i wanted to get to the cafe early this saturday morning because my mother asked me to cook 8 cups of rice and i knew that'd take at least 45 minutes. unfortunately i didn't get there until after 10:30am. but i came up with a solution: cook 4 cups of rice in 2 separate rice cookers. 4 cups cook fast, and by 11am opening i should have 8 cups total ready.
today was a slow day. by 1pm we barely had any business. my sister thinks it's because of chinese new year, and many of our asian customers are busy with chinese new year preparations. or maybe it was just cold and people don't feel like coming out to eat, despite the fact that it was finally a sunny day for a change.
i went over to my sister's place to let esmei out into the backyard to use the bathroom before feeding her lunch. i took off her diaper, which was stained with blood. it's been a week since she started bleeding. female dogs are in proestrus on average 7-10 days it's almost over. then she'll be in estrus for 3-21 days (although the average is 9 days), in which case she shouldn't be around other dogs. after that she'll be okay and return to normal.
first thing esmei did when i let her outside was lick her privates. for some reason she wouldn't come off the deck - just sat there watching - and it took a lot of coaxing (pretending to run so she'll give chase) to finally get her into the backyard. she took a long pee inside one of the raised beds (poor perennials) before relaxing to a pine tree branch chew. i managed to convince her to come inside and struggled to put on a new diaper. i took her lunch out of the fridge but when i presented it to her, she turned her head, like she was afraid of the food. only when i put it in her feeding stand did she finally eat it. afterwards i made her go back inside her playpen but she was already heading there anyway. i gave her some treats before returning to the cafe.
my 2nd aunt pan-fried a package of stinky tofu she bought from 99 ranch. with no customers, it was the perfect time to eat it. it smelled pretty awful - like the sewers. it didn't taste like authentic fried smelly tofu though, more like steamed tofu. paired with some taiwanese paocai and hot sauce however made it a passable taiwanese stinky tofu experience.
it finally got busy around 2-3pm. bentos, tea eggs, and ramen noodles. surprisingly no beef noodle soup despite the cold weather. around 3:30pm i noticed esmei's diaper had fallen off (my sister warned my earlier, said i didn't put it on tight enough) and quickly went back to my sister's place to put the diaper on again.
after we closed, i biked to my parents' place, getting there by 4:30pm. sunset wasn't until 5pm so there was still daylight and i didn't need my bike lights. my sister showed up a short time later, bringing with her esmei. we let her out in the backyard first before putting on the diaper so she could come inside.
we weighed esmei, she's currently 41 lbs. but that was with her harness on. she doesn't look that heavy but when she has a running start and jumps on you she can knock you over. she has a dense double coat, reminiscent of mozart. if you were to shave off the top layer of fur, she'd be a grey dog underneath. definitely not a dog that's afraid of the cold.
esmei did something unusual today. we were watching a dog agility contest on television, and she ended up watching, especially any part that showed a dog on screen. she'd sit attentively in front of the tv, watching this other dog performing. after a while she'd jump up onto the table and even one time she clawed at the screen, hoping to paw the tv dog. unlike hailey, esmei is smart enough to watch television, even if she doesn't know that it's not a real dog on the other side of the screen.
my sister ended up taking esmei home before we had dinner. we had fried rice and a cauliflower & smoked pork skin stirfry. the pork skin tasted a bit like pork ears. i went home afterwards, getting back by 7:20pm.
back at home i continued working on removing the blood stains from the duvet cover. i found the persistent stain i'd been working on this morning, the one that i sprayed with shout stain remover. the stain was still there. so i got a small pyrex bowl, put it underneath the stain, then soaked the stain in more hydrogen peroxide. that seemed to do the trick. it didn't get rid of the stain completely, but the stain faded to such a point where it was hard to see anymore. there was one other large stain and i did the same trick. that worked much better on this second stain to the point where i couldn't find it anymore. as for the smaller blood spots, the cold water oxi-clean seemed to have done the trick, because i looked everywhere, and couldn't find any blood spots.
with the blood stains gone, i threw the duvet cover into the washer along with the rest of my bedsheets. i did spray that one tough faded blood stain with some more stain remover. i noticed a few tiny blood spots on a pillowcase, which i dabbed with some hydrogen peroxide. unlike the larger stains, hydrogen peroxide was able to completely remove the small blood spots. so the stain size makes a difference (also age of stain). i washed everything on a normal cycle, warm/cold large load. i then put it through the dryer. when the laundry was finally finished, i pulled out the duvet cover and it looked as good as new. it took a combined effort of hydrogen peroxide, oxi-clean, stain remover, and cold water to finally remove the blood stains.
if i were to do it again, i'd use hydrogen peroxide to treat any large stains, followed by an oxi-clean soak for 6+ hours. if the stain persists, spot soak with hydrogen peroxide again, and as a final resort, use some stain remover before putting it in the washer. and i did all of that without using bleach. i looked up a lot of info online, and nobody really brought up bleach. a few even said bleach would actually make the stain worse, which i don't really believe. maybe because bleach is hard to work with and only suitable with whites, while something like oxi-clean can be used on a wider range of colors and fabrics. using bleach would be the very very last resort if everything else didn't work.
while putting the duvet cover back on the heavy duty comforter, i discovered corner ties inside the cover, as well as corner straps on my comforter. i tied two of them, hopefully that'll keep the comforter from sliding around inside the cover.
ayo edebiri hosted saturday night live tonight. the final two sketches were laugh-out-loud funny, the one about a hypnotist visiting a school, and the one with people's court and a bad haircut. she really did an amazing job, i hope they invite her back.