Dreaming, I must be dreaming

So last night I had this dream that I was on the crew of a space mission which was going to re-create the space shuttle flight that exploded. I don't exactly know why this was happening, except that they hoped to learn more about the explosion, I guess. We all knew what was happening, what was going to happen, and were OK with it - the idea of being in outer space was a thrilling enough compensation. (and yes, I know the Challenger blew up prior to getting into outer space, but in my dream it made it to near the moon.)

So off we went, lift off was fine - really quick - and suddenly we were all looking out the windows at the blackness of space, and we saw stars all around us, and we looked at one another and said "it's gonna happen soon," and we braced ourselves for the end.

But when it exploded, it wasn't violent or well, explosive, really. Suddenly the space ship was just gone, and we were floating in space. And I thought to myself should I hold my breath or should I just breath in the atmosphere to make it go more quickly? And then I realized I *was* already breathing the outer space air, and I was still thinking clearly - so I sure wasn't dead. I looked around and found another woman from the mission, and she was clearly going through the same thought process I was, so we "swam" towards one another (like you see sky divers do) and held hands, and then we gently fell to the earth.

And it was a slow, gentle descent all the way to the ground. Hey, it's a dream.

When we landed, we noticed our legs were pretty cut up (don't know when or how that happened as it didn't hurt) and we knew "people" would be looking for us to find out how we had survived the explosion and the fall. For some reason this was not a good thing, so we tried to figure out what we should do to not let the "people" find us. Somehow we ended up on a military cruise ship (yes, I am aware of the oxymoron here, but it's a dream. What can I say?), and we got separated from one another and I spent the rest of the dream trying to find my fellow astronaut.

Then I woke up ... and had to run to the store in the dark to get some milk. Now it's time to wake the boys! Happy Monday!