I don’t know why, but it seems like for the past 10 years or so, my birthday has always seemed to go sour one way or another. Nothing really major, and nothing that anybody really did wrong, but it always seems like there’s something that comes up that makes the day a bummer. Well, yesterday, my 36th birthday, made up for all of that. It was just an awesome, awesome day.

Real quick, just in case you’ve never been here before, I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 7-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. I’m attempting to run 61 marathons in 2010 to raise money and awareness for a charity I’m a part of called Train 4 Autism. So far I’m through 55. I named my endeavor Operation Jack, after him. It’s my first attempt at making something good come from his struggles.

So as I mentioned, yesterday was my birthday. I’m 36 now, and I really can’t remember having a great birthday over the past 10-12 years. It’s nothing I’m going to blame on anybody at all, it’s just that sometimes things don’t work out and it’s always been something. Well, yesterday made up for all of that. It wasn’t a super-exciting day, like when you’re a kid and you turn 10. But it was just a great day from start to finish.

So much of it revolved around food, which for me is awesome.

One thing that didn’t revolve around food — I got a happy birthday text from my mom in the morning. She’s 58 … how 2010 is that? I was pretty impressed! I called her later in the day. Anyways, food …

Breakfast
My favorite cookies are white chocolate and macadamia nut. I love pancakes. So Tiff made me macadamia nut pancakes and put in white chocolate chips. They were amazing. But the best part is that the kids all joined me. When I say the kids, I’m including Jack. All three sat at the table with me. Jack had already eaten, but he was calm and playing with toys.

Tiff had Ben and Ava each say something the liked about me. Ava said she liked that I’m nice to her. Ben said he likes that I take care of the family. It put a smile on my face. As did the pancakes. The coffee was good. All-in-all, a nice start to the day.

Visit To The Doctor
I’ve had a cold for about the past week or so, and it’s not getting better, and I’ve had bronchitis two times in the past three years. I’m running six marathons over the next 34 days, which will continue to break down my immune system, and I’ll be spending time on airplanes immediately following those marathons. Ahhh, flying germ tubes.

So, I went to the doctor on my way into the office this morning to get myself taken care of. It was my first visit to the doctor in more than a year. I’m impressed that it took me this long to get sick. But I need to get everything taken care of before it gets worse. I just wanted a Z-Pak prescription to make sure I nip this cold in the bud.

I got there at 9 a.m. and there was nobody in there waiting. It took me more than 30 minutes to get called back. Frustrating! After getting my vitals checked, I spent another 20 minutes waiting for the doctor. I spent about three minutes with him, got a Z-Pak prescription, was advised to rest (that isn’t going to happen) and then went on my way. That took about an hour and 10 minutes — completely inefficient, but nothing to truly bring down my day.

Cool Gift At The Office
Some people at the office made a nice framed presentation of my Runner’s World article and the article that appeared on the front page of the Orange County Register back in January. It was pretty cool and made me smile.

Lunch
I met Tiff and the kids at a place called Farrell’s. It’s an ice cream parlor and they serve burgers, salads, sandwiches and other similar things. All three kids were very well behaved and had a good time. It’s nice when we can bring Jack out without any help and he doesn’t have any problems. We don’t get a whole lot of chances to do normal things as a family of five, but this was one of those chances and it worked out. It was really nice.

Something funny happened when I ordered my lunch. I asked the waiter for a recommendation. I was looking at a couple of burgers or a reuben sandwich, but he highly recommended the Philly cheesesteak. I told him I’d take it, but I also warned him that I was going to put his advice to a serious test because I ate a cheesesteak in Philly the day before! He laughed, but stood by the sandwich.

It ended up being pretty good. No complaints, I enjoyed my lunch. They brought out some ice cream and sang a song afterwards. I had a great time, thanked the kids for being so well behaved when we went out to the parking lot, then I went back to work.

Dinner
Benjamin’s soccer team had its end-of-the-season soccer party last night at a local Italian restaurant called Peppino’s. I got home from work, picked up Ben and Ava, and immediately took them back out. Jack was calm and bathed and stayed in with Tiff. That was OK — he’s better off being comfortable in his own environment in the evening.

We got to the function and Ben had a blast hanging out with his team, eating pizza and running around having fun. Me and Ava split a pizza (with plenty of leftovers) and got a little silly ourselves. It was a nice event, both kids had fun and were well behaved and heck, the pizza was good!

Dessert
My favorite marathon is the Boston Marathon. Everybody knows that, including my wife. For my cake, she picked up a Boston cream pie. Just because. I got a kick out of that. I’m not really picky. She picked that out because it’s something to associate with Boston, so she figured that would make me happy. Because of her reasoning, it did. And it was pretty tasty!

Jack was already in bed, but the four of us sat at the table, enjoying dessert. I had two of those two wax candles with the numbers “3” and “6”. I did some quick math in my head and told Benjamin that we should save them until the year 2037, because in that year, he’ll be turning 36 and I’ll be turning 63! That’s how I see the world, and apparently, that’s how my son sees the world, too. He did the math and got a kick out of that.

Ava went to bed, and I hung out with Ben and Tiff, who were both reading. I watched K-State get a nice basketball win. Last year, Ben behaved very poorly and all but ruined my day. Last week, he told me was going to try very hard to make sure that wasn’t the case again this year. Well, he was great.

When I tucked him in, he asked me if he had behaved better than last year and I told him he was so good, it made me completely forget all about last year. I went downstairs and started writing my blog with SportsCenter on in the background, basically falling asleep at my computer.

There was nothing spectacular about the day. But it was super nice from start to finish and I spent a lot of time with the family. I couldn’t really ask for much more in a day.

I don’t even know where to start this blog. I’m in such a haze writing it. Yesterday was a day that ended up OK, but I’ll never forget it. To put it simply, I almost lost my grandma.

Real quick, if you’ve never been here before, click here and see why I’m running 61 marathons this year for Train 4 Autism. But read this blog entry first.

Yesterday at about 11:15, I was sitting at work, plugging away, and I got a call from my stepmom. She told me my grandma had fallen and chipped her tooth and her mouth was bleeding. That wasn’t the most out-of-the-ordinary thing, but my stepmom told me that she heard somebody administered CPR on my grandma, and that doesn’t fit in with a chipped tooth. Something certainly seemed odd.

My grandma has asthma, and she’s 85, so several members of my family wanted me to go to the hospital to check on her status. If you’ve been following along, you know that three weeks ago, my grandparents moved to an assisted living facility about seven minutes from my work. The hospital she went to is five minutes from my work. I called the place they live at just to make sure my grandpa was there with her and he was. So, not really fearing much, I left immediately for the hospital just to make sure everything was OK.

When I got there, I went to the ER and they had no record of her being there. They checked a couple of different ways and she wasn’t in the system. So, I went outside and called the assisted living facility to confirm, and they swore that she was there with my grandpa, taken by paramedics. So I went back in and asked again. They had no record. They checked something else and still couldn’t find her. I was about to go back to work and tell my family it was a false alarm, because she wasn’t there. I asked one last time, because I felt about 60 percent sure she was there, and the woman told me that she found her, but she had been checked in with a different name. I asked if it was her maiden name, which would have been weird, because she’s been married 66 years. The woman told me that no, when patients are more critical, they check them in with a different name. That’s when I became concerned.

“Is she OK?”

“You just need to get a security pass and go to bed number two and talk to the doctors.”

WOW. That’s when I got really concerned. I got back there pretty quick and saw four or five patients crowded around a person who was mostly covered up. I couldn’t tell who it was. There were machines and tubes all over the place. I saw my grandpa sitting in a chair in the corner, crying with a woman consoling him. I knew I was in the right place, so I told him I was there and I went to take a look at the person. It was my grandma. Her face was pretty swollen with a lot of blood coming out of her mouth. I hate to say this, but she looked terrible. I couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead, conscious or not.

I asked one of the doctors if she was alive and they told me yes, that she was slightly coherent, too. I stepped back to my grandpa and he started telling me about how they were at Target and she fell and he wasn’t sure what was going on. He didn’t have his hearing aid in, so it was a little difficult to communicate with him. Within about a minute, a doctor came over to us with the infamous, “let’s go into the hallway to talk” line.

He told us her heart had slowed down quite a bit while they were at Target, and she passed out, landing on her face, which caused the bleeding. She needed a temporary pacemaker put in immediately and would probably need a permanent pacemaker put in about two or three days later.

I loudly gave my grandpa the quick version and the doctor asked him if he’d sign some papers. He said he would, and within about three minutes, my grandma was getting wheeled on her gurney to get that procedure done. I couldn’t make any calls, but I sent some texts, emails and Twitter direct messages to relatives to let them know what was going on.

While my grandma was getting wheeled down the hall, it was pretty shocking to see her with all the tubes and in her hospital attire. She looked more frail than I’d ever thought she was. The ER trauma doctor was walking with me telling me that he had checked her out and she didn’t suffer any trauma. There were no head or spine injuries and no broken bones. But he told me that an off-duty ER physician’s assistant performed CPR on my grandma while she was out at Target and that saved her life. He seemed like he was 100 percent without doubt when he told me that she would have died right there on the ground if not for that person.

I was shocked like I haven’t been shocked in a long, long time. My wife’s grandma is doing terribly and probably isn’t going to be around too long. I couldn’t believe that I had almost lost my grandma first. My grandma is 85, but she’s pretty upbeat and coherent for 85. Here we are in February:

It just didn’t seem right. She’s a pretty young 85. Everything happens for a reason and I believe in God’s plan. Three weeks ago, she just moved about 45 minutes south from her home of 42 years to live in a new assisted living facility. Yesterday, she was on a group outing with her home to go shopping at Target. If she’s at her old home yesterday, I’d be dusting my suit off for a funeral right now. If that mystery person doesn’t perform CPR, it’s the same situation. And speaking of that, I couldn’t imagine performing CPR on an 85-year-old woman bleeding heavily from her mouth. As I said on my Facebook yesterday, thank God for good doctors and good samaritans. I don’t know what more I can say about that.

Anyways, she’s going to be fine. The procedure went fine yesterday and she’s going to get a permanent pacemaker pretty soon. She’s in Cardiac ICU right now and will stay there for the duration of her stay — probably a little less than a week. I stuck around for about four hours, taking care of my grandpa.

He’s a pretty emotional guy, and he was swinging all over the place. He was upset, and then he was OK cracking jokes. At one point, he started telling me he was proud of me and wanted to know where I was running this weekend. Santa Rosa, California.

“Oh, I remember being there when I was young,” he said. “I got pretty drunk, then started running behind a truck, trying to chase it and grab onto it. I nearly got myself killed!”

Ahhh, the things you learn during emotional moments, huh?

“There’s nothing worse than a wine drunk, Sam.”

Glad I stopped drinking, I guess. Anyways, he started placing blame on himself, saying that maybe it was his fault or maybe he could have done something differently. I told him to stop being ridiculous, that her heart would have stopped beating at that moment no matter where they were or what they were doing. They were in the absolute right place at the right time and everything was going to be fine.

My brother came by and finally my dad and my stepmom were able to get there. At that point I went back to work, but I pretty much spaced for the rest of the day. And that’s pretty much it for my story. My grandma’s going to be fine. But she was way too close to dying face down in her own blood yesterday. I’ll be forever grateful to whoever it was that administered CPR on her.

One last thing … I normally have a weekly contest where you guys pick my time. I’m not going to do that this week, just because I’m just not in the mood to have fun. But here’s what I want to do:

My grandma’s youngest son, my uncle Marty, has autism. He’s 50 and somewhere between moderate and severe. He’s definitely got his problems and he’s nowhere near mainstream. As a result of being a mother of an autistic child who has led a life of difficulty, she has formed a pretty special bond with Tiffany and she’s very proud of Jack.

So, instead of having a contest, I want y’all who would be willing to play to donate $5 (or more) in her honor and I’m going to tell her what the number ends up being. I’ll randomly draw one out of every 10 of you who donate and give you your choice of an Operation Jack t-shirt, tech shirt or sweatshirt.

So that’s all. Thanks for getting to the bottom of this. I hope you have a great weekend!

Video Of The Day

I wish there was a holiday every weekend. That would make it a lot easier to come up with blog topics. Sunday is Valentine’s Day, so naturally, I’m going to talk about three things I love. Well actually, two people and one thing. But you know what I’m saying.

1. Tiffany
Tiffany, in case you didn’t know, is my wife of the past 10 1/2 years (shoot, almost 11 … this year is flying by!). I figure that since Valentine’s Day is the holiday to celebrate love, I’m going to talk about how we started dating and all that yucky-vomit stuff. We started dating on September 22, 1994 because of a newspaper article — one I saw last night for the first time in years.

I was the sports editor on the college newspaper in 1994 and she was a freshman. Wait, I take that back. She was a hot freshman. I wanted to get to know her better, so I tricked her into taking a women’s volleyball season preview story. She took the bait, and about 10 seconds later, she started worrying about what kind of mess she had gotten herself into. She knew nothing about sports.

Lucky for her, I was there to help. A few days later, I knew when she had scheduled her interview with the coach, and I made sure I was around the newsroom when it was time for her to go down to his office. Sure enough, Tiff freaked and I was there and offered to go with her. I handled the interview for her while she sat there petrified.

Afterwards, we spent a lot of time working on that 300-word story that nobody other than the athletes and their mothers read. I even showed off a little bit by letting her borrow my laptop (not everybody had a laptop back then). We worked up a little bit of a friendship and eventually, the story ran on September 15, 1994. The only reason I know the date is because I actually saw the article last night while she was looking at her old stringbook.

Anyways, on September 21, I worked up the courage to ask her out on a date (after 30 minutes of her teasing me and daring me to and another 15 minutes of me nervously stalling). She said yes, I took her out for dinner the next night, and even though I spilled my salad on my lap and then brushed it on the floor, she was willing to go on a second date. There was a third, then a fourth, and at this point, I’m pretty confident we’ll be together for a long, long time.

I have to run a race in Austin on Sunday morning, but I’ll be home in time to take her out to dinner that night for Valentine’s Day. We have babysitting squared away (big thank you to my mother-in-law!) and we’re going to a simple dinner at Outback. So there, I said I’ll talk about three things I love, and just like with everything else in this world, in this blog Tiff is No. 1 on my list!

2. Jack
It’s Operation Jack, so I might as well have a Jack update, right? Jack continues to amaze us with his progress. Last week, he gave us a hug for the first time ever after calling me and Tiff by name (well, “Mommy” and “Daddy”).

This Monday, Benjamin had some tomato soup waiting for him when Jack came downstairs for dinner. Jack had never eaten soup in his life. But he picked up the spoon, scooped some of the soup, blew it off to cool it down and then ate it! Tiff was floored, as was I when I heard about it. He’s showing progress on almost a daily or weekly basis nowadays and it’s totally amazing.

He had some tomato soup with his dinner again last night, and was having a blast playing along with Benajamin’s new “Deal Or No Deal” Nintendo DS game last night, calling out the numbers of the cases to pick. Words can’t really explain what all his progress is like to us. It’s so cliché to say, but I’m just expecting the unexpected nowadays, and that’s what I’m getting. He still has a long ways to go, but he’s certainly come a long, long ways since I started blogging last summer.

3. Running
I certainly do love to run, which is a good thing, because if I didn’t, it would be a really long year! Well let’s be realistic — it’s going to be a really long year anyways.

This weekend, my marathon is in Austin, Texas. I don’t know a whole lot about the course. I presume I should check out the profile. But I’m not tremendously concerned about it. The weather forecast looks like it’s going to be chilly, in the high 30s or low 40s. That’s easy weather to run in. Shorts, long sleeves (or maybe a sleeveless tank — probably a gametime decision) and gloves.

My legs are feeling pretty fresh and I’m feeling pretty strong. I just don’t feel a lot of spring in my step. I’m not sure how quick I’ll feel since I ran two marathons last weekend, but I’m pretty confident in how I’m running right now. If I had to set an over/under line in Vegas on my finishing time on Sunday, I’d say about 3:11. We’ll see how it goes.

PS: My Dad
It’s his birthday on Sunday … 62! I’m grateful for each birthday he has nowadays, because he’s had cancer twice in the past six years. But thankfully, he’s doing great now. And man is he old!

That’s All He Wrote, Folks
I write my blogs the night before I post them and I fell asleep at my laptop finishing this one up. I think that’s an indicator that I’m done. Have a great weekend, everybody!