West Coast Offense

Up at quarter after five every morning to milk cows and gather eggs. As a kid growing up on the farm, Ron dreamed about the days when he had a city job and could sleep in to a decent hour. A couple of decades later, living in New Jersey, he was getting up at quarter after five to catch the commuter train into Manhattan. By the time he retired a couple of decades further on, he was sleeping in a whole 45 minutes later, getting up at six to catch the commuter train into Chicago.

Ron happily threw his alarm clock away when he retired back to Nebraska. He would stay up until one or two in the morning, surfing the Web and listening to music. His morning wake-up time pushed later and later, into ten o’clock, eleven o’clock. It took a while for my morning person and his night owl metabolisms to blend, and they did only by my practice of gradually staying up later and later. I still tend to wake up fairly early, thus making myself sleep deprived, but the fun we have together makes up for it.

For a good fifteen years, Ron was the master of his own fourth dimension. The only schedule he really had to worry about was that of his beloved Nebraska Huskers football games, televised every Saturday during the fall. Aside from the occasional eleven a.m. start, morning was irrelevant to him. I, too, enjoyed the Central Time Zone. With the late night news finishing a whole hour earlier, “The Tonight Show” started at 10:30. I was actually awake to watch it. Monday Night Football started at eight, not nine. I had a chance to enjoy a little of it before nodding off.

So then we moved two time zones farther west. For most television viewing, this is a real bonus. East Coasters have to wait at least until nine p.m. for many of their favorite shows to air. I’m cooking supper when Monday Night Football kicks off. Were I still in Fredericksburg, Virginia, I would sleep through most of “Project Runway.” Out here in the Pacific Time Zone, the designers start sniping at each other at six. It’s still light out.

For Ron, this is a problem. An eleven a.m. home start for the Huskers means getting up before nine o’clock, here on the West Coast. And what about all those other college games, a day-long football extravaganza? A true fan, such as Ron, keeps an eye on all actual and potential opponents. Before one Saturday football fest has ended, he knows which games he wants to watch next week. East Coast games that start before noon start airing here around eight in the morning. All the pre-game hoopla begins even earlier.

But I’ve got my X’s and O’s charted. I’ll shake him awake before the sun is very high, prop him up in his chair, stick a cup of coffee in one hand and the TV remote in the other, and head out to the kitchen to start making football snacks.

Ready for some football? Yeah, we’re ready.

Cat Dickens hid his head as the Huskers lost to the UCLA Bruins on September eighth.

Things you will learn perched atop a knee trolley

Note: I have spent the last month or so healing from heel spur surgery. I chose a knee scooter instead of crutches to keep all the weight off my foot until my Achilles tendon has healed.　

　

Your dog will sense your injury and treat you with delicate reverence. Your cat might open his eyes with a withering look of, "Get over it."

You will run over your own good foot. You will run over it again, and again, and again.

Downhill: gentle slopes are fun. Uphill: level is best.

You need only one shoe, but it had better have a good grip.

After only a couple of weeks of mostly sitting on your duff, you will totally understand where the Princess and the Pea is coming from.

Your husband will declare your kitchen "inconvenient" and proceed to rearrange everything, thus proving himself right. However, he will be a tireless chauffeur, dishwasher, butler, pooper scooper, yard boy, nurse and toilet paper stocker.

As for the rest of the housework, sticky is as dusty does.

You thought giving a cat medicine under normal circumstances was difficult. Now you know better.

You can only hope you have it in you to say, "Of course!" with the same immediate and warm generosity your sister said it upon your requesting she deliver you to the surgery center by six a.m.

You know you are getting ripe when your husband comes at you wielding scissors, duct tape and a large black plastic bag.

Step-over bathtub just a few rolling feet from your bed, or step-into shower crawling up a flight of stairs and across a suddenly vast bedroom? The shower, baby. The shower.

Your knee will never again mock your foot for complaining about carrying all the weight.

Dr. Conner Mai, at the Visalia Medical Clinic, did my surgery and applied two fine foot casts in summertime blue. His assistant removed them without nicking my skin.

If you thought your kitchen was big, the trolley will shrink it. If you thought your kitchen was small, the trolley will stretch it out.

A handicap pull bar alongside the toilet doesn’t look as bad as you thought it would. And no matter how it looks, you’ll be glad to have it.

Your mom is a great cook, and so generous with her time and effort that you don’t mind admitting she’s a better cook than you.

Gator guys, duck dorks, repo rebs, dogged bounty hunters, lizard lickers, storage locker shenanigans, pawn shop putzes, bridezillas and Gypsy brides – redneck television rules, these days. And you will never be desperate enough to check them all out.

A thousand chairs: a thousand ways to get out of them without falling.