Author: Tim Cotton

I was sick a couple of weeks ago. It felt like a common cold, but you can’t be too careful right now. I cannot think of the last time I booked out of work for a cold, but I had to due to the concerns surrounding the virus. I’ve learned not to let people know…

I clipped coupons for the first time in my existence. While I normally toss aside the warehouse club coupon book, I thumbed through it for a couple of minutes before heading out for milk, bread, eggs, “and some kind of meat.” That was the direction from the Significant One. She stopped by the house for…

Rarely talked about, the residuum of melting snowbanks can reveal to you what is going on just down the road from your chosen spot on the jagged edge. Frequent snowfalls in my neck of the woods cause the rumbling transitory snowplows to drop off a myriad of items in front of my house. Most of…

With autumn fading in my rearview mirror, I repacked my travel bags for whatever came next. While my travels are typically confined within the borders of Maine, there are a few nuances between summer dunnage and autumn gear bags. I’ve made the switch. To the kid’s house, I drive about one hundred and thirty miles….

There’s been very little writing over the last week. Storytellers who write stories about not telling stories are —clearly— not going to be nominated for, let alone win, prestigious awards. The only thing I’ve ever won—to date—is a 60-inch RCA projection television valued at over twelve hundred dollars. It was on a one-dollar raffle ticket,…

Circuitously navigating the interior portions of the jagged edge has found me rethinking my Sirius/XM presets. For some reason, one of the seasonally available Christmas music channels has taken up space where something else had previously been. I don’t remember what had been there, but I know it wasn’t yule-related. I’m not gonna lie, during…

Malady-bound, I was stuck inside the house for the day. Other than regularly scheduled appearances on the back lawn for an audience of one black dog, I looked for inside chores that I’ve ignored. The laundry was easy. I recovered some flannel shirts that I left in the dryer during my last session. Even the…

Autumn is time for melancholy thoughts. It’s clear to me on days with cold breezes and low-slung steel-tinted clouds. I can sense winter’s henchmen clearing the path for what comes next. All days cannot be bright and cheery. You need time to steep in the tea of gray with no cream or sugar to mask…

My poker face must need a quick refresh; inner frustration shows when it shouldn’t. There was a time—not so long ago—that most folks couldn’t tell what I was thinking. Predictably, it was at a convenience store, and I was in a rush to get going. One of the reasons I switched to drinking only black…