Finishing Invisalign and Getting Retainers

[davetheanalyzer]

I finally got my retainers. After a bit of a wait, I went in admittedly not knowing what was going to happen. After drilling down the hooks they applied on my teeth for the Invisalign, they started stringing floss between some of my teeth and applying gelatinous material on my center front teeth. Mom and I didn’t expect it would be this long involved process. Tools to dry and suck up saliva were shoved in and pulled out of my mouth. At last it was done and I found my front teeth seemed to be glued together. Then I had another mold of my teeth made for my retainers. We paid the last of our bills and a week later, I got the retainer surprisingly fast. 

I asked questions about how to deal with the glue-like stuff on my teeth, since it gets in the way of flossing and they said I should get floss threaders, which’ll help in the small gaps between my teeth and gums. We’ll have to order those online, though they were bemused I use both floss picks and water piks, since they thought if I had the latter, that was the only thing I needed. They did mention that after the wearing the retainer nightly for 6 months, I should downgrade it to 2-3 times a week, which I’m considering doing over weekends. I no longer have to go back to the orthodontists’ until something goes wrong with my retainers. In some ways, my teeth treatment’s still ongoing but I’m glad the process that took over a year is over.

I’ve hopped back to the mon-inspired original story after many delays. So far it’s just rewording lines or sentences for the first 60 pages. I’ve started on chapter 3 and I haven’t gotten to more substantial edits so far, though sometimes I think I should, either to add more details or change the events presented. Oh well, I’ll see how I go. I’m also doing rewrite notes for the final chapters of We Will Hold On Forever, albeit very slowly since there’s much I want to change and I keep tempting myself with distractions. Still, I’m over a third of the way through.

I saw the film Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire a week or 2 before it finally ended its theatrical run. I was aware reviews were roughly split in the middle but I like Godzilla so much it’ll have to really turn me off for me not to see a falm. It has its flaws but I found it an enjoyable experience. This time, at least they kept the human cast small so they could give them some focus. I did like Bernie and Trapper’s chemistry and kind of shipped them. I did wish they had more of a theme about belonging and finding your group with Kong and the girl Jia, maybe them reacting more to each other having similar problems and the respect of not telling the world about Jia’s Iwi tribe hidden in Hollow Earth. Maybe also a theme of reconciliation, since it involves Godzilla and Kong having to get over their kinds’ long rivalry and see their common enemy.

I did like Jia being taken in by her tribe and her foster mother Dr. Ilene Andrews wanting what’s best for her but fearing she would leave her. Godzilla could have been a bit more involved with the plot but I liked his fight with Scalia in the water though hope she survived, since she was cool. The Skar King was a cruel and intimidating villain and quite the monster, in more ways than 1, to root against. Suko and his growing relationship with Kong was sweet and his conflict with the Skar King is interesting with the implication that the Skar King’s his father, with no love lost between them. Shimo didn’t have much to her character unfortunately, being a tortured weapon of the Skar King but the film did well to show she was reluctant to follow his orders.

I admit, I couldn’t put my head into the action like I used to as a young Godzilla fan, since now whenever I see cities and such being smashed up, my mind can’t help thinking about the humans being harmed among the action. It was nice to see Mothra again even if she only appeared to make Godzilla and Kong work together and participate in a few scenes like rescue the human characters. I did like the end where Skar King gets killed and is defiant to the end, as well as that Kong and the rest of his kind can live in peace with Shimo treated like a respected being. Jia comes to decide to stay with Dr. Andrews. The caveats are that I’m unsure of the depiction of indigenous people here, Bernie’s conspiracy theories are toned down but might still be uncomfortable, and Skar King committing implied rape, domestic abuse and murder, and child abuse and attempted murder. With all that in mind, if this sounds like a good time to you, feel free to see it.

That’s all for now. Had scary family fight near me yesterday and that shook me up. But the parties apparently apologized and settled things, so that’s somewhat assuring. Free Palestine and hostages on all sides. Until the end of June, see you!