Bubble

I had a dream prior to this. I intended to write it down. I dreamed that I woke up and wrote it down and lay back down. As I lay back down to fall asleep, I realized that I hadn't actually written my dream down in real life because I was dreaming. I was really sleepy, though, so I just dreamed about going back to sleep, and it faded into another dream. Unfortunately, I can't recall the events of my prior dream.

I then dreamed about a Choose Your Own Adventure game I was playing. I was playing a boy and his sister. Part of the game involved choosing classes for them to attend so they could build skills (a la Princess Maker or Long Live The Queen). The setting was modern day, though. My first run through, the boy became a thief after wandering into a bad part of town, but died because his skill in lock picks was terrible when he needed to pass a skill check, and he pissed off the thieves' guild. The girl ended up attending some sort of party or event where everyone was dressed in formal wear. In the next game, I completely ignored the boy and focused on making the girl into a well-respected doctor. At some point, I pulled out my dream journal (the one I wrote in in my prior dream) and looked through it, and the notes in it were in big, sloppy handwriting. Apparently, my dream had something to do with Morgan Freeman. I decided that the reason that the journal looked so sloppy and the notes were so weird was because I had written them in my sleep, and I put it away. In the game, the girl needed to find a bathroom (what is it with me and bathrooms?).

The dream shifted, and I was in a library - still looking for the bathroom. I find it, but decide it's not the REAL bathroom (and somehow this has to do with the number 40) because it doesn't look real enough, and I need to find the real bathroom. I wake up, and yes, I needed to use the bathroom.

1. I dream I am working at a nursing home. I take care of an old lady, and take her to a doctor appointment, but forget to actually take her in to see the doctor. I send her off (to somewhere) and then remember that the doctor hasn't actually seen her, and start worrying that even though she is healthy she may have health problems that aren't so obvious... but there's no way to fix it without getting in a lot of trouble.

2. One of my less comfortable OBEs. I partially woke up, but my body was still 'paralyzed' and I was half asleep. I tried to settle down and catch onto a dreamlet or something. That isn't working and I'm not entirely lucid, so I try to sit up out of my body. My body "sticks" to me like it's glue, so I try to roll over out of it. I feel like I am tipping and sinking backwards into the bed. I am in the "wind tunnel". I start to panic, and after a lot of flailing around and struggling, I lapse back into unawareness.

3. I dream that there is a huge snowstorm and the whole city has shut down. The city I live in is one I've never seen before in my life. I go outside and start trying to shovel snow with everybody else.

4. I dream I am in a castle. I am moving through room after room. The floor has diamond floor tiles in various brown colors. I can get on top of the walls and run along them, and jump down into other rooms. As I am crossing a hallway, I see a mirror. Mirrors always make me lucid - I approach it, see my reflection, and 'push' into lucidity. Unfortunately, I'm sleeping too lightly, and it wakes me up (not a false awakening).

I grumble and roll over. A few minutes pass. Someone lightly knocks on my door, twice. I ignore it because if my brother is trying to wake me up on the morning I have a day off work, he's being a jerk.

Someone knocks on my door again, a little louder, twice.
I say "what?" but there's no answer. I get up and open my door, but nobody is there. I hear someone in the kitchen. I go into the kitchen and ask my roommate, "Did you knock on my door?"
She says, "No, I wouldn't do that."
My brother is asleep... my other roommate isn't home. My roommate verified that she was, in fact, making breakfast, and that I did ask her if she knocked on my door. Even though it was a hypnopompic hallucination, it still sounded very real, and was pretty creepy.

Review:
Last night was semi-productive, I guess. I'm having more lucids, but the quality has gone down. I don't think it's because I'm getting "worse" at lucid dreaming, so much as I am having a lot more lucid dreams lately and the quality will slowly improve again.

When I say OBE, I don't really mean that I believe it's an actual out of body experience. I mean that it's a specific kind of lucid dream I have where it feels like I am rising/rolling/whatever out of my body, and either end up in the void or end up in a facsimile of my bedroom, while my "body" remains in bed. I don't believe anything paranormal is going on, it's just a really specific kind of dream with a really specific feeling... and a specific set of challenges that I still haven't overcome.

Clues I was dreaming:
- I don't work in a nursing home
- We don't have blizzards where I live
- I don't generally wander around castles