One of the perks of being unemployed (as I have been for the last three weeks but that is another story) is sleeping in. I was doing just that this morning when Sarah (in bonny Scotland at the moment) telephoned and woke me from a dream in which she featured. I typically enjoy a rich dream life and have often considered keeping a dream journal but have found myself too lazy to transcribe the artifacts of my sleeping mind. Certainly, dreams have influenced a good deal of my fiction and poetry but they have never been recorded in detail. Until Now.

I dreamed I was watching television on the set in our bedroom (the dream apartment was more-or-less true to it's "real" counterpart). The program I was watching was, apparently, some kind of a beauty contest as several healthy and glowing women were standing upon a stage wearing one piece bathing suits and beaming smiles. The camera panned across the line of women as somebody off screen asked them questions or made remarks to them (unfortunately, I don't recall what was said if I ever heard it at all). The camera stopped moving with the scene of the last woman in line receiving, in reply to whatever she had answered to the off screen speaker, a white frosted cake splat! in her smiling face. At this point I moved out of the bedroom into the kitchen where Sarah was busy with, most likely, some kind of food preparation. I had come to her so that I might relate the events of the show I had been watching in the bedroom ( a twist on a recurring theme in my dreams in which I dream that I am telling Sarah about a dream!). As I tried to speak, however, I found myself suddenly choking on a corndog. This was the first appearance in the dream of the corndog but, as is often the case in dreams, it did not seem strange that I was suddenly eating a corndog (despite its abrupt appearance and the fact that in "real" life I am a vegetarian). As I attempted to describe the beauty pageant I found my words stifled behind chunks of batter and meat.

That's it! Analyze away if that is your inclination.

An interesting sidenote regarding this dream. . . Visiting the Yahoo website for driving directions just prior to the writing of this blog, I found this story about a Miss America scandal featured on their main page.