 10-K. Since I ran a 10-K, I knew I could survive divorce. When I survived divorce I knew I could pull all my gumption from deep down in my toenails to be a single mom and launch my sons off the cosmic diving board to their own self-sufficiency, endurance, and stroke perfection.

The way to your teen's heart is through his...

...blender. Smoothies. Nutritious, energy-boosting, straw-worthy, cupholder-friendly fruit and yogurt smoothies.

On a real world resume I could note that I have thirteen years of experience parenting teen males. That outshines the two years leading the Cub Scout group, the five years of toilet training, and all my continuing education credits in emergency rooms.

A nephew turns thirteen this week. My sister is new at this teen guy division of parenting. I offer this wisdom, although I should probably charge for it:

Teen guys must have their blended fruit concoctions!

They are not morning people.

If they can get themselves upright and deodorized in the morning, you can place a large blended smoothie with a bendable straw into the hand not holding the backpack, and they are as good to go as they are going to get before noon.

Hoping for more will bother you way more than it bothers your teen.

Teen guys like machines with motors and loud noises that smash and destroy stuff.

In this regard they are not significantly different than they were as toddlers.

Before they start "fixing" your car, let them learn to drive the Hamilton-Beach blender.

Smoothies are a teen guy's introduction to preparing his own meals. Before you know it your little darling will want to boil his own pasta. Can guacamole be far behind?

The Ice Crush/Pulse button is used to accompany Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild".

Teen guys want to experiment and live on the edge. Bring exotic fruits home from Hinky Dinky and leave them unattended on the kitchen counter.

Teen guys want to think they are "bulking up."

Teen guys want to watch tv while they sip their smoothies. The closer you can move the tv to the blender, the fewer spills on the carpet.

This bonus hint--the longer a heavy metal rock concert t-shirt wallows in the dirty laundry pile, the faster the gross guy perspiration destroys the fabric particles.

Someday your son's taste in music will improve. Until then, sing along.

I want my, I want my MTV

I want my, I want my MTV

We gotta install microwave ovens

Custom kitchens deliveries

We gotta move these refrigerators

We gotta blend these green kiwis!

Get your blender runnin'

Head out on the highway

Lookin' for adventure

And whatever fruit comes our way


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Big Board in the Dumpster

You'll be happy to know this is not an analysis of trading on the NYSE. Yes, I listen to Marketplace on NPR on the drive home from work most days. Yes, I stood in line at the post office today watching the tv infomercial about putting twenty percent of my retirement investments into gold. I suppose that is about right. I have a leftover gold wedding ring that could best be considered a retirement investment!

This Big Board is the dry erase board hung over the kitchen sink for eight years. It served as the Master Logistical and Grocery Store Calendar for our household, and highest transportation coordination authority. We all equated it with the map in the Strangelove War Room. Many times we quoted, "Gentlemen! You can't fight in here! This is the war room!", as a guiding rule in our post-divorce family make-over. My efforts to organize my crew sometimes led to quotes of Jack Ryan imitating Admiral Painter in The Hunt for Red October:

"The average Rooskie, son, don't take a dump without a plan." Wait a minute. We don't have to figure out how to get the crew off the sub. He's already done that, he would have had to. All we gotta do is figure out what he's gonna do. So how's he gonna get the crew of the sub. They have to want to get off. How do you get a crew to want to get off a submarine? How do you get a crew to want to get off a nuclear sub...

My crew is off the sub now. I should have taken a picture before I dumped the Big Board in the trash. It's a strange feeling not being the Condo Concierge/Recording Secretary/Mission Commander for the family. Rats. I suppose I have to manage my own life now!

But first, let's do the numbers... Enjoy the Larry Carlton music that's been showing up during NPR show breaks lately.

Revenge of the Yerm-Lims

High five this old CollageMama! I am so vindicated. El Steveroo received a letter from his university explaining that he wouldn't have to take any college foreign language classes BECAUSE his mom ruined his life* and made him take French his senior year of high school.

*You Ruined My Life, Mom!

Short and stout

My younger brother, who was not really named Igor, was terrified of creatures he believed were living in our basement. He called them The Gooeys. We were never sure how he pictured The Gooeys. I gradually developed my own mental image of his fear factors. The first time I saw pool noodles in Albertson's in the mid-Nineties, The Gooeys popped into my mind.

My biggest basement fear was just of piano practice, but maybe "dread" is a better description than "fear". When my parents bought a piano and paid for piano lessons, I thought they had ruined my life.

For the past year, my high school senior son has told me regularly, "You ruined my life, Mom," all because I insisted that he take fourth year French. His school counselor backed me on my requirement that he continue with math OR with French in twelfth grade.

Over the year, French 4AP has become the biggest YRMLM ever, even bigger than a basement Gooey adjusted for forty years of inflation. YRMLM is pronounced yerm-lim, of course. It is a noun, and also a fairly active and useful verb in its past plupretzel-apoplexic tense.

This weekend I'm not the POD or the T-POD. Im still a yerm-lim, though:

POD Parent on duty
T-POD Transporting parent on duty (sing along: I'm a little T-POD, short and stout)
YRMLM You ruined my life, Mom

Hovering Parents

The L.A. Times and many other newspapers printed a story this week about Hovering parents. Why do parents my age want to keep micromanaging and superhero rescuing their college kids? Are we creating into a new generation without self-sufficient adults? Didn't anybody read Laura Ingalls Wilder books like Farmer Boy and By the Banks of Plum Creek to their kids? Didn't the kids wish heartily to be the protagonist of My Side of the Mountain, living in a hollow tree and teaching his falcon to hunt?

I love my kids. I am enormously proud of the way they are planning and conducting their lives and even doing their own laundry. They are grown up. I don't get a rush from wiping their noses or paying their library fines.

My oldest will have to deal with Hovering and Swooping parents in his chosen field of higher ed. admin. My younger guys will NOT have to deal with a swooping mom of their own. I don't do it. They are big guys. I let them go hungry when they forgot their lunch boxes in fifth grade. I let them answer to teachers when they failed to study for middle school math tests. I let them be cold when they didn't take a coat to school in January. I worry now about my son who has moved to a northern Yankee state. I hope he will throw a coat in the backseat when he comes home for the holidays. I hope he will put a container of sand in his trunk, and an ice scraper in the glove box. Surprises and blizzards crop up in life, especially when you aren't expecting them. Still, I'm going to let him check Weather.com all by himself.

Went for a walk Friday through my neighborhood and back home down the busy street past the Firestone, 7-11, Sonic Drive-In, and Calloway's Nursery. Slowly became aware of a blur of blue and orange each time I passed a power pole. A small bird with running mascara and a groovy retro outfit was moving from pole to pole along my route. I love it that we have the smallest North American falcon just down the street. I love it that the book says the Sparrow Hawk aka American Kestrel weighs the same as a McD quarter-pounder with cheese.


AMERICAN KESTREL (Falco Sparverius)

COMMON NAMES: Sparrow Hawk

RANGE: Most of North America, excluding the far north

HABITAT: Open savanna-like areas with a few trees, forest edges near open areas, farmsteads, suburbs, city parks, desert areas with cactus

SIZE:
LENGTH: 8-11 inches
WINGSPAN: 20-24 inches
WEIGHT: 3.4-5.3 ounces (equivalent to a quarter-pounder with cheese)

LIFE EXPECTANCY:
WILD: 3-5 years
CAPTIVITY: Up to 14 years


DIET:
WILD: Snakes, lizards, bats, smaller birds, mice, voles, and insects (beetles, grasshoppers, cicadas). Kestrels will feed mainly on mammals and birds during the early parts of the breeding season and lizards and invertebrates later in the breeding season. They concentrate on hunting invertebrates when readily available.
CAPTIVITY: Chicks, mice, and crickets

BEHAVIOR: Kestrels like exposed perches such as telephone poles, wires, fence posts, and dead branches on trees. They are swift, erratic fliers, and in a flat flight they may travel at up to 39 mph, and they can dive at speeds up to 60 mph. They pump their tails and bob their heads while perched, especially when agitated. Kestrels are capable of hovering when hunting, and this behavior is seen frequently over highway medians. They will dive feet first when hunting insects and usually capture them by pinning them to the ground rather than capturing them with their beak. They will dive for other prey items head first to gain additional speed and force.

REPRODUCTION: Kestrels prefer to nest in natural cavities found in trees, cactus, or cliffs, but they will use man-made nest boxes and building cavities. They are dominant over most cavity nesting birds (woodpeckers and flickers), chipmunks and squirrels. Kestrels compete intensely with screech owls for nest sites, and eggs of both species have been found in the same nest. They prefer to nest in sites that are protected from the weather, and in areas where storms come from the south and southwest they nest on east facing slopes with the entrance holes almost always facing east. Their average clutch size is of 5 eggs laid at 2 day intervals. The female is responsible for most of the incubating, but the male does 3-4 hours daily. The incubation period is of 29-31 days, and the fledging of the young occurs at 29-31 days. Because of efficient parental defense, there is a high survival rate for fledglings.

POINTS OF INTEREST: Kestrels are the daytime counterparts of screech owls, and the two species will compete heavily for resources like prey and nesting sites.

Kestrels are the only North American raptor with circular nostrils.



Falcon Characteristics: Kestrels are the smallest and most common falcon in North America and are often incorrectly called “sparrow hawks.” They have the long, swept back wings that are typical of falcons. This design is very special and allows the Kestrel to be very maneuverable in the air in pursuit of prey. The US Air Force designed fighters using the falcons' wing design to gain that same ability to maneuver quickly in the air. The upper mandible of the Kestrel also possesses a notch like other falcons. Called a “killing tooth,” it fits perfectly over the spine of vertebrate prey and allows the tiny falcon to quickly dispatch its catch.


Plumage: Kestrels are one of the few sexually dimorphic (males and females are different) raptors in North America. They are similarly marked, but males have slate blue wings while the females’ are brown and black barred. The dark hood on the Kestrel’s head is characteristic of a falcon, and it is believed to work in conjunction with the malar stripes beneath their eyes to reduce sun glare, much like the shoe polish that football players put under their eyes. The black spots on the nape of their neck are called "false eyes," and they are thought to be protective coloration. The "eyes" deter predators by making it appear that the Kestrel is watching them at all times.

Eyesight: If a Kestrel could read, it could read a newspaper lying on the ground from the top of the Empire State Building. To aid them in keeping their keen eyes on their prey, Kestrels are able to keep their head in practically the same position even while perching on a moving object, like a branch or power line.


Caching: Kestrels will cache food year round, unlike other falcons that only cache during breeding season. When incubating eggs, the cache of excess food ensures that the chicks can be fed even if the male does not return with food. After the breeding season, Kestrels may maintain several sites in places ranging from hollow trees to utility-pole switch boxes. Generally the food will be retrieved within a few hours or days. One female was seen killing and stashing twenty mice provided by scientists.


Pair Bonding and Courtship: Pair formation begins soon after the male has established a territory. Often, the same female will return to a male’s territory to mate, or she will otherwise “visit” males’ territories and eventually begin to associate with one worthy male. Courtship includes dive displays, curtseying, bowing, and courtship feeding. A male will climb 10 to 20 meters into the sky before diving down to swoop just above the female in a dive display. He will also often gather and offer food to the female while chittering during courtship feeding. Once a female associates exclusively with one male, the pairing is complete, and often is permanent. The pair will begin to search for a nest site; the male always leads the female, sometimes enticing her with calls or with food. Females will not seek out nest sites on their own.


STATUS: In general, the Kestrel is the most common North American raptor. There are an estimated 1.2 million pairs, not including the Neotropical component. However, the southeastern race paulus has been listed as "threatened" in Florida. Those populations have declined more than 80 percent since the early 1940's due to habitat loss.