Easy Like Sunday Morning?

We begin our Sunday about 6 a.m., awake before the altar boys and the birds, to a world as still and quiet as a photograph.

“I can’t believe this,” I tell my wife.

“I’ll make coffee,” she says.

“I still can’t believe this,” I say.

And I stumble from the house with the dog on the leash, the dog smelling like trout and getting fishier by the minute. He’s a good dog, but I can’t seem to teach him to bathe himself.

“You smell like trout,” I tell him, and he looks up at me proudly, grateful for the compliment.

Back inside, I wake the little girl. She cries a little at first. It’s 6 a.m. Sunday, and she should be sleeping. We all should be sleeping.

“We have a soccer game,” I whisper.

“It’s Sunday,” she moans, flopping back down on her pillow. I dress her while she sleeps.

And we head off in the dark, 20 miles down the freeway to a soccer tournament. One of the advantages of living in Southern California is that you can play soccer all the time. The season begins July 1 and ends June 30. A full fiscal year. Some teams play longer.

Of course, no one makes you do this. You choose to do it. It’s a privilege really, playing soccer at 7 in the morning. If we’re lucky, the country will snag another World Cup through all this.

“Look, there’s frost,” I say, as we walk out across the icy field.

“Frost!” yells the little girl.

It’s a privilege really, playing in the frost.

And we start our game, an all-star match that pits our team against a team from the fancy part of L.A., the daughters of stockbrokers and supermodels, big well-fed girls who question every call by the ref.

But we are not without resources. We yell positive things at our girls and give them oranges at halftime. By the time it is over, we have beaten the other team 1-1.

“Another tie,” the little girl groans.

“But we outplayed them,” I tell her as she slurps a fruit drink. “We really outplayed them.”

“We tied, Dad,” she says.

Back home, we fall asleep on the couch as the NFL playoffs begin. There is nothing to relax you like an NFL game, full of field goals and instant replay reviews, in arenas that look so much alike that they are virtually interchangeable.

“They look so much alike,” my wife says.

“The arenas?” I say.

“No, John Madden and Pat Summerall,” she says.

Indeed, they do. Like most married couples, Madden and Summerall have grown to resemble each other, looking more and more alike each year they are together.

Hair. Skin. Clothes. Like twins, these guys. And they didn’t start off that way. Over time, it has happened.

“That’s so weird,” I say.

“What?” she says.

“How much they look alike,” I say.

We watch the game and discuss the paint in the hallway, how it’s all cracking and looking pretty awful. It seems like we just painted, three or four years ago.

Now it needs painting again, not just the hallway but the entire house. Scuff prints on the baseboards. Handprints on the walls. I can’t figure out how often you should have to repaint the inside of a house. Doesn’t seem it should be this soon.

“Actually, the paint’s holding up pretty well,” I finally conclude.

“I think it looks fine,” my wife says.

Which makes me squeeze her arm and offer to make her a sandwich.

“The dog smells like trout,” I warn her as I get up from the couch.

“I thought that was you,” she says.

“Me, I smell pretty good,” I say.

In the kitchen, the boy is making pudding for lunch. In the distance, I can smell my older daughter’s hair curlers roasting in their warming tray.

“I think I’ll paint,” I tell my wife.

“I thought you were going to wash the dog,” she says.

“The carpet needs replacing,” I say, which really wasn’t part of the conversation but shows a shared sensibility that gets me off the hook in the short term.

At halftime, I decide to rake some leaves--lots of leaves--three, maybe four, into a nice neat pile that I leave in the corner of the front yard, where my wife is sure to spot it.

It’s a token chore, just for show. If you’re a husband, you know all about token chores. While walking back inside, I straighten a picture.

On TV, the referees are reviewing a play. Not a big play, just a routine little pass play that might have been a first down, possibly not. The outcome of the game doesn’t hinge on this play.

Yet, they review it endlessly, like a film of a presidential assassination, studying it for clues that will make this game turn out properly.

“First down,” the referee finally decides.

I flop down on the couch.

“First down,” I say, happy to be cocooning on the couch again--in January when the days are short and the football games go on forever, sort of like those guys Madden and Summerall.

“What are you going to do now?” my wife asks.

“I’m going to baby-sit the Seahawks,” I tell her, getting comfortable on the couch and nodding toward the Seattle team on TV.

“I’ll get you a blanket,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say.

Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.