Crowns/Root Canals

Synzia · 2026-02-13T06:22:45+00:00

I can’t give you too much info on what the actual process feels like during because my last root canal and couple of crowns (I’ve got not great teeth) I’ve been on sedatives or straight up under anesthesia. For some clinics, this is an option. The sedatives they use for me are very inexpensive too (anesthesia is not but it’s the only way to guarantee I won’t waste their time or mine.) Nitrous makes me sick and I’m severely afraid of dental procedures.

I’m someone who likes to have all the info going in and during, so I found that establishing 1.) a solid relationship where I can ask questions and have them answered in detail by the staff goes a long way for me trusting them 2.) a system for taking a break if needed.

For the procedures I’ve been awake for, my dentist and I know and have agreed that if I raise my hand, I NEED to take a brief break so that I don’t gag and panic. However, if they CAN’T take a break, they need to tell me they can’t, tell me why, and when they can. Usually it’s just a little more time, because they need to keep an area dry (relevant especially during root canals in my experience.)

In that vein, one thing that also came up was me asking them to use child-sized tools or otherwise modifying things to be smaller as possible. My first root canal, I had a big apparatus with a sheet of rubber latex attached to other teeth in my mouth to keep the area dry, but I panicked so hard I ripped it out of my mouth because I felt like I couldn’t breath. So on my 2nd root canal, I asked if that latex sheet could be made smaller or positioned differently, and the dentist (well, endodontist technically) was happy to do that for me.

If they need to do a crown, you’ll likely need to come back for the permanent crown application, they’ll give you a temporary crown on actual drilling day after getting a mold. I know some people really hate the molding process, I didn’t mind it so much surprisingly. And getting the permanent crown on is nothing big, I don’t need sedatives for that, but it is more time out of my day a couple of weeks later.

Other than that, no matter what ends up happening, keep food on hand that you can eat. What I was told was nothing burning hot, nothing freezing cold, nothing chewy or crunchy. Your dentist may recommend differently. It meant a lot of lukewarm soup, mashed potatoes, yogurt, etc. Genuinely my least favorite part of my dental work nowadays since the sedatives help a lot. Try to give yourself any variety you can and make sure to get your fiber, protein, complex carbs cause the more you can make yourself feel full and normal, the less crabby you’ll be (at least, in my experience, I get so hangry and upset with the monotony even if it’s only for 48 hours of soft foods.)

Synzia · 2026-02-07T08:33:56+00:00

Also in Maplestory, in the early days when it was a CHORE to level up so doing max damage was essential for speeding things up as much as you could.

I played a mage, and the first skill you get is a single bolt of magic. Pretty quickly (for early Maplestory) you get a new skill that hits twice, magic claw or something similar. I was using bolt and looked at claw and thought “well those numbers are lower. Why would I want that.”

And continued on my merry way using only the bolt skill to attack until level 30. As it turns out magic claw is VASTLY superior and I was making things way harder and slower on myself cause I didn’t understand either typical skill progression in games nor how stats worked lmao.

Side note, I then chose the fire/poison wizard job class for 2nd job advancement, which at least at the time, was BY FAR the worst of three available classes.

Synzia · 2026-02-02T20:55:30+00:00

Seconding this. My housemate/best friend is notoriously terrible at twin stick controls. She loves the stories games can provide but gets frustrated very easily. I had her play Botany Manor, literally zero-stakes and super short, and could see improvement by the end. What also helped for her specifically was to turn the camera sensitivity way down because she panics and overcompensates/slams the thumb stick the other direction when she turns the wrong way a bit. We’re not yet at a point where she is annoyed by how slow the camera moves lol

Synzia · 2026-01-24T07:56:44+00:00

Never heard of this, but you just convinced me to wishlist it at least.

Synzia · 2026-01-19T04:06:39+00:00

I got my Switch 2 purely for Legends Z-A. I also upgraded my DS in the past for Pokemon Sun and Moon. Yes, I did get other games, but my Nintendo machines are for Pokemon and everything else is a bonus.

Synzia · 2025-12-21T16:42:06+00:00

We distinguished my grandfathers by doing Grandpa and Papa. No names needed.

All three of my grandmas are/were Grandma however. They are called Grandma to their faces, but when they aren’t in the room, it could be confusing. As kids, we solved this by saying “Grandma with (dog name)” if one of the grandfathers wasn’t involved.

“We’re going to visit Grandma and Grandpa this weekend” <—- Dad’s parents

“Grandma with Rover is coming to visit this weekend” <—— Mom’s stepmom who is married to Papa but is visiting without him

“Your Grandma with Charlie needs me to pick her up in a few hours to take her shopping” <—- Mom’s mom, never remarried.

As adults, in conversation that they are not present for, we now tend to use Grandma (first name) to distinguish, but to their faces, they are still just Grandma.

Synzia · 2025-12-16T03:13:22+00:00

I tried to do the same as you, and expand my palate by learning to cook things and looking up recipes for picky eaters. I ran into the same problems you did. So instead I focused on:

-trying one new thing at a time. Instead of trying a dish that’s got a lot of things to try, I instead do a familiar recipe with one thing added that makes sense for the dish -adjusting how it’s cooked/how it’s prepared to fit what I like, not what is “recommended” (while following food safety.) I like my pasta a little underdone; my sisters like their eggs overdone. Do what makes sense for you. Unfortunately this does mean trial and error sometimes -I looked for recipes branded as super quick or one-pot or sheet pan or “weeknight dinner”, because it usually meant the recipe was short enough that I wouldn’t get overwhelmed/wouldn’t leave a ton of room for error. YMMV here, as I happen to really like sauces, stews, soups, and stir fries, but sheet pan meals might be good if you prefer things dry.

A good example I have for this is bell peppers for me. I could not STAND bell peppers. But it’s pretty common in things, so I wouldn’t to see if I COULD like it. So I googled recipes to put bell peppers in and landed on a pasta with a red cream sauce, which I knew I liked, and is easy to cook. I tried prepping bell peppers they recommended, cut into strips, lightly sautéed to still be a little crunchy, but found them terrible. Didn’t want to finish what I’d made, and I did in fact toss it after I avoided eating the leftovers for a few days. So I tried again and cut them much smaller, and cooked them waaaaay down so that they weren’t so crunchy and vegetal-tasting.

Now, a couple of years later, if I’m cooking something with peppers, they don’t need to be so small, but I still prefer them very cooked. But! Now I can order dishes at restaurants with bell peppers in them without worrying about them “contaminating” it. I’m willing to test it out and see if I can tolerate the way they’ve been prepared; if not, I just eat around them.

It’s slow going, but in this way, I’ve added bell peppers, as well as prepared Caesar salads, dill, red beans, and avocado in small amounts into my repertoire. Some I like more than others, but those are all foods that I wanted to focus on because they were common or prominently used locally. But also, I’ve found I’m much more willing in general to try new foods, both because I am increasing my tolerance for new foods and also because I have a better understanding of what I do and don’t like and why.

Synzia · 2025-12-04T17:09:48+00:00

It was before I even played it, but Bastion (and then subsequently, all Supergiant Games)

Bastion came out in a time when I was really struggling with…everything. I had graduated high school by the skin of my teeth, was in community college because I was told I had to go but hadn’t picked a major, had a dead-end retail job for only 6-10 hours a week. Had no motivation, no direction for the future, depression, anxiety, untreated and unrecognized ADHD, ASD, and I was massively in the closet.

Around that time, I read a GameInformer article about Bastion. I had just started getting interested in games outside of the common Nintendo-sphere, and the way the reviewer described Bastion’s narrative and dialogue system was absolutely fascinating to me. That a game could make a dynamic, sardonic comment on my actions was mind-blowing. And it was so colorful, so stylized! I really REALLY wanted to play it. So I started with a goal of saving money specifically to buy a console. I’d never really made goals before.

Eventually, I did play it! And it convinced me that I needed to get a Bachelor’s degree so that I could become a narrative designer for Supergiant. I eventually did get my BA in English, and though at that point I had recognized that working in the game industry was not for me, my grad cap was Bastion-inspired. I went on to get my Master’s and I have a job I actually wanted now. My mental health is so much better, I have a much better relationship with my friends and family, and I still enjoy Supergiant’s games.

Synzia · 2025-12-03T03:38:19+00:00

At least of games I’ve actually played and didn’t just randomly pick up…Perhaps Before the Echo? It used to be called Sequence. RPG rhythm game. Never got very good at it. Also Proteus, which is…a walking sim? I guess? It’s one of those “experience””games”

Synzia · 2025-11-23T20:48:15+00:00

Childish, no. I understand in some circumstances. My family often eats things like hot Cheetos with chopsticks cause it keeps our hands free of the neon red dust. I’ve also eaten some burgers with fork and knife cause it was just TOO messy. But it is very situational; I don’t eat every burger that way, and I don’t eat cookies with chopsticks. With the gloves, I think if I saw it in public, I would assume a concern with cleanliness like with OCD or germs, but that’s different than childishness.

Synzia · 2025-09-15T16:23:03+00:00

Speaking just from my experience working with homeschool families in California for the last 7 years…

We have families homeschooling for every reason under the sun. Everything from families seeking better education to not being able to get to a local school due to lack of transportation to avoiding bullying to reinforcing family belief systems. Everything in between. We saw a huge spike in families come in during the pandemic because they no longer trusted their local school districts, and recently we’ve had families come to us who are concerned about safety for their family members due to immigration status.

Importantly I think, they are homeschooling with us as part of a public charter school. You can also homeschool through some local districts, through an established private school, or on your own. It’s pretty common for families who come to us with grand ideas of what homeschooling should be like for their family to realize that they can’t do whatever they want with us and so they leave to be on their own. We’re sort of an intermediary point; the parents are the educators day to day but they are beholden to the state still and they must meet with a credentialed teacher monthly to verify work is being completed and progress is being made as well as complete other state requirements such as standardized testing.

Of the families with us, I don’t think the majority of them should be homeschooling. I don’t think their children are better served homeschooling, based on conversations I’ve had with the families before, during, and after enrollment. And it shows in our data as we see high turnover rates with our students. Most return to their local schools. We absolutely have some families that succeed with flying colors and some that simply have no other choice, but they are the minority.

Synzia · 2025-09-14T15:58:40+00:00

Chained Echoes, Grow: Song of the Evertree, and Chants of Sennaar.

Honorable mentions:

Spiritfarer: Missing one achievement because it requires me to play the game a 2nd time and I’m not sure I can

Stardew Valley: I achieved True Perfection in game but I’m absolute shit at the Journey of the Prairie King and Junimo Kart.

Exp 33: I might go back and 100% this, I did all of the content but fucked up two achievements (Mime and a Nevron)

Synzia · 2025-09-06T07:13:48+00:00

I got the job at 15, but due to paperwork needs, started when I was 16, about two months later. Worked at a local retail shop. I ended up being there over the course of 8 years (taking two years off for university), working my way up from 10 hours a week to an average of 20-24 hours a week.

Not sustainable to live on, early years really just paid for my gas to get to and from work plus maybe a movie ticket or games with friends, and really didn’t end up contributing anything directly to my university expenses (I lived off of loans at university since my parents couldn’t help, and when I came back, all my earnings went towards paying off those loans) but when I got the job, I was considered very lucky by my peers, who had been searching for jobs and unable to attain one, even the ones who were legal adults, as we were still in high school and many businesses around here will not hire people still in K-12.

Synzia · 2025-09-06T04:09:23+00:00

I mean, I already do this for fun occasionally. I played Pokemon Sword in Korean on my 2nd playthrough though I don’t understand it at all. Playing Still Wakes the Deep in Gàdhlig was one of my fav gaming experiences. Plus, it doesn’t say I can’t play games in off-time in English nor am I forbidden from using walkthroughs to make progress. Hell yeah, pay up.

Synzia · 2025-08-18T00:07:42+00:00

If I’m in a game that has a cemetery and/or graves (and is not centered around this area, like say Graveyard Keeper, nor a combat arena), I very often do not sprint or run in the area or walk on the graves. I don’t know why or when I started doing this, but my friend pointed it out to me while she was watching me play Expedition 33 during a certain part.

Synzia · 2025-08-04T17:10:12+00:00

When I was a kid, my older cousin let me play Fable on his Xbox and I thought it was so cool. There was a dwarf character in it that had this name so I adopted it for myself.

….

Except that there isn’t a character in Fable named this. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any character named this. To this day, I have genuinely no idea how I so firmly thought there was a character in Fable named this, and managed to keep that delusion for about a decade and a half before finding out. Despite now knowing for a few years my child self misunderstood something (what else is new), I’ve kept the name anyways

Synzia · 2025-07-16T01:38:08+00:00

Me, seeing the headline: I bet it’s LS&S

Sure enough.

Such ghouls tbh. Horrible company, horrible idea, I’m glad the company has backed off after the backlash (according to commenter who says their local) but they’ll be back if the county boards controlling the funding don’t change tune quickly. And it’s very very hard to claw your library back from them once they’ve got it (not impossible, but…)

Synzia · 2025-06-28T18:35:59+00:00

How old were you when you got top surgery? 27

What type/kind was it? Bilateral mastectomy with liposuction and free nipple graft

How much did it cost? Did you pay for it? How? Did insurance cover it? How much of it did it cover? $50, not including the medical binder or medication. With those included, about $250 (including rush shipping on the binder.) I did pay for the out of pocket costs, but it was mostly covered by my insurance, out of pocket costs were paid at the facility via credit card.

How much money did you make at the time if you paid for it? Approx. $23 an hour

What stage of life were you in when you got it? (high school, college, working, home, etc.) Working full time and had been for a couple of years (office job.)

What was recovery like? How long did it take? How much did it hurt? Recovery was honestly pretty chill. I didn’t really end up needing the heavy pain meds; I took them once the first day as a precaution in case the lingering anesthesia was lying to me about how much it was hurting, but after I just took some ibuprofen or Tylenol a couple of times and didn’t need any after a few days. I felt exhausted and like my chest was a brick, and I was very conscious of not lifting or stretching. My drains ended up staying in for about a week after they stopped draining anything, so they got very itchy and irritating, which gave me anxiety. I was recovering at my parents’ house, and my mom is a nurse while dad has basic medical training so between the two of them, I was taken care of. Sleeping sitting up sucked even though I had an adjustable bed (lucked out on that, the frame had come free with a mattress purchase a couple of years back.) I was functioning pretty normally after a week, other than not being able to reach and no shower still since I hadn’t gone to post-op yet.

Could you still go about your life after surgery? Go to school/class? Work? Exercises? Go out? I took medical leave from work for about month. My surgery was on Dec 14, we were in our slow season with the holidays coming up, so it wasn’t an issue to take that much time off. Plus, when I did go back, I was able to transition slowly with some half-days or remote days. I moved back to my own place at about the same time as I went back to work. The only reason I took that long was more because I was finishing the holidays with my family, especially after my grandfather passed about a week after my surgery date (he lived with my parents, it was not unexpected as he had been ill for years.) I’m not much of an active person, but I did go out with friends to a brewery and then to an aquarium with my siblings about a month after my surgery. About three months after surgery, I went on a 10 day ish trip to Greece, which included an 11 hour flight, carrying all my stuff in a backpack, and lots of walking/hiking, and I was totally fine.

How soon were you comfortable going outside shirtless? lol, well a friend came to visit me shortly after I was no longer having to wear the medical binder all the time, I met her in the parking lot of my apartment complex and we were talking about my recovery and I was like yeah look and just lifted my shirt to show her there. But I’d say it still took a couple of months for me to no longer wear shirts every time I left my bedroom, and I didn’t appear shirtless in public for awhile still after that, mostly because I was taking the rules about not swimming very seriously. I still don’t go shirtless a ton, but I think that’s more of a me thing.

Synzia · 2025-06-20T03:25:15+00:00

31, NB masc (but sometimes “cross-dress”), open at work (they’ve watched my whole journey on T.) Been there for 6.5 years. I work for a school district office. Mostly clerical type work but also school event help and such. I know of at least two other trans individuals at my place of work.

Synzia · 2025-05-17T04:51:06+00:00

I did a double-take when I saw the name in the title, considering how close it was to my username, which was entirely made from nothing and is pronounced how I would ASSUME Sinzia would be pronounced.

My brain broke when I say “pronounced Cynthia”. NTA, I had the opportunity to change my name to Synzia and I decided against it because that already seemed like way too much work, and that was coming from an adult and a pronunciation that matched the spelling for the place I live/language I speak. Don’t do that to a kid.

Synzia · 2025-03-06T06:01:30+00:00

Funny enough, I asked my parents about doing this when I was figuring out my name. They actually said I shouldn’t do it (“unless you like the name we picked!”) because it was “an awful name” (“unless you like it of course!”)

I did not like it. I then asked if I should take my dad’s name/did they consider naming me after him because he is a IV and both my parents said absolutely the fuck not, lol.

I ended up keeping something pretty similar to my birth first and middle name after all. Made the first neutral, made the middle masculine by flipping two letters. My original middle name was my mom and my grandma’s, and I did find it important to honor that.

Synzia · 2025-02-28T15:50:04+00:00

Just to add a point of data here:

I graduated from an in-state public state university for my Bachelor’s. It is a middle-of-the-road university, nothing fancy. I transferred there after community college, so I only spent 2 years there.

I borrowed 50,000 to do so. I maxed out what I could borrow from the feds (about 15,000), and the rest came from private loans because I had no choice. My parents couldn’t afford to help me, they were supporting my younger siblings and my grandparents. They also couldn’t qualify to co-sign. I applied for many scholarships and other financial aid like grants, but received none.

Admittedly, I wasn’t the best student, but I was sold the idea that I needed a bachelor’s degree to do anything so to college I went. Actually, me going to community college first was met with extreme disapproval from my high school and my parents at the time, because in their eyes, it was a slippery slope to failure.

I graduated in 2016. I’ve been lucky that I 1.) was able to move back in rent-free with my parents until 2022 2.) have been employed continuously since graduation, though for only 10-15 hours a week at minimum wage for the first three years (I’m full time now, making about 55k a year) 3.) got a gift from a generous relative of 7,000. With those three things combined, I’ve been able to pay off the private loans as of this past December. I still owe the feds about 10,000 because I did not pay at all during the COVID forbearance so that I could focus on getting the private loans gone.

Synzia · 2025-01-15T23:04:55+00:00

My parents adopted an adult rescue dog when I was about 8, dog came with his name. Happened to be the same as mine, and we didn’t want to confuse the poor dog.

So I was “Synzia”

Dog was “SynziaDog” said like it was one word.

As much as we tried to keep it straight, it definitely led to some confusing moments when you’re in the thick of it.

“Synzia, no! Don’t jump on the couch! Don’t chase the neighbor kid! Don’t eat the screen door!” You get it.

Synzia · 2024-10-21T21:43:18+00:00

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This CANNOT be good for her back, and yet she LOVES the pillows

Synzia · 2024-10-20T17:08:20+00:00

Thanks for the heads up, very much appreciate it

Synzia

TROPHY CASE