side notes

In this dream I was part of a huge project creating documentation for the military. My two bosses was the same as in real life, but I had many coworkers whom I had never met before. There were a number of coworkers on this project who were graduate students from a reasearch university, and even in the dream they were new coworkers to me. What was interesting was that in this dream I was significantly younger than in real life - in fact I was younger than these graduate students, and pretty shy around them, trying to impress. However, I was still a major player in the project, often acting as my boss's representative, which was inconsistent with my dream age, more consistent with my actual level of seniority where I will informally at times act that way with my boss's blessing on less important conference calls and such.

So we were building huge amounts of documentation for the military. (This reminds me of my recent other dreams of creating huge amounts of documents on a large ship. The military part of this dream is probably due to my having interpreted someone else's dream about military last evening before going to bed.) I remember this dream as being long, but now I only remember some significant parts. In one of them we are having an informal meeting in what looked like a dorm room: the graduate students, my Italian American boss who is the less influential of my two bosses - more of a project manager) and myself, and one of the graduate students was saying, "we have all this documentation planned, but what about the shopper's guide? We usually do a shoppers guide for this type of project." Me: "I cannot say. You should really ask our government lead, he is the boss, and he is paying you for this project, so you should ask him whether to do this document." Grad student (this one seemed to be like a leader of the bunch, and in a previous scene he and I had been thrown together, and I was now a bit less shy around him - he was cute.): "Yes, but what do you think? Would you like us to make a shoppers guide? Would you think it useful?" Me: "I think a shoppers guide could be useful. However, I don't make the decisions and I am not the one who pays you, so my opinion is not what you should be seeking." My Italian American boss/team lead: "What she is saying is that she does not have the cojones."

In a later scene I realized that a document that my government lead asked me to prepare was actually a version of the shoppers guide. So I went to tell the grad students, and I also said "When dealing with the military, proper terminology is important. This is not the shoppers guide. This is called the acquisitions plan."

I also remember some scene that seemed to be part of the same dream where I was out in a parking lot. It was raining, and I had to retrieve something from a locker in the parking lot.

I have the sense that there was much more to this dream. I think the scene with my government lead telling me to work on the acquisitions plan was an actual dream scene, not just a memory, for example. Also the scene of being thrown together in some task with the graduate student, which made me less shy around him. I also remember walking down a hallway side by side with the grad student.

Analysis: I think I am dreaming dreams of creating huge amounts of documentation because I am having a sense of not being creative enough in my work and just creating documents but not actually creating something. I am thinking as a solution I should start making bread or crocheting at home again to get an outlet which produces more tangible non written results.

4:20 am woke up, before I moved remembered a dream fragment, but lost it upon moving

Decided to do a WBTB attempt. Staid up about 20 minutes. Then had e hardest time falling back to sleep. Tried to WILD, gave up, tried to go back to sleep, almost gave up.

Next thing i know, I noticed that I am in our laundry room. I thought, "Ah, but I am not really in the laundry room. This is a dream. I bet if I open my eyes, I will discover, that I am in my bed." And so I did.

it was about 5:45 when I woke up.

Note to self: Great job becoming lucid! Congratulations! I am really fighting my desire to reprimand you for waking up stupidly like that. Next time we are lucid, let's stay lucid and not wake up, ok? So awesome job on recognizing dream, and next time I am dreaming I intend to stay in the dream.

Friends of ours organized a big gathering of friends at fancy restaurant. We saw them there. It seemed awkward because we had not been invited. Soon after these friends invited us, just us, to same restaurant. It seems they had forgotten to invite us before. For a while I remember being confused as to what the occasion was: it seemed important, like a wedding rehearsal, but why invite just us now? Was I like a maid of honor? But we were not that close, me and the bride? And besides these friends had been married a long time already. it turned out that the important event was a food tasting. We were supposed to be like food critics, and the fancy restaurant was giving us the best food.

Side note: I had not felt well last evening so I went to bed without supper, just ate a couple slices of bread. So dreaming of food makes sense tonight. Also of note, I had to work hard to recall this dream. Almost gave up, and thought no recall this morning, and then I remembered!

Edit: Oh, and I just remembered: the food was chicken, very tasty chicken.

In this dream unlike in real life I had a cat, and so did my neighbor (not a real neighbor). He and I were talking across the hedge (don't have a hedge in real life), and he was telling me how when I am at work, my cat likes to hang out with him and his cat. It was not explained why he is not working and has time to hang out with cats all day, despite the fact that he was middle aged and quite healthy and well off looking.

Even though cats are a dream sign lately, I did not get lucid.

Around 12:30 (so only after first sleep cycle of the night) woke up with this dream:

It was decided that I shall have a baby, but I do not give birth but receive e baby fully formed. She is a baby girl. there are issues: too much light falling on the cradle, too much movement of the cradle contraption that she sleeps in. For a moment the baby in the contraption in light looks otherworldly.

I need to cover the baby with some sort of rigid screen so she is out of sight. To access her, I need to go around her cradle. On the other side is the bed of her Hindu nanny and the Nanny's son. The nanny accuses me of my being there means that her services are no longer needed. I reassure her that they are, but that I just need to nurse the baby. they are surprised that I wish to nurse her.

For a moment the baby seems too old to be a baby, and maybe threatening looking. She can talk! First she says she needs to go to the bathroom, but when she realizes that I meant to nurse her, she is ravished. First she latches onto my arm, apologizes, and latches onto my breast instead. I am confused as to her age. Is she a baby who can talk, or is she older and if so, should I nurse her? But why would she be that small if she is older. Andher eyes appear wiser than her apparent age.
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I believe this dream tone metaphorical: are my ideas old or new? Do they threaten others? Am I right to nurture these ideas? they can speak for themselves, and yet are helpless without my nurture. I think this dream was inspired by discussions of spirituality on DV.

Also I have been reading Greek mythology to my sons, and the idea of fully formed daughter (Athena) and baby that can talk (Hermes) was probably based on that.

I remember waking up thinking this was a healing dream. Well, that was the intension anyway: I had a pounding sinus headache which would not do away with medications, so I napped in the hope that I would feel better afterwards. I now do feel a bit better: still got a headache, but a bit more manageable.

In the dream I kept getting PMs by Sageous. I don't recall actually reading them and no contents or subjects, but I remember opening them, and they kept coming.

I wonder whether this dream is more like a metaphor for my headache: being bombarded by PMs?

I have a new habit of writing down before sleep a few things to watch out for during sleep, elements for my day that are likely to make their way into my dreams:

For example last night due to that thread on lucifer followers on DV, I was expecting to maybe dream of the devil or something like that, and I was all ready to face him and tell him that he is not real if I became lucid. Lol

Instead I dreamed about cleaning my fish tank. Of course, I should have realized that the guilt over postponing the water change yesterday would get into my dream! Alas, I did not become lucid.

My fish tank in my dream was not at all like in real life. It had some sort of skull decoration, which was buried under something else - a hidden skeleton? It had yellow sand and tree roots. I did not quite see or don't remember what creature lived in my dream fish tank, but I have the sense that it was quite inappropriate for a tank this size and maybe even for a tank at all. (For all i know with all my kitten dreams lately, it might have been a kitten.) I was trying to remove things that leach calcium into the water before refilling the tank (this is due to my trying to sort out in reality how to adjust alkalinity to suit snails, but actually they probably need more calcium not less).

Another dream fragment: I also dreamed something about left hand and upper hand.

I had another one of my kidnappers try to snatch my kids nightmares.

They tried to snatch my kids while the kids and I were running for the safety of a building. I managed to somehow fend them of. I don't remember how.

In general my awareness in this dream was fuzzy, which is why I did not recognize my dream sign: the kidnappers.

Had this dream around 3am this morning. It was long and complicated.

There were these brothers, I think three of them, and they were criminals. And their sister who was an Olympics athlete of sort was being unfairly discredited from winning with false accusations of cheating, and they were using their criminal abilities to try to save the reputation of their sister. And the dream kept switching back and forth between different scenes where the different brothers were, but I had some sense of a cohesive though convoluted plot (but that sense may have been wrong). One of the brothers was at a doctor's office out of some reason throughout the dream. The other two were elsewhere dressed in masks trying to break in somewhere. I think they needed to steal evidence that she was framed and had won based on her own abilities.

In one scene I was somewhere up high with one of the two brothers. While for most of the dream I was watching it like a movie, but in this part I was involved. So I was up high with one of the brothers, and he was going to fall, and I helped him fall more gracefully. He still got hurt very badly and could not call for help himself, so I called for help for him. While his ribs were being mended they discovered why he was there (breaking in to steal the evidence).

Meanwhile the brother at the doctor's office was telling the female doctor about it, and he had a nosy audience of a small group of people listening.

That's all I can remember. None of the character's were known to me, nor does the plot ring any bells in my mind: it does not remind me of anything that happened nor any movie or book. Just a really weird dream.

A mother of a grown daughter who wanted to control her daughter too much came to me to change her name to one of the mother's choosing. I realized that it did not matter what I did, so I said to the daughter. "You can do whatever you like. You control your own fate. You can choose your own name." The daughter's eyes opened wide - she was very surprised.

I believe this dream was almost lucid:
(1) I realized that it did not matter what I did. Why? One possibility is that part of me realized that there would be no negative consequences of my defying the mother. Why? Could it be I realized it was a dream on some level? I think this was not lucid because I did not realize it consciously not that I recall, but this was close. Interestingly, when I realized that "it did not matter what I did", I chose to do the right thing.
(2) What I told the daughter is what you would tell someone to help them become lucid: You can do what you like. You are in control here.
(3) There was a sense of empowerment to this scene which was almost like in a lucid dream.

Dream sign: This was not my only dream about the power of a name!

We had let our kids go out in the woods alone, and I was tracking their GPS on my phone, and could occasionally zoom in to look at what they were doing.

At some point I noticed that my four year old had become a proficient swimmer. I knew he had it in him! I thought proudly.

However, then the GPS signal of my four year old started to get confused and when I zoomed in a different kid would show. I could see my seven-year old climbing a tree, but that was not my younger son beside him.

My husband said that it was ok, just a glitch, but I told him that I had a feeling of dread like something terrible had happened.

We reached the woods, and found a group of kids tied loosely to a tree with some cable. They lay there as if in a stupor. I still had not found my son. I heard the voice of the evil man who had done this saying something over a loudspeaker. I don't remember all he said, but it included "it does not matter." I could somehow know that the tree cables or something there was boobytrapped so I could not free the kids. I also somehow knew the evil man could see me.

I still also had not reached my older son yet, even though I had seen him on GPS phone video, had not lost him.

I woke up from this nightmare after this, quite shaken.

I had to look in on my sons, and found them safe asleep in bed of course. Despite risk of waking him up, I kissed my younger son on cheek - I would have kissed my older one, but he was harder to reach not being near the edge of the top bunk at the moment.

In hindsight, even before my conscious self was aware of it that this would turn into a nightmare, the setting was clearly there. We are watching kids over GPS and phone while they are alone in the woods! They are engaging in potentially dangerous activities such as swimming unsupervised without lifeguard or lifejacket for my younger son and tree climbing on very high tree for my older son.

It is interesting that the nightmare again goes to kidnapper theme. I thought I had successfully vanquished those kidnappers in my previous dream, where I felt so much empowerment due to having rescued my boys and preparing to fight bad guys using my superior martial arts skills. Well apparently they are back with a vengance and this time there is no empowerment for me. Of course, due to the GPS and leaving them alone in the woods, it is all my fault this time. Also i do not even get the relief of seeing my boys before the dream ends, making sure that they are alive and well in the dream. Fear of kidnappers in waking life is one of those cultural irrationally blown out of proportion fears: I know that in reality the odds of boys being kidnapped are miniscule, and I did not think that I really feared this in waking life that much to give me nightmares (perhaps it is not so much the likelihood as what would be worst case scenario - fear of kidnappers and boogieman), but of course I am as a good parent worried for my sons safety, and that of course is the cause of these dreams.

Went to bed around 10:00pm

11:30 kidnapper in a car garage in our van wants to take my kids - I retaliate, I rescue the kids, I prepare to fight using martial arts which i don't know in real life. I felt sure that I would win. I don't remember dreaming the actual fight - i think the dream ended on my intension to fight and sureness of winning. It felt very empowering. A surprisingly vivid dream for this early in the night. A typical mother protects her kids dream.

"12-30 this us a reas," - at first I assumed that I was not awake enough to make sense while typing. But now given my struggles with typing in the morning, I assume that I just did not double heck the result. It could have been a clear sentence in my mind.

4:00 cannot remember anything and distracted by my husband while trying to recall

To bed around 9:30 pm

11:00 1st awakening of night. No dream recalled. Remembered to check reality.

1:00 no dream, but before moving I though that it would probably be 12:30 since I remember last waking up at 11pm. It was actually about 1. Did reality check.

4:00 my son is learning how to ride a bike, so the bike and my son were prominent in this dream fragment. It was definitely visual. Not sure whether or not there was a plot. Non lucid, no sense of self - more like watching a movie, no awareness. Reality check upon waking up

Got up to go to bathroom and drink a bit of water. Will try WILD. Did some simple arithmetic in my head to make me a bit more aware - caught myself mistake 2+2=3! So not fully functional brain, but good that caught it. Ok, now going back to bed:

Auto suggestion: "I fall asleep aware. I dream. I taste something in dream. I fly. I reality check after wake up. I remember my dream."

Was trying too hard and could not fall asleep for the longest time.

When I did I had a bunch of fragments:

Something about my older son's school

A really neat impressive fortress/igloo made out of plastic but then with snow piled up on top. Huge and very vivid. A mother being shown this fortress, was asked, "So you never come out here with your sons?" Her answer "I did not realize before that they do arts and crafts out here." And I had the sense she meant: I could not care less unless arts and crafts are involved, but now that I know, it's of interest to me too. I just remembered while I was looking at the outside of this snow fortress, I thought "Wow, this is so vivid!" That thought only makes sense if I was at the brink of being lucid - if part of me knew it was a dream, but just had not consciously acknowledged.

My husband and I tried to pawn off an inflatable mattress to some college students, who could not care less. We realized in hindsight that while we left the mattress there, we forgot to include the pump. The students were male, and their dorm only had three walls with one wall open to the outside - so not much of a shelter. At some point I thought that maybe this was not their dorm, but just a place they hung out, but they did appear to sleep there too, and I remember bunk beds. I had the thought that they might be members of a musical band, but don't know why.

4/16/2013 recorded outside of dreamviews first - late morning dream after awakening after each sleep cycle with no other memories

I was interviewing for a job with an elderly lady in her home, which was like a fancy mansion. Out of some reason i had the down comforter with me - for comfort? I was shown from a hallway to a living room / salon. The comforter stayed in the hallway. Another woman left just as I arrived, and she was going for another job interview and worried whether she looked good in the yellow blouse - it was very canary yellow, but suited her. The old woman among other things asked me to take dictation using a video which told me what to write. I tried, but then admitted defeat: I was making too many mistakes, not catching up, and the next set of dictation was going to be even harder. I said that I seldom write with a pen any more, and I don't type well fast either - never had to. But I do regularly use the computer and also type on my phone, but generally not dictation. I realized that the reason why she had me do dictation was that when she interviewed for a job decades ago that's what she would do. It showed a difference in generations: what was expected of a woman in a job interview. I expected that I had failed the interview, but to my surprise, I got a job offer. She realized that dictation was not needed for this job, and she liked me.


I think even though this dream was set at a job interview though I decided that I am not actively looking now after all for now, I think this dream is actually about my desire to be accepted by others for who I am despite faults. I think the setting was a home not an office because this dream was personal not official.

Angie is a friend of mine whom I have not seen in person since we were eightteen, and we really were close friend when we were sixteen. She lives in Europe, I live in the US. We are Facebook friends.

In my dream I had been invited to Angie's birthday party, and was eager to go. However, I kept getting confused: when is the party? Is it today or tomorrow? Check on phone. Tomorrow. When is it? Am I in the car now because I am driving there? If so, I don't have a present. No, the party is on Friday, and today is Thursday (in my dream).

Will I even need to drive there? Couldn't I just walk? But it will be late at night, and the party is barely walking distence. Could my mother drive me there? As long as she stays in the car: it would be awkward if she came in, unlike for that other party of another friend where that was ok.

I am not entirely sure whether I was an adult or a teen in this dream. I think it may have switched from adult to teen in mid-dream.

I was not aware not even a bit, even though with all that confusion I should have questioned that something was wrong. I kept not remembering from one moment to the next when that party will be. When I thought of walking at night, I briefly visualized that, too, but it did not raise any weirdness flags. The dream was quite vivid however. A prime example that vividness and awareness are so separate.