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4:50pm

today i paid a visit to the chinatown dentist. my appointment was 2:30 but they didn't actually see me until 3pm. i sat in the waiting room, looking out into the street through the one way mirror. the dentist who saw me was a young man named wu. there was little chit chat, he took a quick look at my teeth (i showed him the spot where one of my filling fell out a few weeks ago) then started cleaning. he had an assistant who's job was to position the micro water vacuum and adjust the overhead lamp. they were both masked, all i could see were their eyes, but i looked up at the ceiling instead, white office corkboard panels with some water stains. it's been 3 years since my last cleaning so it hurt. want to know the weird thing though? I LOVED IT. something about tooth pain, it's almost like a tickle, as nerves come alive. it was a good kind of pain, like i knew afterwards my teeth would be clean again. after a round with the sonic water pick, the dentist gave all my teeth a fluoride polish.

he then took 2 x-rays, then went to work on patching that missing filling. i couldn't see what he was doing but every once in a while, when he wasn't looking, i tongued my troubled molar. apparently he hollowed out the tooth (it was pretty much hollow anyway, mostly filling at this point) in order to put in a new filling, but when he did this he discover i had some cavities. actually, his exact words, translated from chinese was, "there's a lot of cavities." so he had to remove all the cavities first before filling in the molar. he didn't fill it completely and there still was a depression. i asked him about it and he said it was normal, but as an owner of teeth for 30+ years, i knew it'd be a place for food to get stuck in. it was $60 for the cleaning, and $80 for the cavity & filling. i have to come back again next monday, apparently i have a cavity on the other side of my mouth. i visited a chinese supermarket to get some groceries before riding back to cambridge via storrow drive.

i haven't been to my garden since thursday and what a different 4 days can make. a lot more seedlings have sprouted out. i'm sure of them are weeds, but i wonder if some are also the wildflowers i sowed into my plot last year. my knowledge of wildflowers isn't so great so i can't tell, and i may have to assume they're all weeds. maybe when my vegetables are bigger and won't compete with the weeds for nutrients will i consider letting those seedlings grow out. in the meantime, i'll have to clear them out. one other note: the mulberries are starting to ripen and i'm starting to get berries falling on my garden. i don't mind because i love eating mulberries, but i think it makes the soil acidic and also attracts animals like squirrels and skunks, who may damage my vegetables while foraging for food.

since i couldn't eat right away, i decided to watch television in bed until i fell asleep. last night i dreamed i was in jail (people kept stealing my stuff) and during my nap i dreamed i was in a car accident with my sister and i tried to chase down the vehicle that hit us to try and get a photo of the license plate. when i woke up i realized i'd somehow contracted a cold and couldn't stop blowing my nose. hopefully it's just a 24-hour thing and will go away by tomorrow.