I’ll say this about pandemic life — a strange new pestilence of ads and scams have pelted my email inbox. I’ve been smacked with so many offers for face masks resembling the hankies that the bandits wore in the old Westerns that you’d think I was planning to hold up the stage coach at ...

We’ve been roughing it in the Cole household. First, the clothes dryer quit. Then the washing machine refused to finish another cycle. Next, the hot water heater — which had lasted three times its expected lifespan — hollered, “What more do you people expect from me?” It snuffed its ...

Quarantine Diary, Day 1: “This is so wonderful.” Warm waves of love flowed from her embrace. “You’ll be home with me all the time.” I inhaled her fragrance. “We’ll be together all day every day.” Quarantine Diary, Day 3: “Should I thaw the sirloin or the swordfish for you ...

We ran barefoot that summer day at my cousin Dale’s farm. We were explorers or pirates or spies — I forget which — on a secret mission through the cow pasture. Why we were barefoot in a cow pasture, I don’t recall. Barefoot in a cow pasture is not the most intelligent choice a ...

I’ve never gotten around to installing the baseboards in the living room. I meant to do that shortly after moving in — 20 years ago or so. You tend to notice subtle details like that working from home. “More like glaring,” my wife, Terry, said. “When are you going to put those ...

Don’t bother busting out of quarantine — everything is shut down. All the toilet paper’s been hoarded, so I hope you found fast-food napkins stashed in your glove box. Remember the relief when you knew you’d never again have to diagram a sentence or multiply fractions? Yeah, well, ...

“What’s that quote about distractions?” she asked. “Something about monsters and bugs.” I picked up my smartphone — actually, I already was holding it; the thing seems to be stuck to my palm — and tapped the screen. “Life is a hailstorm of distractions. It’s not the monster ...

Marriage is the match of two people who promise to confuse each other for the rest of their lives. Hardly a day goes by without Terry and I heaping such blessings upon each other. We’re marriage experts. “Why is there an empty pickle jar in the refrigerator?” Terry yelled. “I left it ...

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” No, wait. Wrong Charles Dickens quote. Or possibly not. I tend to mildly mangle all those quotes about the month of March. The first one I learned was pinned in construction paper letters on a bulletin board in the Monroe Elementary ...

The stability of life has overcrowded my house. Decades ago, I lived a migratory life. Every three years, I uprooted my belongings and set off for a new apartment or a different rental shack. Every three years, I shoved boxes, bags and trunks into one of two conveyances — a truck or a ...