I am in my fourth day of a whopper of an abscess on the left side of my jaw. The dentist has not until now been quite able to figure out what it is or what to do about, I am going shortly to get it resolved. This is about as much pain as I can remember being in over one stretch, I got some painkillers but I only took one or two of them, not something I want to get too comfortable with and I’ll bring the rest back to the pharmacy, I don’t even want them around.

Pain is a great focuser on life, mostly I just want it to be over. I am happy to see it did not affect my writing much, I wrote right through it. Maria is not what you would call a gentle nurse, she mostly hells at me to stop running around, to lie down and take my medicine. I admit to losing some of my sense of humor but I haven’t been to grumpy, she says, mostly dopey and out of it.

The animals, of course, sense this right away, Simon has been sniffing my jaw, Red is by my feet every minute. Like my mother, I have always been stoic, good in a crisis, not always good otherwise. I am loaded with more medicines than I can recall taking, I am hoping to be done with it this afternoon.

I think it affected my photographs more than my writing, I was definitely pulled toward light and color. I loved this shot of Red advancing on the sheep, in my search for depth-of-field, I focused on the gravel, let the animals go out of focus.