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As I went to sleep tonight, I recited a mantra, "I will stabilize". I also firmly fixed in my mind that as soon as I began dreaming, I would know that I was dreaming.

This worked. I spent some time drifting, and then a dream began. I was lying in bed, and the lights were on. I looked to my left. There were 3 tiny, glowing playing cards floating in the space above my head. I thought, "Yes, I'm dreaming," and snatched the playing cards from where they were floating. It's hard to explain, but the cards were a cue for me - it was specifically seeing the cards that made me lucid. I don't remember what suites the cards were, only that they were 1/4 the size of normal playing cards, they were glowing, and they immediately induced lucidity.

I got out of bed, and my bedroom was very different and not at all like my real bedroom. The carpet was worn out, and an ugly shade of tannish orangy brown. My "dream room" carpet is always this ugly color, for some reason. The door was in the wrong place, and led to a hallway that doesn't exist, and there was no furniture besides my bed. The bed was a twin, but in real life, I have a full. I said, "Stabilize!". I went to the door and tried to visualize that as soon as I went through it, I would be in a rainforest. I tried very hard to convince myself of this.

When I went through the door, everything was dark. I saw shadowy forms that hinted that I was in another room. I got frustrated and lost lucidity.

I woke up, grumbled, and tried WILD. I got past the initial wave and felt as if I was sinking into my bed. I sat up out of my body. I tried to open my eyes, but it was very hard, and I felt like I was opening my physical eyes. I was really tired and had work in the morning, so I gave up on it and lapsed back into unawareness. I dreamed that my head had made a huge dent in my pillow, so now my pillow had 2 lumps of stuffing on either side and nothing in the middle. I tossed and turned (in the dream) and tried to make it comfortable somehow.

I dreamed I was shopping at a store. I've never been there in my waking life. There was a desk on a top shelf that I was interested in - it was $50, and I thought it would make a good room divider. But my cell phone was malfunctioning badly. The screen came off (how?) and then it got hot to touch and melted. I got some of the melted screen on my finger, and it burned me. I kept thinking about how frustrated I was that all of my money now had to go toward buying a new phone. I needed a smartphone, too, so it was going to be expensive.

I woke up. I tried some visualizations. I visualized a room full of dolls, where each doll represented a DC I knew. I visualized putting a doll on the floor and making it grow to full size. (I was not asleep at this time). I began drifting off, but the visualization didn't completely take hold, and I didn't become lucid. Instead, the room became the room of a woman with a group of really odd friends. My dream followed their antics, but I don't recall any specifics on what they were.

Review:
Dream clues:
- Playing cards (instant lucidity)
- My pillow doesn't have stuffing. It's a memory foam pillow.
- Unfamiliar store, without recalling how I got there
- Malfunctioning phone (malfunctioning electronics)
- Spectator perspective

Edit: Believe it or not... I actually figured out the playing cards while I was riding the train home. In my dream, they were glowing like they were lit up LEDs. On the train ride home, there's an installation where LED playing cards flash by the train windows. I tend to stare out the window at them because I'm bored and they're something to look at... which means I'm also staring at my reflection. So, since mirrors instantly make me lucid (for some reason), apparently my brain linked the playing cards with my reflection strongly enough that just looking at a card makes me lucid.

Sept. 2, 2003:
I had this dream that my uncle had a fish-tank, only instead of fish there were hamsters swimming around in it. When I asked, "Aren't you worried they're gonna drown?" and he was like "No, they've lived in water all their life, they fell in there when they were babies". Then I dreamed I was in an office doing secretary work. There was some other stuff, but I've forgotten it already.

Sept. 4, 2003:
I had a dream, but I don't remember very much. My alarm clock went off and I hit the snooze button. Then I had a very realistic dream that mom called me on my cell phone, and the reception was really really bad, but I woke up halfway through the dream (so I know it was a dream).

I've had weird dreams, and I haven't been sleeping well... I don't know why I feel so ill but I just can't sleep. I reached that state of overtiredness that isn't caused by a lack of sleep, so much as too much stress. I mean that state where you're actually almost hallucinating, and you're paranoid because you're jumping at stuff that you see out of the corner of your eye, but isn't actually there. And all of the freaky dreams don't help either.

I mean, aside from the hamster-fishtank dream, I had a dream I was talking with Mom on the cell phone, but I had a nightmare too. I had a dream that I woke up and somebody was standing in my bedroom, but then I dreamed that I fell asleep again, or something. I know there wasn't anybody in my room, for several reasons. The first: my door was locked. I always lock and close my door when I go to sleep. Second, none of my roommates are like 6'3 or 6'4" tall and male. Third, it had that nice, surreal quality that makes you think "Hmm, I'm dreaming."