Entries by Amanda Waggener

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

Itā€™s cold in Kentucky. Itā€™s cold all over this half of the country, but Kentucky is where I live and so Iā€™m mostly pissed that itā€™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. Itā€™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 donā€™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. Itā€™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. Iā€™ll watch my teenage son and daughter, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the couch laughing together and this mamaā€™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? Donā€™t say ā€œnothingā€, just tell me whatā€™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 donā€™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. Iā€™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. Itā€™s a problem. What I was feeling was the […]