Sorry for the lengthy post yesterday regarding my many mishaps. I got a little carried away, but like I said it was a very strange day that continued on into the very early morning hours. I’ll try to keep this edition a little more concise… (Oh, who am I kidding?)

Stanza five: I lost (big time) at the races.

So I pushed Sarah over to the college in her broken down trike.  I had a little time before I was scheduled to race.  The Foreign Student Affairs office had given me my number (2612) for the 400 meter relay (they signed me up for…) but of course it was still locked in my apartment by the phone. If only I had not been wearing my running clothes/shoes when I left the house that morning…if only. So I met up with my friend Bill and the other two suckers who got signed up to run in this fiasco.  We were all pretty confident that we would finish last before we arrived and once we saw the competition we were almost certain that we would also be humiliated.  But we maintained a pretty good sense of humor throughout.

I wish I had pictures to show you, but as I shared in Stanza 1 my wife left me and she took the camera with her…

This was a real track meet.  The other participants (i.e. the Chinese students who were not enlisted to race against their will) were wearing tennis shoes designed for running on a track.  They had running clothes on (shorts even, and it was pretty cold) and most of them were sporting leg muscles that looked like they had been sculpted in iron.  They were a lot shorter and younger than the foreign contingent I was a part of, and it turns out they were also a LOT
faster.  Of course the races were all delayed and before we ran our heat we got to witness the women’s 400 meter relay.

That was a sight to behold.  There were no foreigners in this race at all.  A few of the girls were running in blue jeans which was a bit of a confidence booster for me, but even these girls could have probably outraced the likes of me.

The funniest thing about this track meet from my perspective was that the participants didn’t seem to pace themselves.  They ran a full-on sprint for the entire 400 meters!  This was especially evident during the girls’ race when many of them crossed the finish line only to collapse in a dead heap.  A few of them looked as if they had actually passed out at the finish line.  At least five that I saw had to be carried from the track.  They just run and run until their lungs give out.

Witnessing this run-till-you-die approach worried me a bit.  What would the men’s race look like?  I changed my goals a few times while waiting for our heat.  First, I wanted to beat at least one other competitor; then I decided that was too lofty and I should just plan on finishing the race; then I even second-guessed that decision and decided I would be happy if I didn’t swoon at the end of the race like so many of the girls I saw.

Without our numbers pinned on us (because we had no chance and the officials knew it from the start) we took our places on the track.  I was scheduled to run second so I would be the first one to get the baton passed off to me.  None of the four of us foreigners had ever ran track…not since junior high anyway, so we didn’t really even know how to line up.

When they fired the shot to start the race, my friend Bill tried his hardest to stay in it.  But like I said before they run at a full sprint and don’t stop.  You can tell they’ve done this before.  They didn’t pull these guys off the streets.  By the time the baton came to me there were only two other runners behind us.  After I ran my lap there was only one.  I held my own pretty well and ran as hard as I could (without swooning) but we ended up falling short…way short.  We didn’t get lapped (which was our main team goal) but we came in dead last.  What a surprise.

After the race my head was spinning like a top and for a while I thought I was Jimi Hendrix.  After that sensation passed my heart just kept pounding in my chest and my legs began to feel like Godzilla-sized sausages.  I wondered at one point why my lips would be tingling and then thought it was probably better not to think about it.  The most crushing blow however was the one that my ego received since my chances of competing in Beijing were officially shot.

The good ole’ U.S.A did not fair well at the Xining Olympics.  Although to our credit one of the girls in my grammar glass won gold in the shotput…so they’ll think twice about whether or not they’ll sign up foreigners for that event next year now won’t they?

I think next year I’m just going to fake an injury and save myself from unneeded physical anguish and humiliation…

Bridge:  Ee-woo brawl

This one didn’t really affect me, but it was strange enough it has to be included in the inventory of this day-song.  While getting Sarah’s new trike repaired at the ‘mall’ I witnessed a brawl.

It was the first brawl I’ve seen since moving here AND it was the first brawl I’ve seen in a mall since I was in junior high.  I came down the elevator into the shoe department with Sarah’s fixed trike (yes, something positive during the course of the day!) and I noticed a large crowd of people staring into the cosmetic department.

When I glided down the end of the runway, I noticed there were a bunch of people brawling.  It looked like an episode of Jerry Springer because it appeared to me that there were male and female participants AND the women seemed to be winning.  There was a lot of slapping and jumping around and a fair amount of bodies trying to push other bodies away from one another.  And, to beat all, it looked like most of the people fighting were of a specific ethnicity: we call them the Hat people (because, duh, the men wear white hats.)  Anyway, I was far enough away from the action to leave the scene unscathed.

Stanza 8:  Bloody lip, spilt milk, puke, sleeplessness, and hangover

The rest of the day actually went pretty well before it got weird again.  In commisseration with my Norwegian friend whose wife also left him for the day, I took my girls outside to play with his girls so we could support one another during our time of loss.  The kids had a great time riding bikes/trikes and being in the chilly out-of-doors.  Things were going smoothly so we decided we would all have dinner together.  The Dads were desperately outnumbered 5:2, but we felt it was worth it for our own sanity.  Plus, neither of us were much into cooking so we did toast and fruit and other bachelor-type foods.

Within the first five minutes at my friend’s house Sarah fell from of an inflatable Hello Kitty! chair right on her face.  Moments before this happened I was thinking, "Hmmm, I wonder if that’s a good idea…"  And I guess it wasn’t because she got a little bloodied lip.

Ten minutes later, after I had applied a cool wash cloth to Sarah’s swelling lip, we were preparing our "meal".  My friend was boiling milk (i.e. the Xining form of pasteurization) in the kitchen.  Then the phone rang and my friend went and answered it.  I continued spreading peanut butter, jelly, butter, and other condiments onto toast.  And then the sizzling started.

The milk had boiled over and was pouring onto the stove.  I ran and grabbed it but not before a few quarts poured all over the stove and cabinet area.  If this had been our apartment, I would definitely have been crying over spilled milk.  But since this wasn’t my place I was just an innocent bystander who was trying to help.

The meal went well, the kids played pretty well together, and the bedtime ritual went off without a hitch.  I let out a big sigh of relief, watched some TV series DVDs, and hit the blog.  When I finally went to bed all was right with the world and I was glad to finally put the bizzaro day to rest…

That is until 1:45 a.m when I first heard the moans.

Sarah had woken up and came into the hall saying, "Poopy, Daddy, poopy."

I got out of bed groggily, changed her diaper, re-diapered and clothed her and tucked her back in.  I crawled back into my bed still hopeful that I could get 5 more hours of sleeop.

At roughly 2:15 I heard Sarah again.  When I went into her room, under the fluourescent glow of the girls’ nightlight, I could see many boggy puddles splotching Sarah’s bedding.  There’s only one explanation for such consistency: Puke.

Yep, I’m sorry to be so blunt, but it’s unavoidable.  Something had not settled right in her little system and it seemed to have made its way out of her like an ill-contrived prison break.  The bizarre thing about this is that Sarah was sick two days ago.  It seemed to be a twenty-four hour thing that quickly passed.  Except now (in the middle of the night) it had come back with a vengeance to haunt me like a country-western song.

The rest of the night played out much like a Monty Python skit.  (Oh, but it’s such a thin little mint…bring me a bucket)  I won’t go into details.  I’ll just say that I had to start a load of laundry to keep up with all the soiled bedding, garments, stuffed animals, etc.

My poor little girl finally drifted off to sleep and woke up promptly at 7:15 this morning (seemingly) healthy and chipper.  Anna slept through the whole messy thing.  I, however, woke up feeling like I had a serious hangover.  I still feel like John Henry drove a steel railroad spike through my skull.  But as my Norwegian friend likes to tell me: "Welcome to a new day with new possibilities…"  I’m ready for them for sure.

Conclusion:

Amazing even me I find that my spirits are not too low.  When you survive a day like yesterday you feel you’ve survived something significant and you’ve become a stronger person in the process.  Oh sure, I’ve drank a few pots of coffee today, Anna’s pony tale looks like a raccoon that stepped too close to a wood chipper, and Sarah’s watched 5 consecutive hours of Teletubbies this morning; but hey, we’re survivors.  And no one can take that away from us…

It’s just that banjo twang and croon of your typical country and western song.  Somebody turn the channel, please!