Believe it or not: Ruby is back! On Monday I went around the neighborhood and took down the posters Alex and I put up a few weeks ago and threw them out. Tuesday morning, she showed up on our front porch! She's lost some weight and feels a little bony around the middle, but she's not dirty and didn't have any fleas on her, and her fur isn't matted or anything, so we think she may have been living somewhere where she could be inside but couldn't get out. There is a couple moving out of the apartments next door so the door to the building is propped open; maybe she was with someone in there? But it doesn't seem like she's been being fed consistently either, so we don't know. Anyway, Iris is pissed. She had been getting back to her old self again, her pre-Ruby self. No growling and hissing all the time, jumping up into our laps and curling up, that sort of stuff. Now with Iris, it's like Ruby is brand new again. It's bad. I've had to feed her on the table or something to keep her away from Ruby. Ruby has been just fine though. She doesn't seem to have changed much.....We went and got the camper on Wednesday, complete with the new AC unit. I set the camper up in the driveway when we got home so we could test it out. On a hot sunny day, with the AC set to medium cooling, it kept the camper very comfortable inside. Impressively so. I'm nervous about water condensation getting into the roof, since there was a little pool of water trickling towards the back end of the camper, but hopefully it's sealed up nice and tight. It should make it much more pleasant for camping next month. It cost a thousand bucks but it's cheaper than a new camper.....Friday I decided that there must be another mole in the backyard because there were still tunnels in the ground, and I didn't think I'd missed that many in stomping them back down. So I reset the trap in the backyard, and by Saturday morning I had caught another mole. Another big one. The end must have come very quickly for him if you know what I mean. After that I set it back up again in the front yard. There must be a mole there too, unless it was all the same two.....Saturday we all went to the mall in Fort Wayne. I wonder if that was a really bad idea. The shops were pretty much all open, and the crowds were about as large as ever, and pretty much nobody was wearing a face mask. Very, very few people. Except for us. We were probably more exposed there than we have been any time since this all started. Anyway we hit the Barnes & Noble, and the kids did Think Geek and Hot Topic and Box Lunch and so on, and those stores were limiting the number of people coming in at a time, and they asked you not to touch things unless you were going to buy them, but it felt like a petri dish in there.....The county is now up to 468 cases, and it's blowing up all across the country, it seems.....

Our little girl turned 16 last Monday. We had a little family birthday on Monday, where we gave her her presents (some dragon books, phone case, hoodie, Pop figure, etc) and had angel food cake with fruit topping. The real party was Friday when she had a bunch of friends come over in the afternoon and have a pool party. There were about 6 or 7 girls here to play in the pool and have fun with bubbles and sidewalk chalk, hang out and have grilled hot dogs, and watch Jim Henson movies. The Muppet Movie to start, then Labyrinth, and finally the Dark Crystal. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and the pool was nice because it has been so hot lately. It was a sleepover party, but only a couple of the girls were able to stay overnight. In the morning I made pancakes and they hung out until the parents came.....389 cases of coronavirus countywide now; still going up fast but the rate is decreasing a bit.....Beth and I have decided to get an air conditioner put on the camper. We're treating it as our anniversary presents to each other. We're camping in about 3 weeks down south, where there is no pool or beach, so we need something to cool us down. We went around to a couple RV repair places near Warsaw but eventually took the camper to the same place in Goshen that we'd had it repaired at in years past. We took it up Friday, they said it shouldn't take too long to get it done.....I would have taken the camper to Goshen Wednesday but after a short time at work, I tried to leave and the truck would not start. No clicks, no whirrs, no nothing. So I had it towed to Ab & Tom's and sure enough, the starter was dead, so I had to get that fixed first.....Church was at the building again this week, still not a whole lot of people at the second service.....For the first time ever, I have caught a mole in the backyard! It's been killing all the new grass I've been trying to grow in front of the pool, so even though I never had any luck with them before, I went out and got a mole trap Saturday evening and set it in the back yard. By Sunday after church, it was sprung, and there was a dead mole, a big one, caught in it! It was much bigger than I thought it would be. I don't know if there are others in the yard, but from the size of it and the size of the dead patch of lawn, I'd guess it was the only one. Don't know. We'll see soon enough, I guess. I reset the trap in the front yard to try to catch one there, too......Still no sign of Ruby, she's been gone 3 weeks now. I don't think she's coming back.....

Another step towards normal this weekend; we had church at the building for the first time since early March. We're having 2 services to split things up, and we chose to go to the later one, which was much less attended. Beth and the kids and I were greeting, and only one person came in the entrance that Alex and I were covering (There are 3 separated by last name). There were maybe 30 people in the later service, but apparently there were more, maybe 70, in the earlier one. No Sunday School and no child care, of course. We're up to 316 cases in the county now, and the rate of increase is increasing.....Saturday I went on another bike trail ride in the morning, and replaced a cache back in the woods that has been missing (as has the cache owner) for some time. Also found a second one that we'd looked for and not found a couple times......Later on in the day we all went to Pottery Bayou for Missy's birthday and something to do, since it's open. Missy made a big dragon, Nat did a cup, Alex a turtle, Beth a camper birdhouse, and I a dragon head topper. Topper to what, I do not know, but I'll probably give it to Missy.....We went geocaching on Sunday out towards South Whitley. Found a few (including one out on a country road where we raised the ire of some grumpy middle aged man who was walking down the road from his house to find out what we were doing, and gave us a surly look as we drove past on our way out. A couple were in a park by the river and one was in a rail-to-trail path; both locations had a lot of skeeters......I made a key lime pie Friday night because I found out through conversation with the Rogers' at our house last week that Matthew loves it. Sunday evening we drove out to their house and "dropped off" the pie, meaning we stayed to visit and eat it with them. Matthew has an amazing baseball card collection.....Thursday I finally complained to the city about the moat in front of our driveway. It's been getting bigger and rougher for a long time now, and never really got fixed when the city redid the road years ago. Amazingly, within a few hours, two guys from the city roads department were at the house, doing some measurements and checking levels. I'm glad there was quite a bit of standing water still in the moat so they could see it. They told me that they were just there to check it out, and 'someone paid more than them' will decide what to do about it. So, it's on their radar, and maybe we'll get it fixed sometime soon!....Ruby is still missing....Missy had her wisdom teeth out on Friday. It went much easier than Natalie's; they just cut her gums open and they came right out. There was pretty much no swelling at all, and she didn't have a lot of pain.....

A little more normal all the time, but still not quite. This weekend we had actual company at the house for the first time in a while. Our small group, which has been meeting only virtually for a while, and for some reason sparsely attended at that, met at our house today for a cookout. Only two other families came but that's about what we've been getting for attendance on Zoom too. Beth and I provided and grilled the burgers and hot dogs, everyone else brought a side and drinks, and we played bean bag toss and frisbee cricket and just visited with actual human contact for the first time in a while. Good times.....I put up the pool this week. The kids and I got it hauled into the backyard and I spent a couple days getting it filled up. Saturday was awfully hot so it was looking like a good call to get it up, but it had cooled off a lot by today so the pool was still barely higher than freezing. With another several months of storage for the pool under the belt, it also has another many leaks. Just little ones for the most part, tiny trickles really, but still should be fixed. I used the last of my Flex Tape to patch most of them, but the tap was old so I don't think it was sticking very well and most of them are still leaking a tiny bit. I also tried sealing up the inflatable ring with some Gorilla silicone sealant, we'll see how successful that turns out to be. Missy hopes to use the pool for her birthday in a couple weeks.....Ruby is still missing. She disappeared a week ago, and hasn't been seen since. I hate not knowing what happened to her! It doesn't make any sense, any of it. She never leaves the yard. She never jumps the fence. She's scared of everything and never stays outside more than a couple hours. Did someone take her? Why would they? There are maybe 8 cats that roam the neighborhood, why would someone snatch Ruby? We never heard a cat fight. Ruby just went outside and basically vanished. Alex and I put up some posters around the neighborhood, and Beth and Missy checked with the shelter, but so far it just seems like she is gone. Iris however is much more friendly now, so we wonder if she was behind it.....We all went to the beach at Waubee Lake on Saturday for something to do and because it was so hot. The water was cool but not cold, but there were too many people there for Nat, so we didn't stay too long. Some people there gave us a couple of inflatables because they didn't want them any more, so that was nice.....The new grass in the yard still seems to be growing all right.....