We all scream for ice cream
I’ve never lived anywhere where the neighborhood ice cream truck was as persistent as the one we have here. Like clockwork, at a few minutes past 7:00pm we’ll hear the truck (actually a large van) roll down the street of our little cul de sac, blaring one of those signature awful ice cream truck melodies at full volume. The van passes by our house, turns around at the end of the street, then passes by it again.
Then two hours later, the van comes again. It comes a minimum of two times a day, seven days a week.
So far, Cassia and I have been successful in diverting our children’s curiosity about the van and its contents. Every time we hear those clanging chords, we announce “There’s that noisy truck again. It plays loud music, doesn’t it?”
Jonathan usually replies, “Yeah, it’s really loud.”
And so we’ve managed to avoid those nagging conversations with our children begging for spare change to buy an overpriced red-white-and-blue popsicle. Of course, it helps that we typically have no fewer than three varieties of ice cream in our little freezer, and lately at least one box of el-cheapo popsicles for those sudden sugar cravings that are widely known to beset pregnant women and young children during the summer.
Unfortunately, we’ve been reaching for a delectable frozen treat less and less these days. Our refrigerator/freezer, which seems to be on all the time, seems to be nearing the end of its life. Our refrigerated food is barely tepid, and our ice cream and popsicles turned to soup a few days ago and still haven’t fully recovered. Cassia and Annie spent a few hours cleaning it out the other day, and set both compartments to their coldest settings, but it hasn’t helped. We even pulled it out from the wall to check the coils for serious dirt or damage, and couldn’t find any. I think the motor is just petering out. If this is the original fridge that came with the house when it was built 8-9 years ago, it’s probably due for a change (along with our oven and dishwasher, but those still work fine for now).
Thankfully, since we’re among the lowly renter class, we don’t have to pony up for a new fridge. Cassia placed a call to our property management office today, so hopefully we’ll see something happen soon. They and the owners of the house have been great with major repairs and replacements — they sealed up our home against insects and animals in March, and installed a new garage door opener when one of ours suddenly stopped working last month — so we’re optimistic that they’ll help us out with this issue as well.
I’ve been looking at chest freezers (and their upright siblings) for the past few weeks, but I’m not too enthused about the whole manual defrost thing. Those frost-free ones are generally too expensive, though, and too large for the space we have available in our garage. We’ll see.
To bring us full circle, here’s today’s (06/26) “Bizarro” comic. Perhaps Dan Pirarro is just as annoyed by these folks as we are.
I do wonder why these trucks have to play such awful music. Is it because of the Pavlovian response it generates in people, especially young children? Or is it because their sound systems are incapable of playing anything more complex than 8-bit MIDI tones? I wonder if there’s a CD of Annoying Ice Cream Truck Music one can buy, and if it’s available online.
Update: The owners of the house contacted us Friday (06/27) morning. Our brand-new fridge will be delivered by Home Depot tomorrow.
Best. Owners. Ever.
More update: We had a new fridge/freezer delivered and installed by 1pm. :)