Pain relieving memories...

The day before my surgery, I was in Kentucky, visiting my favorite cousin and doing my favorite thing. Walking in the creek near my grandmother's farm. It's beautiful, peaceful and is part of my therapy, when it comes to my life. I love it.


I never really gave much thought to the name of the creek itself, "Snake Creek". I knew it had a reputation in the past, (we're talking 80 years ago) for having hordes of snakes, piled up on the banks and swimming in great swarms in the water, but I had never seen more than 3-4 snakes, tops, in all my years of going there. As I carefully walked along the peaceful water, I remember making a comment to my cousin, Machell, how in less than 24 hours, I would be recovering from my surgery and I wanted to have this moment, of the gentle water, the sun shining, the sounds and smells all around me, to remember as visuals, which help get me through the recovery process. Around this time, Machell pointed out a large frog corpse, lying on it's back, near the creek bank. Being the morbid person I am, I walked towards it to see the most beautiful jewels of color, with it's white foamy mouth around the frog's head. It was a FREAKING snake! A poisonous copperhead, at that! After snapping above photo and a few others, I quickly moved on down the creek, enjoying the vegetation, the rocks (fossils and geods) and all the other blessings around me. After deciding to turn around and head back, we once again saw the snake/frog homicide scene and of course, Machell had to point out that the snake was making progress on the frog and that you could actually "see the frog jiggling from the force of the snake swallowing it." Why the hell did she have to say THAT?! It's bad enough that I have a memory like an elephant, but it's like a video memory and I always remember all the little details of things, especially the ones I do not wish to remember.


So...We move on and edge closer to the other side of the creek. Once again, Machell has to beckon me over to "look at this". Sticking it's not-so-wee, triangular shaped head out from under a rock, was another damn copperhead, this one, being a baby. With that, the decision was made to abandon the creek. When did my beloved creek become so overrun with damn snakes? Is it the same thing for snakes, as they say for roaches? If you see one, are there are 10 more living in your walls?


Sad. Truly sad. And now, ever since this little "incident", and under the spell of pain relieving narcotics, I have been having nightmares about snakes. And this is a rather sad thing for me. I really do have a great deal of respect for snakes and think that many of them are beautiful. But now, I'm allowing my psychosis of dreams to take over. This is the creek where I play with children for God's sake!

Sigh....oh well. My pain pills are running out and hopefully, the dreams will leave with the residue as it leaves my system. :)