i left for the cafe by 8:50am, stopping at the nearby speedway to get $40 worth of gas. there was enough time for me to open up the shop, as i couldn't trust my sister to do it. also she saw me while walking esmei which gave her additional incentive not to come early. i reheated the tea eggs. turned on all the ordering tablets. cooked 6 cups of rice. my sister didn't show up until 9:30am, right when i was about to unlock the front door.
my 2nd aunt showed up right when i was about to leave for the airport at 9:40am. she made some crumbled salmon stirfry for my mother, along with some fruits.
i hate driving to the airport even though i've done it a bunch of times. i always get really nervous, afraid i might take the wrong exit, get in the wrong lane, or maybe crash the car in the tunnels.
i made it to the cellphone lot by 10am, right when my parents' plane landed. then i waited. i brought the quansheng radio where i could listen to departing and arriving air traffic. i also had my phone and was browsing through reddit. i kept checking the map to see when my parents would show up, meaning they turned on their phone, but i didn't see anything. i even left them a voicemail via line, asking them to give me an update. i waited for nearly an hour before my mother finally called me close to 11am. it was my father on the line, he said they'd already left the terminal with their luggage and was waiting outside.
google map told me it'd take 8 minutes of circling the airport to get to terminal E arrival, but there was actually a shortcut that brought me in front of terminal E in less than a minute. i saw my parents waiting. i don't think they were expecting to see me so soon, i even flashed the lights but they didn't recognize me until i got out of the car and popped open the trunk. my mother was unmasked and coughing. i'd already put on my facemask, didn't want to catch the flu. for some reason they now had 5 suitcases even though they originally left with just 4. each one of pretty heavy, requiring two people to lift it into the trunk.
my father got in the driver's seat and drove us back. i found an extra mask in the back seat and gave it to my mother. my father originally planned on working today, but we convinced him to at least rest for a day in case he was still contagious being in close proximity with my mother who was still showing flu symptoms. so instead they dropped me off at the cafe around 11:30am before they continued home.
not sure what i was planning for this week, but didn't plan on both my parents being sick and me having to work again indefinitely. how much longer would i have to endure this relentless schedule? a week? two weeks? my 2nd aunt leaves for her own taiwan trip on monday, so there's no way it'd go beyond this week.
after a month though, by now i'm used to the grind. the trick is to not think about it too much. it also helps that today wasn't all that busy. we reached our average profit. there was a busy stretch around lunchtime, but after that things tapered off significantly. my 2nd aunt - who's a hypochondriac - wore a facemask for much of the day, afraid that i might've contracted something from my mother, didn't want to get sick before her trip next week. i made a new batch of tea eggs and a new batch of boba pearls (half a package, 5 boxes).
around 2:40pm i took esmei out for a half-hour walk. temperature today was in the 40's which wouldn't be all that bad except it was also very windy. esmei pooped first then later peed. at one point we were spooked by a black pitbull puppy. he was behind a chain link fence, but the door was unlocked and he managed to get out and follow esmei around. i led him back to his house and closed the front gate, but he can still easily get out from the side, but that wasn't my problem.
even before i had close contact with my virus-ridden parents i wasn't feeling very well. i was coughing this morning and felt a stiffness in my body. could be nothing more than tree pollen allergy and sleeping wrong on the bed. there was also some pain in my gut, but could just be because i was hungry and didn't eat or drink anything all day.
the day went by pretty fast. by the end of the day my 2nd aunt sprung some surprise news on us: she wouldn't be able to come in tomorrow because her apartment was getting fumigated. normally my 2nd uncle would be in charge of letting in the exterminators, but he had a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so my 2nd aunt needed to be there. i said there was nothing to worry about, that my father could come in tomorrow. that's when my sister got really angry with me, said he couldn't come to work because he was contagious, said i didn't care about my parents' health. she said she could run the cafe on her, which caused both my 2nd aunt and me to laugh. that just made her angrier.
then we had another fight right around closing time. two customers came in asking if they could stil order. my sister was in the bathroom at the time, my 2nd aunt took the order, but i told the customers we were closing and they had to get their food to go. when my sister came out and heard what happened, she got angry with me again, said if the customers want to eat here they can eat here, regardless of the time. i already had my jacket on and was ready to go, but ended up staying and cooking the noodles before my sister angrily told me to leave. so i did (retrieving my stashed bike from the shed). later when i checked the webcams, i saw my sister and 2nd aunt didn't close the cafe until 7pm. i had legit reasons to get home, one of them being i didn't bring my bike lights and wouldn't be able to ride in the dark.
a surprise greeted me when i got back home. new sign posts new installed in front of my house. apparently the parking spot in front of renee's place is now a designated handicapped parking spot, so nobody can park there but her. i gave her points for gaming the system, but it's an asshole move on her part, especially since there are now so few parking spots left as residents of the private way near where we used to be able to park freely converted all those spots to private parking spaces. it doesn't affect me that much because i don't have a car but i occasionally borrow one and now there's one less parking space.
i didn't have dinner until 9pm, reheated some leftover mujaddara from last night.
i took one of the abbott lollipop-style home covid test, just to make sure i didn't contract the coronavirus. it was negative. so whatever was ailing me today is not covid related. could just be fatigue.