Trying to Catch Up After A Difficult Month's Sleep

I'm enjoying my last little bit of time at home with the family (who, oddly, weren't that happy to see me) before this "Monday Night Football" experiment begins for real. It's good to be home. I get to sleep in my own bed, which feels better than any other bed -- even the one in the presidential suite at that St. Louis hotel. Maybe it's all my stuffed animals. Or the fact that I don't have to buckle myself into bed, like I do on my "mobile home."

And while I love the plush bus, it's much better to do the things I enjoy -- like simultaneously watching TV and eating at the kitchen sink -- at home. Oh, I can stand at the kitchen sink and eat while watching TV on the bus. I can even work out on the treadmill, like I do at home. But all that is much less of an adventure when the house isn't traveling 65 mph.

Everybody likes their own bed best. Or else they'd spend every night in a hotel, wouldn't they? Don't get me wrong: I can sleep on the bus. (I have a prescription sleeping pill that would stop a rhinoceros in mid-charge. These pills are gold, Jerry, gold.) But the five-to-six hours I get isn't restful sleep. I toss and turn like I'm on a Ronco Rotisserie. (Cindy: "Ah, nice Ron Popeil reference. Do they set you and forget you?") I feel every bump in the road and hear every siren. So when we arrive at the city of our destination, I'm almost as tired as if I hadn't slept at all. I'm sort of like a zombie. Except I look worse. And I don't have to go into a 7-Eleven and ask for an O-positive Slurpee.

It didn't seem like I was away all that long, and yet so much happened in my absence. The Nationals spent August underground, diving deep into a rabbit hole, losing 872 games. (Though Alfonso Soriano is still here, still banging taters and looking like the Powerball winner in the free agency lottery.) And the Redskins finished the preseason 0-4. Gaaack! Double gaaack, even! Do I have this correct, that in four preseason games the first-string Redskins offense scored a grand total of zero points? Zero? I keep reading how Al Saunders has a 700-page playbook. (Wow. That's almost as long as one of Junior's books.) Wouldn't you think one of those plays would work? Everybody thinks Saunders deliberately didn't show any of his good plays because he wanted to unveil them during the regular season, like designer shmattes on "Project Runway." Great. Maybe Heidi Klum can punt.