Day 134

It's Saturday, so there is little that we can do on the "wrap up Dad's affairs" front. Instead we spent part of the morning on a leisurely start the day routine. Then we went shopping. Hooch and I needed shoes. Mom and Julia needed black dresses.

The first stop was Nordstroms. Since Mom and I went in a separate car, we got there first. We hadn't even made a complete circuit of the women's department before Mom saw a dress she liked that fit. Julia arrived a few mnutes later. She immediately saw and liked the same dress.

I will say that Nordstrom's must be feeling the recession. I've never seen the store with that little inventory. It wasn't bare, but it was far from full.

Dan and I went downstairs with Sophia. Alicia stayed with her mom. Dan took the opportunity to shop for some additional shirts and shoes. He doesn't get a chance to shop very often. After a few minutes Alicia showed up. I think she walked downstairs and found us on her own. I also found a pair of shoes. It was a bit of work to ride herd on the kids while the two of us were being helped. They wanted to mess with everything and run off in all directions.

Julia couldn't find a dress she liked so she came downstairs to look for shoes. What ensued was another episode with the kids running around grabbing shoes, crying, and generally acting up to try to get her attention. Hooch was there so for the most part Mom and I just watched. I felt sorry for the salesman.

Then it was time for lunch. We went to a sports bar. There was a pawnshop next door, so I went in alone and scored some cheap CD's. After lunch we went to Macy's in search of a dress.

Macy's had a lot more stock than Nordstrom's. Julia spent a couple of hours trying on dresses. Mom and I spent the time chasing the kids or locating candidate dresses. Julia finally made a decision.

We parted ways again. They went home and Mom and I went to the grocery store and in search of dinner. We were going to get stuff at Happy Panda, but the line stretched out the door. We went to a nearby Chinese restaurant and ordered takeout. The food was bad to terrible. The dishes were all vegetables with no meat or shrimp in them. I ordered "almonnd chicken" which turned out to be a few pieces of chicken in a bunch of pudding. The shrimp dish didn't have more than 4 or 5 shrimp in it. The beef dish had maybe three pieces of beef. Usually when you order Chinese takeout you save the leftovers for the next day. We threw the leftovers out. What really sucked was that the food was expensive.

In the evening Dan made some progress finding financial documents. This will make thigs easier when we finally get the death certificates.