We interrupt this life with a message from...

It started out as a slight sensitivity to hot beverages – but not to cold, so everything had to be okay, right? Then there was a sensation that wasn't exactly pain, more just more an awareness of the left side of my face – but without a specific location, so it probably wasn't the heat-sensitive tooth, right? Well, yesterday that awareness became a steady ache, and that ache became periodic pain, and by last night I couldn't ignore the reality that the last tooth worked on – the one I broke at a church potluck – was sending me a message, loud and clear. So early this morning I texted my dentist and his assistant (they are brother and sister, and we attend church together) asking them to look when they got to the office and let me know if they had an opening today. Within 10 minutes I got a text back saying they could see me at 9:00.

So instead of going to work in one town, I drove the opposite direction, taking Brian to school and then killing a few minutes before enduring 2 1/2 hours in the torture chamber dentist's chair. Not that my dentist was having an easy time of it. The failing tooth was the very back upper molar in my small and crowded mouth, making the root canal very difficult – but he got it done. Then I had him clean my teeth because it had already been seven months since this whole dental debacle started, and who doesn't like to add insult to an already injured mouth and wallet?

At least there were pretty flowers outside my (actually very nice, kind, gentle) dentist's office.

There are also pretty flowers outside my house.

That sprawling Pink Walloper rhododendron was a Father's Day gift to my husband years ago. And those trees in the little plot between house and stairs are Sunset maples I planted as tiny little treelets when we built this house 15 years ago. And that door at the bottom of the stairs? It leads into the workshop where my DH creates his gorgeous bowls. That's what those chunks of wood will become.

Anyway, I took that photo this evening while Brian and I played a little "Frisbee" for a homework break. Half the time he was playing from up on the tramp, where he struck a pose, the ham:

Yesterday while my tooth was ramping up, I got Sarai's fleece harvested. I started out rooing her as I always do, but her fleece wasn't coming off easily and she was obviously uncomfortable, so I switched to scissor-shearing. I'm not getting faster, so had to leave her like this (covered and back in the fold, of course)

in order to pick up Brian. On our way home, we stopped to play a few holes of disc golf – on the State Hospital grounds, of all places.

If that building looks familiar, it's because it was the location for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." I captured these little posies in the lawn while we played:

I finished Sarai after we got home. If you click to biggify, you can see the longer fuzz left on the areas I rooed.

She may be naked, but my niece's baby won't be; I finished his Denephew "old man" cardigan but for the buttons on our trip.

Now I'm knitting him a coordinated hat.

That's it for now from . . .