SCPantera's Dream Journal

Had a number of fragmentoid dreams that seemed to mostly have to do with Dead Rising 2, which I finally got around to installing and playing extensively yesterday. I also remember a sequence where I went out to best buy to buy some expensive, $2000 computer hardware. When I brought it home, took off the plastic wrapping, and opened the box to find a set of elaborate-looking gun gaming peripherals. Realizing this purchase was a terrible idea, I ask my wife if it's too late to return it and she tells me that they won't without the plastic wrapping.

Hit quite the jackpot on dreams this morning. This is made somewhat ironic in that I'm in the nadir of an annoying upper respiratory tract infection, so I didn't put any effort into dreaming for the night. Finally, since our alarm didn't go off this morning, I didn't have time to fully write these up in the 10 minutes I had to get ready and arrive at work. Also, splitting the rest into two entries to make room for plenty of tags.

Second sequence (note that this is #2 following the short sequence in the previous entry): I was driving in a car with my family again. We were turning onto University Drive from 19th avenue north. For some reason we were discussing Oblivion/Morrowind mods. We were apparently headed to the Fargodome for some reason. We parked and got out to go inside. Inside I spent most of my time at the food court there, ate a meal and loitered about. When my mom was ready to go we went out to the car and then pulled up to the entrance to wait for my dad and brother to come out. They came out just as I was getting impatient. As we turned back onto University Drive the dream transitioned into me physically playing in one of the mods we were discussing earlier (everything seemed real and not as though it looked like video game graphics). I enter some random house. As I walk in, a thin, thugish looking man comes to see who entered and meets me. Surveying the room, I notice he has a desperate-looking woman naked and tied down (I'm not sure if I realized it at the time, but I recognized after the fact that she strongly resembled my wife). Inferring that the man was about to rape her, I immediately slew the man. I turned and was about to leave without untying the woman when I figured I might as well not waste an opportunity and stripped down to have sex with her. At this point she didn't resist as though I was going to rape her, but she was very inviting and willing and quite turned on as well. It was very sensual and amazing sex; I entered her slowly and completely at first and then held it there, feeling her around me. She reached down to play with her clit as I held there, which was very erotic. After a short while we begin to have a good old aggressive, animalistic fuck.

Unfortunately it ended before it reached a climax. I have a reflex I've developed over the years that wakes me up from some sex dreams before they finish in order to avoid having to clean up the aftermath. This time it was mildly disappointing, but not in that it at least left me with the memory. Though the dream wasn't lucid, it is a memory I enjoy recalling and it's something I need to remember to perhaps emulate in lucid dreams in the future. It's also worth noting that my dream avatar is much thinner, allowing for some unrealistic actions during sex.

Similar to last night, late entry. I may have been lucid for a moment at the end, but I don't recall any lucidity and from what I can tell the dream ended at or shortly after the reality check, so this one I won't count.

I was living with my dad in a house. The house was at the top of a hill, with the hill going down out in the back yard. My old shitty landlord Marv was living at the bottom of the hill in another house. For some reason, we would occasionally need to use his inflatable swimming pool, but he'd always be a dick about it. One time when I needed to use it, it was winter. When I went down to use it, it wasn't there, but I could see it locked in his house. I'd brought a hose with to fill the pool, so instead I just sprayed water everywhere to freeze everything. I dropped the hose and went back to my house. I noticed he was following me back up to bitch about the hose, so I turned it off and he left. He came in the front door later, mad about something or other, but he was just talking about how he wanted to go into the mall in town to buy a bunch of different kinds of coffee (like lattes and mochas et al). Afterwards, my dad asks me to go retrieve something from the mall. When I get there, I'm taken to a small back room where there's a clipboard face down on the table. When I turn it over, I find that it's a list of people who are either vampires or victims of vampires. I realize the dream is odd at this point and reality check.

My memory of the dream ends around the reality check but I have in my post-waking notes that I attempted to follow along the premise of the dream to stabilize, but I can't remember anything coming of it.

Short fragment and a slightly longer fragment tonight. The short fragment was that I was walking down a long isle in a grocery store, shopping with my wife. She was asking me if we should get some juice, but I was like, "Eh, nah." This, of course, would never happen in real life; my wife absolutely refuses to take me grocery shopping.

In the second sequence I was walking down the street with a black woman. We were about to get on a subway. She was telling me about how she was looking forward to riding the IM subway for the first time, only she pronounced it like the "im" in "him". A white woman near us who overheard was annoyed and corrected her that it was pronounced like initials. As we walked down the stairs into the subway, the black woman had her subway pass on some kind of wood or plastic board; she didn't know she was supposed to hold it at a certain angle as she passed through the scanner, but it was hanging at the right angle anyways. As we proceeded she asked me why I didn't need a pass, I told her it was because I had already picked up a special permit which required two forms of ID and that when you show them they only give back one (which I then thought was kind of counterintuitive). As I was telling her this, we were passing by the special permit area where I could remember earlier (possibly even in the same dream here) standing in line to get the permit. The subway looked more like an airport terminal.

This was an unusual one: my wife and I decided to go to IHOP for breakfast. When we got there, we noticed there were only a few cars in the parking lot, so when we got inside and found several dozen old people seated and eating we were surprised. Also, there were apparently no waiters or any other staff. More people slowly collected at the front of the restaurant. I watched Barry arrive on a bike, only it wasn't quite Barry; he was shorter and a bit thinner but had a chubbier face. Just as I was getting annoyed enough to leave, Laura and I were suddenly on a city bus with the old people. Angry and confused, I asked my wife why we were taking the bus home when we drove there in our car. I pulled the string to signal for a stop, but a man standing at the front said, "Sorry, we only stop at the nursing home." The bus then did this sudden turn to run up on the sidewalk, where it narrowly passed by another bus parked at the curb. I realized that this was clearly a dream since normal buses don't do that, however I didn't go lucid, I had a false awakening upon which I described this dream I just had to my dad.

Tonight's dreams came in kind of random fragments, which I suspect might possibly be due to waking up several times over the course of the night and not even realizing I'd dreamed before dozing off again. Here's what I can remember:

I was with my family, we were in a car (it seems it must have been either an SUV or our old Isuzu Trooper, judging from how relatively high I was seated) and one of my parents was driving, I was in one of the back seats. We were on our way to the lakes, which I was somewhat excited for; I had been vaguely wanting to spend a weekend at some lakes place all summer (also, I had read a classified ad for a luxurious-sounding lake cabin yesterday, which probably contributed to the dream's inspiration). The lake area we were going to was in a sparsely wooded area, but for some reason we were going to stay in a hotel at the edge of the woods. As we turned into the hotel, we were stopped by a woman and a young girl. The young girl walked up to the window and was telling my parents something; apparently they were from another family that we were traveling with. Apparently, the hotel we were going to go stay at was either closed or full, so we'd have to go stay in our proper lake cabin. I noticed the hotel was in a fenced off lot, and was several feet deep in water as though it was flooded. We went back onto the road to go into the woods, but a short ways in we came to a line of traffic that was backed up behind the main road, which was closed for some reason. My family used this as an excuse to turn around and go home. I was pissed because there was a clearly visible side road nearby that we could have used.

I was playing Metal Gear Solid 5 (!), and was increasingly concerned that Hideo Kojima has gotten a bit too avant-garde, because it included several highly unusual elements, such as Pokémon. There was one part where I was trying to figure out how this summon thing worked; it would summon a ghost night who would get more powerful with time but the summon didn't last very long. I eventually figured out that you have to restart channeling the spell to continue and doing so wouldn't resummon the ghost knight. Later, I tried to get my brother to try playing the game, but he wasn't interested.

At some point, I decided that if my family wasn't going to the lakes, I'd go by myself. So I took a car and drove there. At the woods there was a large grouping of camp sites and paved areas for RVs. It looked like a fun place to be, but was disappointingly empty, which I attributed to it being early in the season. I found a quaint-looking cabin that I parked at (though curiously I note that it wasn't near any lake).

I'm not sure if there is some chronological shuffling that's going on with my memory, but this is all I recall for now.

I was trying out for my middle school's chamber orchestra again, but not as string bass for some reason; it seemed as though I was going through school all over again and had picked a different instrument (seemed to be either violin or viola judging from where I was seated). Afterwards I got on a charter bus to go to some camp, I suppose it was supposed to be reminiscent of IMC. The camp was just a large building in the middle of the woods that was kind of like a hotel, but there was no activities planned, we just had 2 person rooms where we stayed for a while and did whatever. It was raining as we got on the charter bus, so I was wearing my black coat, but I put it with the luggage under the bus. I got on the bus and as we were leaving I was thinking about previous times I'd been to the camp where I had been with a friend who didn't mind that I hooked up my gaming console and just played video games the whole time. I wasn't going with a friend this time, so I was figured whomever I was roomed with would probably want to use the TV, so I'd tell them to let me know if they ever wanted to. I fell asleep on the bus but woke up a little bit before we got there, so I listened to my MP3 player for a while. My dad was chaperoning the trip, and was trying to collect unusual amounts of demographic information (like fingerprints) from me and the others who had tried out for the chamber orchestra to forward to the middle-school-orchestra-teacher-whose-name-I-don't-quite-remember, but he was being really sneaky about it. I realized what he was trying to do; as he was helping me unload my luggage I told him that if they wanted all kinds of unnecessary information I'd rather not get in since I was planning to quit soon anyways because I didn't want to hang out with Mr. Italiano (heh, in my dream I nicknamed him Capitano Italiano). Also, in the dream I forgot I'd put my coat with the luggage and was surprised to find it there. I went to the kitchen area of the lodge and Megan R. was there, she accidentally spilled a 2-liter of Mountain Dew, but as it tipped over it poured into a series of containers that were lined up to the side of it. One of them was a tall glass filled with water but as the Mountain Dew poured into it the cup didn't fill up and spill over; it looked like the water was replaced by Mountain Dew as it poured in. I thought this was awesome, and pointed this out to Megan, who hadn't noticed she'd knocked over the Mountain Dew. Dream ends hereabouts.

Edit: Just wanted to add that I keep thinking there may have been more dream that I'm forgetting on the front end of this dream. Also, that the impression I got during the dream wasn't that I was going back to school retroactively, but that I was reliving my earlier life.

Got a couple of longer fragments tonight, mostly owing to the fact that every time I woke up during the night I was too heavily fatigued to get out of bed to write some notes. I was able to prepare myself to preserve some general memories of them though, so here goes.

I was one of four famous/elite assassins/bounty hunters that included myself, my brother, a third random guy whom I don't recognize from real life, and Mandy. We all had, at least, some kind of rifle that had four ammo types: a bullet that would kill, a bullet/dart that would instantly knock someone out, a bullet/dart that would slowly knock someone out, and a dart that would shoot out a laser beam to help reveal someone's position. We were all together in a semi tractor-trailer going down a highway in some sort of desert canyon when third guy said something that seriously pissed my brother off, so he stopped the truck, jumped out, got on a motorcycle (!?), and fled backwards the way we came. I quickly jumped out and ran after him, hoping to keep him safe from my brother's wrath. I followed third guy back aways to a shack near a gas station off the highway. I told third guy to get down and hide. I saw my brother following out the window, so I readied my rifle and shot him with the laser-beam dart as he was approaching. I checked myself to see what other weapons I had on me; I had a revolver with only one bullet in the chamber so I set that down and then found another handgun with a full magazine. There was an old woman who had slowly been approaching the shack to see what was going on, as she got close to the door so did my brother. Instead of charge in or wait outside, my brother held his shotgun up to the old woman's head and demanded that we come out or he'd kill the old woman. From around the corner to the door I could see the barrel of his shotgun held up to the woman's head. From there I was able to extrapolate his position, so I aimed where his feet would be and fired two shots. I heard him cry out and fall down, so I quickly came out the door and pointed my gun at him to keep him from getting back up. I convinced him to give up trying to kill third guy, so we brought him in and sat him down. Some time shortly after, Mandy came in, carrying a long case she used to store her custom rifle, and told us that she was retiring, so we held a small retirement party. During the mini-party, I recalled one mission where we were all holed up in a shack like this one, fighting off dozens of enemies that were attacking us.

Second sequence was even stranger: through some freak of nature British law, I and one other American tourist were somehow appointed to two of four vacant seats in the British parliament. The other guy and I were seated at a group of desks with a bunch of old men who were all bickering over how to fill the remaining two empty eats. Across the room were a few rows of seats for observers. American guy and I were talking about random stuff while the old guys argued. At some point I joked that they should just grab a few more tourists to fill the seats, but they apparently thought I was serious and immediately held a vote to do so, but it was too split to pass. Afterwards, I called my wife, trying to figure out how we were going to make arrangements to move to the UK. I was talking to her as I was walking down a sidewalk, observing the traffic; I joked about how getting used to driving on the other side of the street was going to kill me.

My wife had a speech class in some far away place, so we drive there the day before she has to give a speech. In the hotel room, she writes a speech based on some poem, but she changes parts of it to personalize it. The next day I watch her give the speech to her class; later another student gives a different speech modeled after the same poem. We drive home, but I have my own class to go to where we're giving presentations. We're giving them in a room that looks like the newer gym at my hold high school. I'm sitting behind the stage with a few other people. Someone gives a presentation that includes a speech based on that same poem. I pointed out to someone that this was the third time I'd heard someone give a speech based on that poem (and though I can't remember them now, in the dream I was able to identify the poem's author and the book it came from). For some reason, I have my computer set up backstage and Miles is there with a laptop. I go to point out something on his laptop, but I accidentally hit the power button and it shuts down. It won't turn on again, but I notice a button on what looks like a small desktop speaker, so I press it and the laptop turns on again. I go back to my computer, but now it's acting weird. The operating system looks strange and corrupted, so I conclude it's picked up some sort of virus. I turn it off and take it home. I turn it on again, it looks better but it's still obviously infected so I boot up Norton (which hadn't booted up automatically). I let Norton start to sort things out and walk away to go do something else when the dream ends.

Little bit of bleeding here, I woke up dreading going back to my computer since it was infected, but it slowly occurred to me that my computer wasn't really infected in real life.

Got quite a good haul tonight; 3 decent-sized sequences that I'm going to split between two posts to denote a break where I woke up and wrote down some notes.

This first one may have been longer on the front end, but this is where my memory picks up: I'm living in a house with just my dad. I'm in the back yard enjoying the beautiful weather. I'm sitting at the top of a hill, looking at the sky. As I look back down, I notice the back yard is a mess, stuff is scattered everywhere and there is dog poop and urine stains all over, on the ground, and on the walls. I notice my neighbors' back yards are nice and neat, they're all separated into distinct sections by a short chain-link fence. I go inside and it's a mess inside as well. Pissed, I call for my dad, who shows up quickly. I yell at him for letting the dog shit everywhere. I tell him I'm going to go to the store and that everything better be cleaned up by the time I get back. I get into my car, but I decide instead of going to the store I'm just going to run away and live somewhere else. I try to plan where I want to go, I decide I'll fly to Alberta, Canada, then from there to Vancouver. I figure my dad might still be able to find me there and he'll be mad, so I decide I should keep going to Europe. I pick an arbitrary spot to land in Europe, so I pick Budapest (I had to check Wikipedia to verify Budapest is even in Europe and apparently my subconscious knows exactly where Budapest, Hungary is on a map; I should also note that my starting location was in southern California and as I was planning it I was seeing the path I was planning to take on a map with a line for the air route Indiana Jones style). So I go to the grocery store, which had an airport on its roof. I go up to the roof to get on a plane.

This dream may have transitioned into the following one; my memory of it starts (as I'll describe shortly) with flying as the previous one ends with it, and the sky in both situations was yellow as though it was dusk.

It's the future, but it's a zombie apocalypse. But not quite an apocalypse; there's pockets of humans living comfortably and there are quarantine zones. I'm at an airfield near a forest, learning how to fly (the airplanes are these tiny hover airplanes). I watch another student (who is Jesse Eisenberg of Zombieland fame) successfully take off and then do a couple loops in the air to show off. I do my own take-off and continue flying to explore. I wander into a massive city, only I notice that it's conspicuously abandoned (also note, the sky is now blue). As I continue, I suddenly realize I've accidentally flown into the quarantine zone, just in time to just barely miss getting hit by a raising camera bot with a zombie hanging off of it. Since it's the future, and there's some advanced technology, they use automated hovering camera bots to watch over the quarantine zone. However, sometimes one of the zombies would grab it, causing the hover blades or the bot itself to be destroyed, so to solve this problem they programmed the bots to fly up and continue flying up if they get grabbed until the zombie falls off. Looking forward, I see several more upward flying camera bots with random zombies hanging off them, some occasionally falling off. Though I'm filled with some dread, I figure I'm fairly safe up in the sky so I continue exploring. Some ways in I find a series of very large buildings that are completely intact. One of them has a large airport on top of it (what's with the airports on top of buildings in these dreams) and as I continue I can see into some of the buildings. I come to realize that this is some evil corporation who's trying to exploit the zombies. In some places there are crowds of people moving around normally as though they are busy at work and aren't in the middle of a zombie infested quarantine zone, but in other places I can where swarms of zombies are attacking people who are desperately trying to escape. There's places where it looks like there's a special forces team fighting zombies. Another place looks like a grade school; a nervous student answers a teacher's question but is wrong so she is taken to a closet and left outside, zombies burst through the door and attack the girl. At another classroom area, a student lures the teacher closer but then attacks them in rebellion so they can escape. The other students attack him too and knock him out, so they all flee. I find what looks like some kind of vent that's large enough for me to fly down into. I come out in a busy office hallway; the ceiling there is high, so I can hover above everyone's heads so most of them don't notice me. There an intersection, and nearby is a black guy in a suit who is apparently the boss of the whole operation. He's giving some sort of evil monologue. I continue to look around while listening; there's windows into labs where technicians in sterile suits are working on something. The boss guy's assistant has noticed me and is trying to get the boss guy's attention but the boss is too into his monologue to be interrupted. I start to head back the way I came to leave, but as I get back to the vent I notice it's been covered over. While I'm trying to figure out what to do, the boss notices me and approaches me enthusiastically, he shakes my hand and asks me how I've been and other small talk; apparently we've met before. Another guy comes up the stairs nearby, I recognize him as a supervisor that I had for a previous job and I'm worried because I know he'll recognize me and know I'm not supposed to be there. The boss waves him over and "introduces" me to him, then tells him to find me a room. After boss guy leaves, I tell supervisor guy that if he lets me in on whatever the evil corporation is doing I'll keep quiet and won't try to escape or anything. He agrees and we get on an elevator. Inside there is what looks like some sort of special forces team. One of them looks half-zombified and is wearing some kind of special suit. We get off on an abandoned floor, the team goes first and readies assault rifles so I assume it's an unsafe floor. I wake up hereabouts.

This dream may or may not have been longer, but here are the parts that I can remember.

I was living with my family again at our old house on Broadway, only there was also this other guy living with us who kind of looked like Gabriel Iglesias only shorter and not quite as fluffy. Anyways, I was in what must have been my brother's room (because A) it was really heavily cluttered and B) there was a scene coming up where I was in my room, which was different) and my brother was there too when Gabriel Iglesias guy came in and demanded something. We were both blew him off so he took out an uzi and sprayed the room; he didn't hit me at all but it killed my brother. Shortly, it cut to a courtroom where I was watching the verdict in the murder trial; GI guy was somehow found not guilty. So I wake up in my bed some morning after but I'm all depressed so I just lay there for a while. When I finally got up, I found my dad and GI guy in the kitchen packing up my brother's stuff. I asked if I could look through it for anything I could use (there was kind of a neat looking fan, and a lot of our old Nintendo hardware). As I started looking through his stuff, I said, "I know we didn't get along, but now that he's gone I kind of miss him." Then I broke down in tears.

Now here's the kind of weird part: I sensed something was weird, I guess probably from the emotional breakdown so I thought, "AM I DREAMING? REALITY CHECK!" But instead of doing a proper reality check I ended up just waking myself up.

Oops.

There was a little bit of dream bleeding with this one too. I woke up into reality trying to figure out how I could sneak some concentrated potassium chloride into GI guy's bloodstream.

So it seems the new mantra has a bit of a gaping flaw, and I suspect I know why. Namely that I haven't associated it with an actual reality check. I'll maybe fix this in the future, but for now this'll go on the back burner.

Had another lucid-for-a-few-moments-but-lost-it episode.

It started with a longer sequence for which I only remember some. I was with a few people whom I suspect were my parents (at least one of them was my dad) and we were in a car going to what was some kind of mall/fast food restaurant combination--it had a drive through window. We ordered and picked up...something, but we forgot to order something we needed so I got out to go into the store and get it while they circled back around to pick me up. When I came out, as I got into the car my dad asked, "Do you know what 'los loco lobos' means?" to which I replied, "The crazy dog."

Cut to me sitting in a theater watching some romance movie. It featured an Asian couple from New York City. The only part of the movie I can remember was a segment where the girl went into this long-winded monologue about how her boyfriend was so awesome because he had all these manly, rugged qualities because he was such a "Minnesota man", which I recall thinking was outrageously stupid because they were both from New York City.

Cut once more to me in bed; I would wake up, my wife would tell me something, and then I'd go back to sleep. This would happen over and over. At some point she woke me up and started reciting sappy lines from the romantic movie from before, and when she did so I thought, "Oh god, I'm in a nightmare now!" semi-jokingly, then did a nose pinch reality check which failed. Had a quick "Yeah!" moment, then got up quickly (thus far I'd been thinking my last lucid slipped away because I stayed laying down) to get to work. My wife was now babbling incoherently, trying to get my attention so I waved her away since I was planning to clear out my apartment as a start to environmental control practice. I started to head to the front door of my apartment to turn on the light (since it was still dark in the room), but the dream dissolved to awakening. Reality check passed; lost it again quickly unfortunately.

It's nice that I'm still getting lucids and that they seem to be occurring with a little more frequency, but I need to find some way to stabilize them.

Another fragment/short sequence this morning.

I was with my family again and we'd just arrived at a restaurant for dinner. As we got out of our vehicle we notice we'd parked next to a really cool looking pickup truck that was painted all in gold. There was a post in the bed of the pickup on which was mounted a video camera, so I figured whomever owned it was using it to shoot movies. As we walked around it, the coolness was ruined slightly by the realization that it was only painted on that one side. We went into the restaurant; there was a line of people going up to the cash register at the front where we were to order, evidently. It seemed to be some sort of continental restaurant that specialized in seafood, but I couldn't decide what I wanted to get. There was some sort of bound ghost towards the front of the line that was trying to get my attention; it appeared as a woman with long, bright blond hair and pale skin, wearing a white robe. She was blindfolded and bound by several brown leather straps. I went over to try to figure out what she was trying to tell me, but I couldn't understand or make out what she was trying to say. I noticed there was a computer in the corner then I noticed some people whom I identified as friends outside the restaurant, so I went to see what they were up to. I talked to them for a while and then we went into the restaurant. I remember recalling that the layout of the entrance had changed some (and now I recall my family was no longer there, it seems as though I had gone to the restaurant with these friends now). We were still in line trying to decide what to get when someone told me that someone was sending me instant messages on the computer in the corner. I sat down to see what was going on, some girl (a nurse maybe?) was frantically complaining about how my mom had left the hospital (she's worked there for years in real life) and was sending other weird-looking messages. I was confused and trying to figure out why she was so upset. Dream ends around there at some point.

Again, parts of this dream were likely heavily inspired by last night, when my wife and I discovered there was a Golden Corral here and went to check it out. For the record, it was alright (not top tier) and had a pretty decent selection. Might be worth a return trip in the future. Wasn't a fan of the ambient country music though.

Edit: Additional notes, it feels as though I'm in a bit of a dry spell, though I'll admit it could be worse; I am still able to get at least some material for entries still. This certain relative timing of this morning's entry (i.e. Morning of X) comes from the fact that my wife's earlier alarm this morning woke me up earlier than usual without any dreams to record, though fortunately I was able to get a little bit more sleep and experience the above. I believe in my enthusiasm earlier this week following last weekend's first lucid dream I may have been trying to run before I could walk, so I'm returning my effort to push forward to instead focus on solidifying the basics. Meanwhile, I've been at least trying to ramp up efforts to pepper in reality checks throughout the day. We'll try to remain optimistic.

Edit: This is a partial entry with one dream sequence omitted. See file 0818-0819; recall note: mall apartment, egg achievement, delivery man.

I've got a few fragments to record, unfortunately I ran into a problem wherein I woke up perfectly to remember them, thought about the dreams enough to crystallize them somewhat (or at least for sure the fragments I'm about to write down), but then I intentionally neglected to get up to write them down. This is something to work on overcoming in the future. I was reluctant to get up under the justification that it was sort of the middle of the work week and I was too tired to get up and write for a while to justify doing it. Plus some of the subject matter of the first one made me reluctant to bother to remember it at all (in fact, although I feel it's beneficial to write as much detail as I can remember, I'd still kind of rather any readers skip over this post). I would like to congratulate myself on the noticeably improved dream recall though, it's amazing what just a little effort can do to go a long way towards awakening at the end of dreams and remembering plenty of detail.

So here we go. As usually I'll try to keep it as chronologically in order as possible.

-

The next one was a shorter fragment. I was with my immediate family. Everything seemed kind of retrograde; my brother was younger and both my parents were heavier as though it was before they both had gastric bypasses. We walked through a small junkyard into the waiting room of what looked like a car repair shop, but was apparently a combination car repair shop/walk-in clinic. Everyone sat down in a chair to wait but me; I paced around the room being annoyed and angry that once again people I'd known for years had nothing but contempt and disregard for my medical opinion. At some point I noticed my mother was missing a foot, and I thought, "Diabetes." Curiously, she was still able to walk fine despite the missing/invisible foot. She got up to ask the receptionist what was taking so long, she sounded frustrated, in pain, and desperate. She then went and sat down at a different spot. She was trying to partially cover her face with her coat, but I noticed she was crying. I continued pacing around and making mental notes about my family members until the dream ended.

One last quick note: just went to start breakfast and I remembered one more super short fragment wherein I noticed that the free expired 2-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper I brought home from work a few days ago expired in 1995.