After the show we all went to Mr. Z’s for dinner.  The whole family is so rarely together, so it was really nice to do that.  Between last night and tonight I spent $60, which is every cent we have.  I had thought my dad would have bought us the pizza last night, but he made no move to do so, and so I bought it.

And after that we went food shopping to get Olivia’s favorite ravioli.  I had just finished putting everything on the checkout belt when Steph pointed out a man with only one roll of tin foil, so I waved him forward and made him go in front of me.  Usually when I do that the people are very happy to cut ahead and do so readily, but his guy was astonished that I had even offered and kept asking if we were sure that was alright.  I wonder if it was because he was a black man that he was not used to this kind of treatment.  His wife was sitting on the paid side of the register aisle, and apparently they had already gone shopping but had forgotten the tin foil.

They were so moved by our kindness that they gave a dollar each to the girls.  They were impressed with the girls decent behavior and helpfulness.  She said something about her girls having received token money like this when they were young and she felt that this was a way to ‘pay it forward’.

Well these nice folks don’t see the girls at home.  They refused to go to bed and spent an hour fooling around and ignoring our demands to go to bed.  Olivia was still hungry, even after eating a bowl of ravioli, plate of french fries and a slice of pizza at Mr. Z’s!  She had almost a whole bowl of Ramen right before bed.

I stayed up managing money flow so we can get the phone bill paid tomorrow, before they cut it off.  And I made up the HCTV timesheet so I can get a check by Tuesday.  We have no money for two days.  I can’t eat or buy gas for the three days I will be down at Dartmouth.

It was very nice to spend the whole day together as a complete family.