non-lucid

I enter a fancy, beautiful restaurant in one of the nice towers on Coruscant. I round a corner and sit down at a table with Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi, whom I had arranged to meet there for breakfast.

I am approaching the main entrance to Hogwarts, but in order to get to the main door, you have to get through a series of challenges and tasks. They include climbing across a sliding metal puzzle-thing (which someone who was there before me has already aligned so that it can be climbed across easily), and washing some dishes and putting them away neatly (again, this has already been done for me). When you get to the main door, you have to sing the Hogwarts school song to the low doorknob to get it to open. Fortunately, I still remember most of it, and I sing the end part of it. The door opens.

I'm with one of my coworkers, and we are meeting to play a Star Trek RPG. We have to wait for my sister to show up, and I go on a rant about how she can get away with sleeping in late, while I never could when I was a kid.

Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm looking out my upstairs bedroom window in our family's house [our first one that I lived in as a kid - the one that didn't have upstairs bedroom windows, it was only one story in real life], watching my parents and sister drive away in their new Honda SUV. They drive up onto a freeway offramp, where they get out of the new SUV and get into a different vehicle [bus, I think?]. The now-empty SUV is a self-driving car, so I watch it come back down the freeway offramp and drive itself along one of the main roads through our neighborhoods. I realize that if we're going to get it back, I'm going to have to go chase after it. I know that it's brand-new, my parents just bought it, and since I'm home alone, I'm now responsible for it.

I run out of the house and chase after the SUV, on foot. You'd think it would either keep going in a straight line and crash into something, or else it would be programmed to either pull over and stop or come back to our driveway and park itself, I think, but no. It's programmed to follow the streets and turn at randomly-selected corners, of which there are many in our tract-home neighborhood. Fortunately, it does so very slowly, slowly enough that I almost catch up to it a couple of times, even running after it on foot. I follow it into the neighborhood on the opposite side of that main road I mentioned, just north of the one where our house is. I lose sight of it and yell, "NANOOK!" before I remember, It's a car, not a dog. It can't hear you. [No surprise it's a Honda; my parents have been loyal to them for many years. The odd part is that they never name their cars in real life.]

I finally see Nanook the Honda SUV parked nose-in to the chain-link fence at the front of somebody's front yard, which stops it for long enough that I can get close, but it gets away from me again before I can get in. [I think - my memory gets fuzzy here. It was a fun and amusing dream, though.]

My parents have just bought a house up on a high hill overlooking the ocean. There is a whole community of similar houses up on that hill; ours is the last one at the end of the street, on the ocean-facing side of the hill. Beyond our house, the hill becomes more of a cliff, and the ocean is below it. My family has just recently moved to the community.

My parents, my sister, and I are coming back from being out and about, and we see all our neighbors standing or sitting around in the open area at the highest point on the hill, which we have to pass through to get to our house. When we talk to them, we learn that they are out there watching the neighborhood slowly fall apart. I see an open patch of mud on the ground in a corner where two pieces of concrete come together, with air bubbles coming up through it. I see a corner of someone's concrete patio sticking up at an odd angle, no longer flush with the ground. All over the hilltop, the is starting to liquefy like this.

We get to our house (which is a long, straight, single-story house built perpendicular to the cliff), go inside, and see that the floor is now tilting at a 20-degree angle or more. It's clear that it's ultimately going to slide off the top of the cliff and fall into the ocean, but we can't feel it moving right now. Our mom tells us to collect any of our things that we want to save before that happens.

My sister and I go to the far end of the living room, which is the narrow edge of the house and the wall furthest from the edge of the cliff. There is a fireplace there, with lots of dark wooden shelves built into the walls on either side of it. We start taking the things we want to save off the shelves. Two of the first things I grab are shiny, silver-colored, stainless-steel thimbles. My sister also grabs a similar thimble of her own. I look closely at both of the thimbles I have and see that they each have a small number 10 etched into them. Good - they're both mine, and my sister hasn't accidentally touched one of mine.

The shelves are mostly filled with CDs and DVDs in cases, but there are lots of other things there, too. We grab a few other small items, but the number of things we decide to save is tiny compared to the total number of things on the shelves. It doesn't take long until we look at what's left on the shelves and think, "There really isn't anything else here that's particularly important to me."

----------------------------------------

Side notes:
When I realized what I'd seen and done in this dream, I laughed out loud. Those thimbles are what I've been using as a dream totem for more than four years now. They're supposed to be a reality-check tool. I saw it and handled it, and it never once occurred to me that I might be dreaming, nor that I should use it to see if I might be dreaming. How silly of me!

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary written while awake]

I'm in an episode of Doctor Who that takes place in a big, artificial, vertical column that connects the center of the earth with outer space. I am the current companion, but I'm still me. The conflict in the episode centers around whether or not to set off a bomb at the bottom of the shaft that will blow up the Earth. Different characters present convincing arguments for both setting it off and not setting it off. The Doctor and I, of course, are trying to stop it from being set off. Also, there's a time loop, so we get to go back to earlier in time and get a second chance at stopping it from being set off. At some point [I think during the second loop], I become lucid and enjoy the experience. At the top of the shaft, which is in space, I have to jump through empty space and through a small, circular hole to get into an enclosed space that has air. It's a little scary, but I make it.

[This was a pretty cool dream, and I wish I could remember it in more detail.]

Awake, Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

[Note: This DJ entry contains discussion of my personal religious beliefs, which are Christian. If, for any reason, you do not want to read about them, please skip over this entry.]

I'm trying to get from one place to another by bicycle. It's right at or just after sunset on a cloudy, overcast day, so it's somewhat dark outside. I'm bicycling along sidewalks that run between buildings that are each about four or five stories tall and have lots of windows. [It actually bears a strong resemblance to some of the private college campuses I used to walk around when I was a kid.] When I try to turn a corner, a guy on a larger bike passes by really fast right in front of me, and I shout out in surprise and fear. After he has passed by, I turn the corner and go on my way. I'm carrying a large plastic bag hanging from my left handlebar. It is filled with other, crumpled-up plastic bags, as well as a heavy, black, U-shaped metal bike lock.

I'm in the sacristy [back room where robes and other special equipment are stored] at my old church. I've arrived there to meet up with a bunch of my friends from my old college Christian fellowship, who are all crowded into the room. [I think this might have been the place I was trying to get to on my bike, but I'm not absolutely sure; I don't remember the transition from one dream scene to another. Or they may have been two entirely separate dreams.] We're all there for a special church service in which all of us young adults will be honored. All my friends already have their choir robes on, and I hurry to take mine out of the closet and put it on over my clothes.

As I'm doing this, everyone starts to file out of the room, because it's time for the service to start. I'm still hunting through the shelves in the back of the closet for my shoes, saying aloud to myself, “I'm not sure if I have black shoes in here....” I came into the room wearing white shoes, which wouldn't go with my dark-purple choir robe. [They were the same kind of choir robe I used to wear at the church I attended immediately before my current one.] I find a pair of black, slip-on sandals [a pair I own in real life] on a shelf and start putting on, but I'm already being hurried out the exterior door of the sacristy, along with the rest of the procession of young adults. When we get outside, I cross the sunlit courtyard by shuffling and sliding my feet forward, still working on getting them all the way into the sandals.

Although this church building is in a different place and has a very different layout than it does in reality, I recognize it as the one I went to as a child. The sacristy door opens onto a courtyard paved with red ceramic tile and enclosed with white walls, and it's a beautiful, sunny day. We walk in a procession along the outside wall of the sanctuary, then turn left and then left again to enter the church through its large, wooden double doors. I'm still finishing up fastening the front of my choir robe as we enter.

As we enter, there is modern, rock-instrumentation-based worship music playing, the kind we used to have in fellowship meetings. Most of the pews are facing forward, except for the section nearest the front, where they are facing inward toward the center aisle. Beyond those seats is the altar area. The sanctuary is full of people, including my mom, who is sitting in an aisle seat that I pass on my right as I walk up the aisle with the procession. I'm aware that the families of my friends from the fellowship are there, too. We all process up the center aisle and take seats in the center-facing pews.

The music continues until we are all sitting down. When it ends, one of the leaders of the fellowship starts welcoming everyone to the service and talking about how its purpose is to honor the young adults of the congregation. During this speech, I realize that I accidentally dropped my knitted bag of choir books [again, something I had in real life at my previous church] in the aisle, right where my mom is sitting. I stand up and go to retrieve it, but a tall, old black lady beats me to it. She picks it up and brings it back to me.

The leader who's speaking says that we're going to start things off by playing a team-building game. [This was typically how we started off conferences in that fellowship in real life.] I smile; this is going to be fun. I look at the service bulletin and see that just about everything the leader will say is printed on it, like a script. There are even photos of the young adults who are being honored, and a list of the supplies we'll need for the team-building game. As I continue to look through the bulletin, I see that after we play this game, we'll proceed to have a regular church service, the more traditional kind we've always had at this church. I'm also aware that although some of the people in the congregation are from my Episcopal tradition, and others are from my friends' evangelical tradition, absolutely everyone present is not only okay with the idea of having a service that blends elements of both traditions, but is actually happy about it and looking forward to the rest of the service. I am, too. The whole gathering is suffused with a sense of love, peace, joy, and unity.

-----------------------------------
Side notes:
This dream was significant for me because it made me feel better about the past. It made me feel less conflicted and less torn, and gave me hope that reconciliation between those two areas of my experience is possible.

[This is a catch-up post. This dream took place on the night of December 5-6, 2012.]

Non-lucid, Semi-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm at my university, and I have to fill out and turn in a form to get rid of a dorm room that I don't want or need, because I'm living in an apartment. I go into a computer lab to work on it, and the computers have floppy disk drives. When I remember a previous episode in this ongoing plot, I realize that I'm dreaming. [I don't remember that previous episode now, though. I think the lucid part of this dream continued on from this point, but I didn't write down what happened.]

I wake up, walk into the room where I work, and go to my work computer. As I'm walking across the room, I think, Hmm, am I still dreaming? This sure looks and feels real, and gravity feels normal, but I have a sneaking suspicion... When I get to my work computer, I see an instant-message conversation on the screen, and it's between two fictional characters. Yep. Still dreaming, I think. I start trying to type up a dream journal entry on my work computer, but I find it's very difficult to type in a dream. It's really slow going; it feels like my fingers don't know what to do. [Makes sense - that part of my brain that knows learned skills like typing must not be active when I'm asleep.] After just a few sentences, I lose interest in finishing my dream journal entry.

I start floating away from my desk. A friend gives me a push to help me along. I go into another area, where there are a bunch of people having some sort of gathering, possibly a picnic [I don't really remember now]. I decide I want to try making myself bigger. I crouch down on all fours, close my eyes, and concentrate on expanding the size of my body. At first, I don't think it's working because I don't feel any sensation, but when I open my eyes, I discover that it worked: I'm now huge compared to the DCs.

I wake up at somebody's house, having spent the night there after a party. I drive myself home, but get lost along the way. While I'm driving, my alarm clock wakes me up for real.

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm flying through a large, rectangular, exhibit-hall-like space with an entryway connected to one end of it. Every time I make a complete loop through the exhibit hall, out into the entryway, and then back into the exhibit hall again, the scenery and displays in the hall have changed. While I'm flying through the entryway after a couple of iterations of this, I catch on to the fact that I'm dreaming.

I remember that I need to stabilize and ground myself in the dream, so I will myself to go down. I sink straight down, in an upright position, until I'm standing on the floor. I immediately walk over, reach out, and touch one of the walls, then squat down to touch the carpet. The thought of licking the floor to bring in that sense crosses my mind. [I was reading a thread on DV before I went to bed that mentioned engaging all five of your senses in a dream.] I decide not to, but thinking of things you should do in a dream brings to mind the current Task of the Month: spell “November” backwards.

While still squatting down, I start tracing the shapes of the letters on the carpet with my finger. R...e...b...m...e...v...o...n. I get all the way through it, and feel very proud and pleased with myself. I feel just as alert and self-aware as I do in waking life, but I notice that it's slightly more difficult to keep track of the letters and what order they go in than it would be if I were awake. Then, I suddenly find that I have a ballpoint pen in my hand [a plain black Bic pen with a grip, the exact same kind I'd just been using in real life to do my homework for a class]. I take the pen and print “Rebmevon” on the wallpaper on the nearest wall. It's still a little hard to focus on spelling. At first, I write an “e” in place of the last “o,” but then I cross it out and correct it. I write it a second time [I think] because I can, but then I think, Okay, now you're just doing it to be a smartass.

[There was more, but I only have time to write the part that has to do with the Task of the Month right now.]

I adopt a large, black dog from a shelter, and take him home to my apartment. I find that the responsibility of taking care of him is more than I can stand, and I don't enjoy it at all. I feel like a horrible, awful person, but I decide take him back to the place I got him from to ask them to find a different home for him. He's too big for me to pick up and put in my truck by myself, though, so two of my neighbors help me.

I get back to the shopping center where the shelter is located and walk through it, but by the time I get to the shelter, the dog has wandered off on his own, and I don't know where he is. I was such a lousy owner that I didn't even get a leash for him.

[This dream stemmed from an ad I heard on the radio yesterday for a kennel that really does find new homes for dogs. By the way, I don't even have a truck in real life, just a car.]

[Different dream, later in the night.] I'm playing Hidden Chronicles and I notice, for the first time, that the river on the main map continues further up than I had thought, and there are all kinds of buildings on the other side - a whole town for me to explore. There's a sailboat dock across the river from my estate - obviously, you're supposed to get to that part of town by sailing across the river - and a second bridge for me to repair.

Suddenly, I'm standing among the buildings of the town on the far side of the river. When I turn and look back down the river, I gasp - from this ground-level point of view, looking in this direction, I can see that there's a whole city over there to explore, complete with its own skyline of skyscrapers. I'm really excited to explore it, but I think, Looks like I'm going to keep playing this game for the next couple of years.

[Different dream.] I'm with my parents, and my mom needs me to translate some text from Japanese into English [or vice versa, I don't remember] for her. She needs it right away, and all I have is my phone, but I plug away at it anyway. We're visiting the home of some friends, and we're sitting down to have dinner with their large family around the light-brown, round table that my parents have in their house.

(This one is from last night, bringing my DJ up to date again.)

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in House #4, which is enormous and elaborate and has lots of rooms [far, far more than in real life]. I go into one room that I had been using as an office/storage room, turn on the lights, and wonder why the lights in the ceiling fan don't turn on when I flip the switches, like they always have. [Arrrrrgh! *facepalm* It's been a while. I completely forgot that this was a dream sign until just now, when I was writing about it!] Then I notice that the room has been completely redecorated and filled with all kinds of objects and belongings. Someone has moved into these rooms. That someone has left a note on a rectangular sheet of yellow paper, attached to the wall, and has signed it with her first name, Emily.

While walking through the house, I pass a seating area with couches and a coffee table in an open area of the second floor, on a sort of landing next to the walkway that leads to the other bedrooms.

I'm in a dining area, sitting at a table, eating a meal with my roommate, LB. We talk about how I have this is my last night in the house, and I have to return to my original home.

I go downstairs and walk out of the house, which is now a small cruise ship sitting at a dock. Someone says something like, “If you don't come back, the ship will leave without you.” And I'll be marooned, I think. Well, Long Beach sure is a great place to be marooned in.

I wander off, along the city streets, heading toward the ocean. I find the frontage road that runs along the edge of the beach, and follow it to the next cross-street that leads inland. [The intersection I came to looked a lot like this intersection here, a place I know well from real life, but that intersection is actually in Santa Barbara, not Long Beach. In the dream, this area looked like that intersection, except grayer, more urban, and more built up - more like Long Beach, in other words.]

I turn right and head up that street that leads inland from the ocean. I come to an enchanted-forest-themed park area, where there is a gently-curving path through a forest of tall trees, and little statues and figurines, including one that plays a chipper, pre-recorded message when you touch a marked panel in front of it. The companion I'm with does so, and I turn around and walk back the way I came along the path, annoyed by the recording.

While retracing our steps, my companion and I come to a section of the pathway where there's a little toy train that runs along a ledge, about three feet off the ground, on one side of the footpath. The train consists of a toy engine, a toy caboose, and a whole bunch of random, small objects in between them. Any object placed in the line of objects between the engine and the caboose levitates a few inches above the ledge, and is pulled along as part of the train. The idea is that you're supposed to stand on the objects and ride the train along the ledge. I take my totem out of my pocket and place it on one of the flat objects in the train, and look at it for a moment. However, I then put it back in my pocket, because I don't want my companion to see that I have it. [Again, how did I not realize I was dreaming? Apparently, in my mind, that totem object is associated with the idea “This is a secret - no one else must know you have this” much more strongly than it is with the ideas “This is a symbol of your membership in the lucid dreaming community, a reminder to do reality checks, and a way to do them.” Great. :/ ]

(This is a catch-up post. This dream took place on the night of September 8-9, 2012.)

Awake, Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in my old hometown, on a major east-west street. I have to transport some large, cooked meat dish from one place to another in the trunk of my car, without letting the juices from it spill all over the trunk, so I have to drive very carefully.

[Later, different dream.] I'm in my apartment in Omaha. My parents are there with me. They've come to visit along with SS [a good friend of my mom's], and we're trying to figure out a more comfortable sleeping situation than cramming both of my parents and SS into my office, which is what we have been doing. We wander into the far side of the apartment, where I don't go very often. We walk through a hallway that goes past an outdoor courtyard, with a brick floor and a stone fireplace, and into the large master suite.

“I don't come in here very often,” I say. The master suite has a large, unused bedroom and its own bathroom, which solves the problem of sharing bathrooms. We can also move someone into that bedroom.

A little later, I walk toward the door of my apartment, from the inside, and find that my parents are decorating it for Christmas by putting lights up all around it and putting a green garland over the top of the door, so it hangs down on the inside and the outside. “Mom!” I say indignantly. “I don't put up fall decorations until the autumnal equinox, and I don't put up Christmas decorations until December 1st!” I start taking the decorations down.

My parents and I are discussing the amount of money we spent on my relocation, and how much I still owe them. They are under the impression that I owe them for the car we rented, but I counter with the argument that no, I don't, because that expense went on my mom's credit card, not mine.

My friend Jim is in my apartment. He looks very young [younger than he is in real life] and is holding a baby girl. I introduce him to my parents: “Mom, this is my friend Jim. Jim, this is my mom,” and the same with my dad. While I'm doing so, Jim disappears, leaving only the baby floating in midair. [I have no idea how I didn't realize I was dreaming. I did take note of how strange it was that Jim looked younger than he normally did, though.]

---------------------------
Side notes:
This is the first time I've dreamed about my new apartment since I moved here, which was 1 month and 9 days ago now. This dream comes as a relief. I was beginning to worry about my mental state. On two previous occasions when I've made a change in my life (when I moved into the rented room and when I got my first smartphone - see my DJ entries from July 24, 2011 and September 4, 2011), only two weeks passed between the date of the change and the date that change was reflected in my dreams. This led me to develop the hypothesis: “Evidently, two weeks is how long it takes for my my unconscious mind to accept something as normal and start incorporating it into my dreams.” This time, it took just over five weeks. Time to adjust my previous hypothesis. Here's the adjusted version: “When my unconscious mind has begun to accept something as normal, it starts incorporating that something into my dreams. The amount of time it takes for that to happen may vary.” On a conscious level, I would agree that it has been much more difficult to adjust to and accept this change than it was to adjust to the other two changes in this data sample. I believe that this accounts for the time discrepancy.

I recognize several of the other themes in this dream as themes that have been on my mind lately while I'm awake. I frequently think about how my apartment seems very large for just me, so in my dream, my apartment actually was as big as it feels, or even bigger. I really am excited about decorating my own apartment for Christmas, so it makes sense that I would dream about that. Yesterday, when I was shopping, I really did purchase a few Christmas decorations, but I didn't put them up. My policy on putting up decorations is exactly as I said in my dream.

My best guess as to why Jim was there is that I subconsciously feel guilty that it's been five weeks and I still haven't found or joined a new Toastmasters club yet, because I keep putting it off.

(This is a catch-up post. This dream took place on the night of August 22-23, 2012.)

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

My mom and I are watching a play together. The play features a girl and a creepy, life-sized puppet that is designed to be a body double of her. I see that $OfficeBoss is there, watching the play with his family. Then, my mom and I go out to the parking lot and drive away in the same car together, even though we both have cars there. We can only start one of our cars, not the other one, because neither of us has the right key for that one.

I'm in the Phoenix, Arizona metro area on vacation, visiting my good friend, JM. I have my own car [which I never do when I go to visit him, because I always fly there and get rides around town with him and his friends - this should have been my first clue that I was dreaming, but it wasn't], and I'm driving east along the freeway, heading in the direction of JM's house. The scenery around me is incredibly beautiful and lush, with lots of desert plants.

JM and I are hanging out in a bar together, totally chilling out on a sofa. I'm drinking a beer that someone else abandoned on a table. We walk out of the bar, which is located in a shopping mall. As we're on our way out of the mall, we find another friend of ours, ET [a human - yes, those are his initials], in another of the mall's shops. I realize it's him when I hear his voice. A bunch of our friends are with us now. ET hugs everyone in the group (myself, JM, CF, and a couple of others), except for RD. RD doesn't want to be hugged, and uses her fingers to climb up the side of a door to get away from ET. ET tickles her on the small of her back instead.

I'm walking through a beautiful Arizona landscape of desert farms, and at this point, I finally realize that I'm dreaming. I focus on the fact that the guard dogs that many of the farms have cannot really hurt me when I'm in a dream. I run away from one of them by flying straight up, and then start flying over the lovely scenery, admiring it. Looking southwest, I can see downtown Phoenix, which has skyscrapers and a giant stone head with a big, wide-open mouth. Just after I've started flying, my alarm goes off and wakes me up.

[TRIGGER WARNING: This journal entry contains content that recalls the shootings in Aurora, CO. Reader discretion is advised.]

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm on the second floor of a big office building, and I take the elevator down to the first floor. There are a lot of other people in the elevator with me. I get an odd feeling that something big and important is about to happen in just a few moments.

I exit the elevator and walk out into the ground-floor lobby of the building. It's a large space with lots of glass that lets in sunlight, and there are lots of people walking through the lobby, going in all directions.

Suddenly, a man with some kind of small-to-medium-sized automatic weapon fires a short burst of gunfire into the air, in the middle of the room. Everyone in the lobby panics and tries to take cover, including me. [I know this nightmare was inspired directly by the recent Aurora theater shooting tragedy.] As the gunman continues shooting random people in the room, I hide under a long, low, rectangular wooden table with another young woman, about my own age, with brown hair. She and I whisper to each other about how this isn't very good cover, and how he's going to find us here any moment know. We're right - he does find us there, and threatens us with the firearm. I'm terrified that I'm about to be killed. Fortunately, I realize that I'm dreaming, and that that means I can just fly away. So I do. I fly away from the gunman in a straight line, passing right through the wall of the building without even realizing that I've done so until I'm well outside the building. When I'm some distance away, I look back at the tall office building I just left. I'm far enough away that the gunman is now little more than a dot, still visible through the windows.

[There was more to this dream; I went on to explore the rest of the dream while lucid, but I don't remember any of the specifics.]

****************
Side notes:
*derisive snort* And I call myself an oneironaut! I was having a nightmare, I became lucid, and I just used my dream control abilities to run away from the danger. Next time I go lucid during a nightmare, I will try to remember to stand up to the threat and talk it down.

By the way, I had this dream at a hotel, on Night #1 of my big relocation road trip.

[This is a catchup post. I had this dream on the night of July 18, 2012, but I'm just now getting around to posting it.]

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in [or outside - not sure] House #1, and I become aware that I'm dreaming. I think, Hey, cool! This would be a great opportunity to go and achieve that goal! So I take off and start flying, keeping very low to the ground [I don't know why] , following the roads that lead from my house to the nearby park. I make a point of concentrating on the dream world around me, to keep myself in the dream. [I think] There's a moment where I briefly become aware of my body lying in bed, but I forcibly drag my awareness back to the dream and manage to stay in it. [It may have been after this next part, I'm not sure.]

Anyway, I turn up the road that leads to the park, and there it is: the metal, chain-link, curved baseball backstop, the one I've been fantasizing about flying to the top of since I was a little girl. I come to the center of the back of it and start flying up, following its curve, but inexplicably sink back down to the ground. I shrug and decide to just climb the thing instead. It works. I'm up at the top in just a couple of seconds. I stand on top of the baseball backstop, surveying the park and feeling very proud of myself for finally getting to the top of my baseball backstop in a lucid dream.

***********
Side notes:
Every time I have a lucid dream, I always start my day in a great mood, with the attitude that today is going to be a great day. On the day after I woke up from this particular dream, I finally received and accepted the job offer I'd spent years waiting and hoping for. Does it mean anything? I'm not willing to say yes, but it's interesting.

Color-coding: Non-lucid, Semi-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]
Bold text indicates a “dream within a dream,” meaning any dream scenes that followed after I dreamed of falling asleep

I wake up in my current bedroom. I can hear the couple who lives downstairs in the master bedroom arguing. The woman says something like, “I have to get up now and get ready for work!” I can't sleep with them arguing, so I decide, “Okay, I guess I'm up for the day now, too.” I get up and start trying to take a shower, but the hot water keeps turning cold because the woman downstairs is taking a shower at the same time. After I'm done, I'm still feeling so sleepy that I decide to go back to bed and try to get some good sleep while I still can. It's still only 4:15 AM, after all. So I get back into bed and go to sleep.

[All of the above paragraph was a completely convincing false awakening that I failed to catch. I've never heard the couple in question argue like that, plus, in the dream, the residents of the master bedroom were the parents of the girl who actually lives there in real life, and I thought nothing of it. :/]

I'm visiting EM and SM's house in Omaha [something I did in real life recently]. It's morning, and we're all getting ready to leave the house for the day. They have a gigantic, elaborate house [way bigger, fancier, and more high-tech than their real house]. While we're in the kitchen, SM says something like, “You haven't had a chance to eat today.” I answer, “I know. That's why I always keep bananas in stock.” I show her that I'm carrying a banana with me, which I intend to eat for breakfast. SM has an eyepatch over her left eye socket, with a cool outer-space vista on it. It's embedded into her skin, and I can see muscles twitching underneath it. It's kind of creepy.

We get outside the front door when I realize that I don't have any shoes on. I say to EM, “Could you unlock the door for me, so I can get back into the house? I'm not wearing shoes, only socks.”

EM takes out a door key and uses it to unlock a lock in a wall, which opens the front door. “The front door” consists of a zig-zagging wall of metal panels that cross a wide, concrete courtyard. The panels that are parallel to the house swing open, toward the house, when the key is turned; they're the doors. I go into the house and run up the stairs to the room where I'm staying, to get my shoes.

When I come back outside, I find SM sitting on something in the middle of the tall, light-green grass on the wide front lawn, waiting for me. She doesn't have her eyepatch anymore; both of her eyes are normal. [This is the case in real life.]

“Wait just a ding-danged minute here...” I say. This discrepancy has caused me to begin to suspect that none of this is real. To test whether I'm dreaming, I turn to face a low rock wall nearby and start walking toward it, willing myself to pass through it intangibly [something I know very well that I can do in dreams]. I find that I can't pass through it; I just bump into it normally. In the moments that follow, I'm very acutely and vividly aware of the world around me, of my own self-consciousness, and of the fact that I'm not sure whether I'm awake or dreaming at this very moment. [I finally started watching the TV series Awake a few nights ago, and this is what the protagonist experiences all the time, a fact which is reiterated at the beginning of episodes 2 and 3. That is so cool, that I got to experience that personally in one of my own dreams! ]

After another moment or two, I do realize that I am dreaming. [I don't remember specifically how or why.] By definition, that means that I am getting some good sleep now, I reflect gratefully. I smile and decide to enjoy myself here while I'm getting that restorative sleep I needed so much.

As usual, all I want to do is explore the dream world, so I start flying up and away from the house. I see SM's car driving away below me, and wave goodbye to her. From up here, I can see the entire city spread out below me, covering the gently rolling hills like a blanket, and it's very beautiful. It's also very windy up there. I think to myself: I've got brains in my head, I've got feet in my shoes, I've got levitation powers in my mind. I can steer myself any direction I choose. [This is a reference to the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You'll Go!, from which one of my contacts in Omaha read a passage to a graduating class while I was there. Hmm. No idea why I thought of them as “levitation powers” instead of “flight powers.”] I try to fly into the wind, which is coming from my left, but can't find the strength to fight against it. I decide to fly with it instead. I think, Why not? When you're going bicycling, you'll probably choose to ride with the wind, if you have a choice.

I end up flying through a neighborhood filled with lots of cute little houses that line narrow, old, little streets that wind around every which way. [Just like in the real Omaha, or, at least, the neighborhood where EM and SM live.] Every front yard has big, tropical-rainforest-looking trees in it that reach across the street, forming the beginnings of a canopy, but not a very thick one. There are exotic, tropical birds in every tree. [Um... not at all like in the real Omaha. ] I fly along, following the streets and admiring the beauty all around me.

[Dreamskip - I don't remember getting from one locale to the other.] I'm still in Omaha, but now I'm in a gigantic, elaborate, multi-story library and bookstore. It has lots of glass walls and ceilings that let in the sunlight, and they're arranged in a square geometric pattern, just like this library. It's filled with lots and lots of shelves of books, and there are plenty of people walking around. I'm still flying to get around, instead of walking. I fly up from one level to another, in search of the section where the most popular books are kept. I want to check one of those books out, but I don't have a library card yet, so I'm limited to buying it. I definitely intend to get a library card when I move there, though. [True in real life, too.]

When I get to that section, I land and start walking. I'm looking for the second book in a series I'm reading. I have to think about it to remember which one it is. It's not the Twilight series; it's the Hunger Games series. [Which I haven't even started reading in real life, but I would like to.] I look through the neat, white, bright shelves and find the book I'm looking for. I pick it up and start walking away with it, reading it. There's a computer kiosk that beeps at me as I walk by. I look on the screen, and it has a written message directed at me, chastising me for cracking the spine on my book. Doing so somehow disrupted the operation of a pacemaker of somebody in the immediate vicinity. [I don't recall seeing that somebody there, though.]

I continue exploring the library, and decide I want to go down one floor, but I don't want to fly because there are lots of people around, and I generally try to avoid using any of my dream powers when there are people around to see me. [Yes, they are just DCs, but I always think like that in my lucid dreams anyway. I don't know why, but I do.] I see a wide, steep, carpet-covered ramp leading down to the level below me, and decide to roll down it.

[Dreamskip. I'm not 100% certain that I was still aware that I was dreaming in this scene, but I may have been.] I'm walking along a city street and see a restaurant that is closed. I'm disappointed to discover this, because it had belonged to my friends. I wander through it, looking at all the debris left in the abandoned building. I walk to a side entrance and go out through the patio, where I see that people have begun seating themselves at the patio tables. I realize that they must have seen me walking around inside the restaurant, assumed it was open, and sat down. I feel bad about it, but I start telling them, “Sorry, it's closed.” They get up and leave.

[Side notes: Heh. I love how my subconscious has turned Omaha into this perfect tropical paradise with an awesome library, a place where everything I saw around me was incredibly cool and gave me nothing but happiness and joy. Omaha really does have a gigantic central library, although it doesn't have that cool architectural design. That part came directly from the library at UC San Diego. I didn't go to school there, but EM did - a fact which I had consciously forgotten about until I told my mom about this dream later in the day. Hmm. Omaha also has a zoo that I didn't actually see, but that everyone tells me is pretty awesome. Okay, subconscious, I get the message: Don't give up on Omaha yet. You may still be able to find happiness there.]

Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

[Fragment:] I'm sorting through laundry, separating out the things that need to be washed. [Heh. Apparently, anything you've been avoiding dealing with in real life can show up in a dream, even if it's something completely mundane. ]

[The following is a different dream. I'm writing this at the end of the day after I woke up from it, rather than in the morning, right after waking up for it, so I've probably forgotten a lot by now. What I'm about to write here is all I remember now. Sorry.]

I'm a member of a group of Chosen Children [from the Digimon anime series; these people are otherwise known as Digidestined in the English dub]. Everyone in the group is around my own age. [Yes, I was the same age in my dream as I am in real life. Yes, I'm way too old to be a Chosen Child by the standards of any of the anime series. Evidently, my subconscious doesn't care about that.] There are at least 20 people in the group. We all go into a fairly small cabin, the kind that would be at a summer camp, in which we all have to find a space to lie down in, because we're all going to enter a dream together [Inception-style. No, I never once realized I was dreaming throughout this entire dream. Yes, I feel silly now.]. I climb into the upper bunk of one of the many bunk beds in the room. Addressing the group at large, I say something like, “Try to make space on the floor for everyone.”

With my right hand, I push up the left sleeve of my shirt to expose the inside of my left elbow. I wait for someone to come around with an IV needle for me. I'm not looking forward to having the needle put in, and want to just get it over with already. [Exactly how I feel about them in real life.]

I'm now in the first dream level, with the same group of people. Once again, we're all lying down, waiting to get IV needles put in. I think, We need to go into the deeper dream levels so that we can get into our stronger Digimon forms. I have the following knowledge about our current situation: We're in the midst of a mission to defeat some enemy, and in order to transform into the strongest Digimon forms we have available to us, we have to be several dream levels deep.

This time, I actually feel the needle being stuck in, but not into my elbow - it gets stuck into the tip of my left thumb. It's still not a pleasant experience, of course. I can feel it in there, and can feel my pulse throbbing in the tip of my thumb.

[Awesome. I love the premise of this dream. I'm slightly tempted to write crossover fanfic based on it, but I don't have time to write fanfic.]