Entries by Amanda Waggener

It’s Cold In Kentucky and I’ll Be Okay

It’s cold in Kentucky. It’s cold all over this half of the country, but Kentucky is where I live and so I’m mostly pissed that it’s cold in Kentucky. Everything is frozen, even pipes. Ā Also, house breaking a new puppy while the ice coated grass crunches beneath my feet as I wait on this animal […]

Good Friday Sunsets

Predictable and stable, yet different every time. I can look at my phone and find out the exact minute it will fade into darkness. It’s never late. Never absent. Dependable and strong. No matter where you are in this world we all look at the same sun. There is something about knowing that which knits […]

Sweet 16

A couple weeks ago something terrible happened to my daughter. Brace yourself. Take a moment if you need. I don’t know how else to say it besides just coming right out with it: It was a Friday night and my teenage daughter had no plans. It was tragic. She had no other alternative but to […]

For Non-Perfect Family Thanksgiving Dinners:

I’ve hosted Thanksgiving dinner most years, since we’ve been married, for my husband’s side of the family. I normally begin drinking around 11am when the turkey goes in the oven.Ā  By the time 5pm rolls around we are both baked.Ā Ā Ā  (Relax mom, kidding) I wouldn’t need to do this if they would just act like […]

Broken and Crumbly

I woke up at 2am, heart pounding, sweating. It sounds like it could be a chapter opener from a cheap romance novel, but I am neither cheap nor romantic feeling at the moment. It could have been the pimento cheese sandwich and big piece of chocolate cake I ate before bedtime. Or it could have […]

Teenager Thrill Rides

Teenagers get a bad rap. It’s for good reason. I know, I have two of them. They live in a world of polar extremes. Their ever evolving brains make them predictably unpredictable. I’ll watch my teenage son and daughter, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the couch laughing together and this mama’s heart beams with joy. […]

Sorry For What I Said When It Was Humid

Last night, as I was preparing dinner, my 15-year-old daughter walked up to me and asked, ā€œMom, what is wrong with you? Don’t say ā€œnothingā€, just tell me what’s wrong.ā€ I had to stop and take a deep breath, feeling bad that I was so irritable that my daughter was doing an emotional check-in on […]

Little Boy, Big Ideas

A few nights ago I was on the couchĀ channel surfing for something good to watch on TV. There really are only three channels I watch. From the stories my mom tells, three channels is all she ever had growing up. I don’t feel sorry for her. Three is all you need. I have close to […]

Awkward Family Photos

I found this picture in a drawer this week. The other pictures from this vacation are all in a photo album. It was one of the last times I actually printed off pictures and put them in an album. Now most of my pictures live on jump drives and in folders on my computer. This […]

Simple Sisters

Last week I kept waking up feeling heavy. I’m not referring to the heavy from the unreasonable amount of carbs I indulged in recently. And seriously, it was an unreasonable amount. I have no self-control around a basket of warm, buttery rolls sitting on the table. It’s a problem. What I was feeling was the […]