Steve Christilaw: This fine weather poses gnarly problem for my routine

I have friends who love the change of seasons, so this last month has been right in their wheelhouse. But all of the change this season has brought has totally thrown off my schedule.

For starters, the older I get the harder it is to adjust to this whole daylight saving time stuff. Not only does it feel more and more pointless with each passing year, but it’s hard to make necessary adjustments.

Spring forward? That means you will spend the next month feeling like you’re at least an hour behind the rest of the world. Fall back? That means you’ll have to factor in an extra hour trying to convince the dog that suppertime is no longer when she thinks it is – and when your dog is a Great Dane, it also means you will lose the argument on a daily basis.

That’s all normal.

But what makes this season an exceptional challenge has been this incredible string of great weather. I call it Sunlight Disaffected Disorder.

Look, the seasons are designed for a reason. I like spring, but moving it up four weeks on the schedule just isn’t working for me.

For one thing, the tug-o-war between the urge to go bask in that warm sunlight is strong and it conflicts with the need to stay completely up-to-date on college basketball. You can’t track three or four games at once while wistfully gazing out the window. (Yes, I hear you – turn off the TV and go outside. But hoops is part of the job.)

You see, I’m used to a certain sameness with this time of year. It stays cold; it snows a little. The only sunlight I am used to getting this time of year comes from watching spring training baseball games from Peoria, Arizona. The closest thing to a garden tool I use is the snowblower.

I have neighbors who have already mowed their lawn and I’m beginning to worry about not keeping up my end of the community bargain – and who needs that kind of pressure this early?

I look out my office window and I see squirrels frolicking – and I swear I heard two of them taunting me the other day. I thought about unleashing the Great Dane on them, but she was too busy taking a sunbath at the time to be bothered with furry, tree-climbing things.

My golfer friends already are in midseason form. I saw one of them at the grocery store the other day with eight carrots. He was trying to convince the clerk that it was just four.

This is not supposed to happen!

You’re supposed to do things in a certain order! You watch the NCAA Tournament; you take a week off and then watch the Masters. If you really aren’t ambitious, you watch a couple of early season series of the new baseball season, and then you head outside and, if you’re lucky, take off the sweatshirt and flannel and expose yourself to sunlight.

I’m one of those folks who long ago adjusted to the depression that comes from week after week of dreary, gray weather. Not as much as Seattle natives, naturally, but as well as anyone east of Roslyn can.

I’m used to being able to work up an earnest angry at bandwagon jumpers and Yankees lovers this time of year. I have a well-deserved reputation for being skeptical of newcomers to the Mariners roster – they don’t get my seal of approval until they actually prove their worth.

The other day, I actually jumped up from my desk when Seattle’s great hope, D. J. Peterson, homered in his first at-bat of spring training in a game with the Padres. And I am taking the Fifth on what I told myself when Nelson Cruz and Rickie Weeks each belted a remarkable homer.

I try to reach for my traditional, seasonal grouch and it just ain’t there.

So I’m going to do penance. I’m sending myself to the rocking chair I’ve already brought out of the garage and put in its summertime spot on the porch.