how i creep out even the tingting man.

a few weeks back, the husband of a friend posted something on facebook regarding what everyone used to call the guy who drives the ice cream truck:  the tingting man or the ice cream man or what?  and i was all, those guys are real people? i thought they were some kind of legendary figure, the kind that started out as some guy with a fifties haircut and a skinny tie driving down the road eating an ice cream cone.  and now, fifty years later, that guy has been exaggerated with our nostalgia for all things pleasantville and utopian until we're all like, 'i heard there used to be a guy who would drive a WHOLE TRUCK full of ice cream and all you had to do was stand on the street and he'd give you some and his truck played MUSIC and everything!'

to say i was shocked that an actual ice cream guy ever existed is an understatement.  (and the schwann's guy doesn't count.)  (and also, if i had known this in the nineties when it really would have mattered, i would have called him the ice cream man, not the tingting man.)

i have mentioned before that our town is pretty awesome and kind of pleasantville itself (a tree lighting ceremony where santa goes up in the basket of a utility truck to chuck pingpong balls at wide-eyed children?  that has 'fifties america' written all over it).  but never in a million years did i ever think i'd see this:

now, this isn't a great picture, and i'll tell you why.  first, because when i took the picture we were driving.  second, because as we drove past a curbful of children by the ice cream truck i probably looked like i was photographing the children and not the truck.  and that's never good.  so i did it as quick and matter-of-fact as possible. and third, because we drove by a second time, and we were starting to look like creepers.  so we clicked and dashed and hoped we wouldn't end up in the paper.

THEN.  the ice cream truck (which, i would like to point out, looks like a converted handicapped bus) drove past our house.  i dashed out to get a picture, and that poor ice cream guy thought i was in the market for a cold-something-on-a-stick-or-in-a-cone, so he slowed down.  i took a picture and dashed inside, leaving the tingting man lonelier and a quarter poorer than he would have been if i had been in the mood for a cold-something-on-a-stick-or-in-a-cone.

creepiness PWND.  van voorsts take gold.

festive.

on thanksgiving the lady across the street stopped by to tell us there was going to be a tree-lighting ceremony downtown the next night.  whut?! what kind of movie set did we move to that they would have a tree-lighting ceremony?!  i LOVE our town.

unfortunately penelope contracted the plague the night before, so she was unable to go.  so todd and atticus went while penelope and i had a girls' night forty five minutes in. 

she LOVES putting on her coat, so when she saw todd and atticus putting theirs on, she begged for hers too until todd gave in and let her put it on.  which made it especially pathetic-looking when she realized that she wasn't able to go with them and started bawling.

all dressed up with nowhere to go.

atticus had a blast seeing santa and watching him light up the tree.  he also got his very own candle (unlit) and sang christmas carols.  also, he took his toy vacuum hose along because it is his pet worm and we all know how much worms love santa.

oh, here is the awesomest townie thing yet:  see up there in that electrical truck? that's santa.  along with some other guy who was presumably up there to keep santa from falling to his death in front of a large crowd of wide-eyed children.  i personally find the extra guy unnecessary as santa apparently manages to keep his big old fatty self inside the sled at all times while it is flying hundreds of feet above the earth faster than the speed of sound.  but whatever.  whatever makes you feel like you're worth what you're paid, extra guy.

ALSO?! santa not only was up in that electrical truck to fire up the lights on the tree, but also to throw ping pong balls at the children below.   ahh, the magic of christmas.

Y.A.G.

if you haven't heard, we recently moved to a cute, kitschy little town and we're having a blast getting to know our new community better.  basically so we can rub it in your face how much you out-of-towners are missing out on by not living here.

today, i would like to rub your face in Yard Art Guy, or Y.A.G., a nocturnal local artist who always has some kind of interactive piece going on his yard, both with and without stereo accompaniment and free-for-the-taking christian tracks.  he lives on the main street into town and, while i'm positive he's well-intentioned, i'm also quite sure that he affects the home values of his neighbors.  not to mention how much it used to piss me off that he was allowed to put such obtrusive stuff in his yard (i really am about 85 at heart).  since then, i have come to appreciate Y.A.G. and his voice as an artist.

and also, i found another way home that allows me to bypass his house should i so choose.  

no one i know has ever seen Y.A.G.'s face, although one night todd and i caught a glimpse of him as we were coming into town around 11 pm.  and no one i know definitively knows his story.  and no one i know fully understands what his art is really getting at, although judging by the soundtrack, the reading materials, and the dummy hanging on a cross and wearing a wolverine mask, i think he's trying to convey something spiritual.  but then, the dummy sitting on a lawn chair holding a bottle of moonshine, as well as the viking ship and cast-off playground bouncy horse, speak to pure frollicking of heart.  both deep and jovial is Yard Art Guy, and i have much to learn from him.

i am a bit worried that Y.A.G. is preparing to move.  there has been not a touch of yard art (whimsical or otherwise) to be seen since halloween, and he has been purging lots of stuff lately - his curb is regularly stocked with contributions to our local sanitary landfill.  and i wonder what will become of our town if we are prematurely robbed of our only access to art.  hopefully we'll never have to find out.

huh?

if you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that i haven't said specifically to where we recently moved.  that has been on purpose.  mainly because with 100 readers a week, i don't know that some of you aren't sexual deviants or arbonne representatives that are just dying to know where we live.  and not that i don't assume that if you do fit in one (or both) of these categories that you're not intelligent enough to just type our names into whitepages and find out for yourselves, but you know.  doing what i can to protect the fam.  (and there will be more in this direction later, possibly involving one of those things where parents start calling their kids food nicknames in order to conceal their real identities but you're really all like, 'why are you calling your kid carrot stick when it's pretty obvious from the last three years of posting that his name is gene?'  yep.  we might go there.  not naming a kid gene.  calling him carrot stick.)

(also, if you're dying to know, just ask me. it's not like it's classified. just give me a head's up if you're looking to kidnap one of my kids or something so i can be on the lookout for that.)

anyway.  a secondary reason for not sharing our locale is so that i can point out little quirks without making you associate the whole town with the funny little goings-on that only a newbie can appreciate...i will say that i have LOVED LOVED LOVED where we have landed and only jest because i love.

as you drive into town from the interstate, there is a series of professional, permanent road signs lining our main street. and while each sign only contains two words, they all add up to read: "statistics show from near to far, folks who drive like crazy are, OUR IOWA." and i'm all like...huh? what does that even mean? is it like a cautionary series of signs, and i should watch my back so i don't get T-boned by some iowan with a death wish? or should i get offended and sue the sign-makers for libel because they're calling all iowans crazy drivers? and also, who voted that such confusing signage would be a good idea? and who paid to have them made and installed? and what, exactly, is the obvious benefit of reading those signs instead of, say, watching the road or finding out what the speed limit is?

i have to admit, those signs did not make the best first impression on me.  i found them confusing at best, and NO ONE could tell me what the heck they were for.  i have since found out that the register did some kind of 'ridiculous OUR IOWA rhyme' contest, and one town from each county won.  so now, they actually make me kind of proud that somebody from our town came up with it, weird as it is. 

i saw another series of signs in cantrell, iowa, that said something about pulling off to the side of the road so you don't fall asleep while driving...OUR IOWA.  and again...huh?  i still maintain that the contest was maybe a dumb idea, and the poems are hardly tennyson, but whatever.  i have decided to think of it in a stars-hollowy kind of way, where it's kitschy but kind of in a cute way, so it actually becomes endearing.  in fact, it's so endearing that i may vandalize the sign to say MY IOWA.  it has won me over to that degree.  (...not entirely true, but i'm getting there.)

our new little town

we've been in our new-to-us house for almost three months now.  the settling-in process has gone much more slowly and much more quickly than i expected.  on the one hand, i've only painted one room, haven't hung anything on the walls, and some rooms don't have any furniture in them (and other rooms only have piles of junk and home decor that i haven't dealt with yet.  if you've moved recently, feel free to compare your progress to my lack of progress in order to feel good about yourself).  in that way, we're FAR from being settled. 

in another way, though, things really are starting to feel like home.  i'm not sure either one of the kids remembers the apartment anymore, and we have rules and routines for the new house that seem like second nature - the kids are only allowed up and down the front stairs, not the 'owie stairs' - the really steep ones down to the kitchen;  atticus knows that naptime is for sleeping in the 'green bed' (the pack and play in the basement) and nighttime is for sleeping in the 'white bed' (his crib in their shared room); he knows what i'm talking about when i say 'the toy room' or 'your room' or 'mommy's room'; he knows that the basement family room is where we keep the TV and some special toys; he knows there are more 'owie stairs' up to the attic that he's not allowed to go up, but he remembers the time grandpa tony and grandma jacqi went up there.  he loves playing in the yard with his lawn mower, and he pretends that he got his felt food from our garden.  we all know the house well and feel comfortable here - we feel like it's our house (although, still more 'house' than 'home') - and that makes things feel much more settled.

but we're not just adjusting to a new house.  we're adjusting to a whole new community, and in a lot of ways that's gone really well.  i already know and get along with a lot of the neighbors (including betty, the 88-year-old widow who lives across the street - i LOVE her), and i've even met some other stay-at-home moms at the pool and the park, and they've invited me to start attending MOPS when it starts back up in the fall.  i finally know where dollar general is, and i know where the market is, although i've only been in there once and left super pissed because they charge up the butt. ($3.89 for an avocado?! did you birth that thing yourself? does the pit look like the virgin mother? because otherwise, no avocado is worth four bucks.) 

i am realizing, though, that there are a lot of things that i now find quirky or different about our new town that i probably will get used to later and totally overlook.  so i should probably start documenting (read: blogging about) them before i forget.

so stay tuned; we live in a pretty cute, weird little place.