the shell of every boiled egg to the actual egg: ♬it's gonna take a lot to take me awayyyy from you♬

the classic "I'm out of money" nightmare

That joke went over my head. And yours, too, probably, but that didn't stop me from saying it. This is why I don't have a Twitter, and I'm not a writer for TV shows, which was a dream I once had, but instead, I decided to write a bunch of run-on sentences for a blog nobody reads. 

DREAMS.

Speaking of dreams, mine have gotten pretty strange lately. I'm not sure if it's because the news is perpetually bad, I've been indoors for basically 6 months, I gave birth a little while ago, or all of these things combined, but does the cause really matter? Let's break it down:

• Dream #1: I signed up to bring pie to Thanksgiving (is Thanksgiving canceled yet?). However, in my dream, I procrastined making the pie and realized I needed to buy some from the store instead. For some reason, the pie place I went to was owned by an ex, only sold pie by the slice, and they charged you extra for whipped cream, even if they were out (which they were)? It was one of the worst dreams I've ever had.
• Dream #2: I was in middle school, started my period, but had nothing with me and decided to stay at school. This is actually a recurring nightmare. Still. STILL. It's been 20 years, McKenzie.
• Dream #3: I was back in grad school, and my class was being held outdoors...in the teacher's backyard. We sat on hay bales and the river that ran next to the classroom (lol) started to rise and then flood. I jumped the fence and was in the BYU football team's locker room, of course. Super logical place to flee from a flood, by the way. Thanks, brain, for the tip. 

I can't end this post without explaining the title. You know how when you boil eggs and the shell is like IMPOSSIBLE to take off? Even with the cold water trick?! 

Yeah. It's not funny if I have to explain it. I know.

postpartum things

• I started exercising for the first time in...um...I'm embarrassed to admit but it was well before I got pregnant. Anywho, I finished the WARM-UP and thought the workout was over because I was in so much pain. 
• I cry at anything/everything. Like yesterday, I cried watching an episode of The Great British Baking Show. The day before that, I started sobbing when I discovered a photo of Matilda taken a few days after she was born.
• I have looked at my incision scar twice, and the first time was to clean off the gunk before a doctor's appointment. It helps that a layer of pudge prevents me from looking down and seeing it straight away.
• I get really nervous to take Matilda anywhere. We used to go on walks, but now it's 100+ degrees in AZ, so we stay in our lil' air-conditioned bubble all day. She's been to the grocery store once in her little life, and she was a month old (this was just before the pandemic struck). I think she's an extrovert (can you tell this early?), but she's not gonna know what to do when she sees another person's face NOT via FaceTime. 
• I have a hard time watching movies or TV shows where people die, because now I think "Well that person probably has a mom." Probably.
• I also cannot listen to true crime podcasts anymore. For the same reasons.
• For a couple of months, my hair fell out in such large chunks, I probably could've made a rug with it. Now the shedding has stopped, but I'm growing back small tufts on my head in places I don't think even had hair on them before. I now relate to many of the male characters in the 90s smash hit, Ever After (Drew Barrymore forever):

Too real.

deleting your instagram is the new black

when your anxiety outlasts the nail polish on your toes

So, I deleted Instagram last week or the week before. I can't remember exactly when it was. Maybe that's because I was relying too much on Instagram/social media to mark the time (and pass it). 

When you have a baby, a lot of things change about your life. A lot of this change is expected, like never sleeping normally again, or crying a lot at certain movies (I hate u, Goofy Movie), and ESPECIALLY (most importantly) going through more laundry than you thought possible. You know those huge gallons of laundry detergent you can buy at Costco? We had one of those when we were first married—it was actually a wedding gift, ha. It took us all of 2 years to finish it off.

Well, we bought another one right before Matilda was born and it's nearly gone. No, you didn't come here to read about the amount of puke I deal with now (wait...maybe you did? If you did, sorry, I think you have the wrong blog). The point is, I was expecting most of the change that's come with Matilda. And she's worth it all. But some of the change...a certain....virus....well, that was unexpected. 

I used to write a lot. I used to give myself time for other things, but with the baby and quarantine, every day kind of dissolves into the next. And it's summer in Arizona, which is basically just "stay inside for 6 months you sweaty pug." (I wish I identified as a better-looking dog, like a Golden Retriever, but no...I think I am 100% a pug).

Please bless I never talk about coronavirus again because I'm just sick of reading about it, talking about it, thinking about it, having nightmares about it, etc. Next thing you know, Swig is going to name a drink after it (wait, that would be bad marketing, and also....the beer? C'mon McKenzie).

So anyway, Instagram was the best way to escape these feelings of...being trapped. Whoops, got a little too real right there, but it's ironic, right? So instead of reading scriptures every night I would scroll, scroll, scroll. I don't want to know how many miles I have scrolled through Instagram but it sure isn't equal to the amount I've walked in the past few months (my dead FitBit just rolled in its grave). 

I've always been an anxious person, but in the last 5 years, it really began to flare up. I don't deal with change very well, and if I'm not doing what I should do to keep the crazy anxiety thoughts from spiraling down the McKenzie Brain Drain, it starts to manifest. In lots of scrolling. Lots of scrolling and feeling sorry for myself because...my inner dialogue be like:

• Why don't you have a house?

• Why haven't you paid off your student loans already?

• Why are you using your Master's degree to write about freaking mattresses? (this one depresses me the most)

• Wow they already have 5 kids at your age, you just have 1! (this one...particularly dumb, but I know I'm not the only one who has thought having children is some kind of race) (LET ME TELL YOU THERE IS NOTHING FAST ABOUT THOSE 9 MONTHS)

• Why don't you read your scriptures more?

• Why don't you exercise? You need to lose weight.

• Why don't you cook more? 

• Why do you still have adult acne? *cue the tears of irony*

And on and on! Exhausting. Not to mention, boring. 

No, really. Nobody talks about how boring anxiety is. It gets your heart pumping and you can't breathe, much like feelings you'd get on a roller coaster or somewhere actually fun, like a theme park, but no. It's boring as hell. You're just sitting around (or my preferred position for an anxiety attack, flat on my back in bed with a pillow to muffle my crying so Houston can't hear me). 

And instead of these really awful things happening to you, which would be awful, but also, would be SOMETHING HAPPENING, you're just imagining it all! That's right! It's all in your head. But logic doesn't work, either. See, I'm writing all this down and it sounds stupid, but that won't stop my brain from making me feel lame.

So, conclusion. Instagram made everything worse. I know there's plenty of studies showing the correlation between mental health and social media, and it's still inconclusive, but this is my experience. Instagram just made me feel like a speck of dirt. 

Instead, I'm just gonna blog again because that's fun. And it's not an echo chamber (well, it is, but it's just MY voice, so that's fine) (insert sunglasses emoji).

Now here's some pictures because mom always said never post a blog post without pictures!

(No, my mom didn't teach me that, because I came of age in the 90s, where the highest form of technology I used was a Tamagotchi)

I gave birth to... an extrovert?

her halo 😍😍 (Houston says emojis are for teenagers. I'll show him!)

here my designer eye bags are on fine display (and the reason they exist)