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weekly retro #26: let's hope this is the last one about teeth

i wrote last week's retro after dental work that monday morning. i'm happy to report that this monday did not cost me thousands of dollars or involve any needles or blood. just coffee and typing. also, i enumerated all of the weekly retro post titles. welcome to #26!

photo of a dentist stand with a bunch of tools and my name is labeled in the background. these are all the needles and drills and stuff needed to replace my crown

it's very good that i don't have a fear of the dentist and also that i'm neutral when it comes to my teeth. they're not white or straight but they do their job in spite of genetics and thyroid issues. i would love for them to not cost me so much fucking money lol.

photo of a three tiered cylindrical candle I made. the bottom tier is white with a reddish orange wax dripped around it. The middle tier was dipped fully in that reddish orange wax and the top-tier has the reddish wax dripping and then there’s five wax white molars (teeth) decorating it. It’s like a fucked up bloody cake, which is just kind of how I was feeling in the dentist chair at the time.

i made a candle to commemorate the entire teeth journey. i think i've truly found my calling in the form of candle-journaling.

photo of a very messy candlemaking area where i've got one mold filled with blue wax and a votive mold inside it, another mold with a cylinder candle above it and i poured blue wax and crumbles onto it.

with almost a month of bugs rock under my belt, i took some time to just mess around and play with wax. i've tried new techniques, got some new supplies to try different things. it's been a lot of fun and i can't wait to show you the less toothy things i've got in store.

photo of the inside of my airbrush ink cup after a session, there's swirls of liquid watercolor in purple, red, blue, and yellow

i finished one of my book-binding projects and celebrated html day by streaming as i wrote html to update my website with book-binding projects. one of my august goals is to get my art portfolio/site up to date, so this was a good start.

photo of the sidewalk during torrential downpour of rain outside my gym

i didn't go to aerial yoga at all! ugh!! we had a major heatwave earlier in the week and then it lead to a ton of rain. i went to the gym in place of yoga to not get caught in the storm, but the storm started hours earlier than anticipated so i got soaked on the way home. wet sneakers with socks on is one of the worst feelings man has invented, another is a full week without my tension-free inversions.

photo of a monarch butterfly sitting among a variety of flowers and plants in my park

the weekend was gorgeous though, and not too hot. i got my chores done without aggravation, did that html stream, and cooked one of our favorite meals. most importantly, my new crown has not moved or fallen out.

photo of four chickpea cutlets frying in oil inside a cast iron pan

pov: you're watching chickpea cutlets cook. for a side with these i made roasted lemon pepper potatoes and broccoli.

things i enjoyed this week

  • this 20 minute doc about an artist enclave in brooklyn was really good. the ending will stab you right in the heart, so hold off until you're resilient enough for that.
  • king gizzard and the lizard wizard, my favorite rock band, is back on their us tour and live streaming a lot of the shows. they played in nyc over the weekend and we watched both shows from home and they were great! they're playing in maryland tonight and i hope the venue let's they stream it.
  • one of my favorite kinds of blogs on tumblr are transparent png bloggers, like pngblog and pnglove. i love the themes they pick (and are requested). i'm often reblogging paint and candle related ones on my own tumblr.

transparent png of a pink heart candy that says "love bug" and sitting on it is a fuzzy jumping spider

xoxo jenn

this was published August 4, 2025 under living working tech food weekly-retro jersey-city teeth bugs-rock airbrush vegan cooking gym candle-making streaming youtube html