The Lab Notebook

[Fragment] I'm in a grocery store, sitting at a disused checkout stand. The store has recently been rearranged so that the checkout stands that are actually being used are on the opposite side of the building, but the old ones were left in place.

I'm parking my Saturn [the car I had in Florida] in the parking lot of an Albertsons grocery store [none that I've ever been to in real life]. I notice that the temperature gauge on the car is maxed out [as it usually was in reality]. I think about how I have to make this car last all year because, in my situation, there's no other method of getting to work that will do. [In this dream,] I'm back in Florida for a second year.

When I went back to bed after having taken some handwritten notes on the above dream, I noticed that my body already felt heavy. I decided to roll with it and try to WILD. I had attempted to do so a few days before during an afternoon nap, and had gotten as far as one of my arms starting to go numb before my mom interrupted me with a question. This time, I succeeded, and to my surprise, it wasn't nearly as scary as I had thought it would be. My hypnagogic hallucinations consisted of a buzzing sound in my head that seemed to go on for a few minutes. Then it stopped, and a few seconds later, I find myself lying in my bed, looking around at my current bedroom. I immediately recognize the false awakening for what it is, since I had been expecting to be dreaming. I did it! I think excitedly.

None of the lights appear to be on, and yet I can see everything clearly. In other words, the room looks very much the way it does when early-morning sunlight is coming in through the window, and yet I'm aware that it's nighttime. I get out of bed and start walking out of the room. Just before I walk out the door, I do the nose-pinch RC just to verify what I already know, and for the cool experience. I can still breathe, which I still think is the neatest sensation.

I go out the door and walk down the hallway. This looks exactly like my real house. There's no one else around. As I pass by the door to P.'s room, I notice light coming from underneath it, but this is normal in our house, so I don't investigate. I go to the front door and open it. It's exactly like the real one, too; I even have to unlock the deadbolt on the screen door before I can open it and go outside.

I walk along the front walk. I notice that I'm wearing one of my summer nightshirts, the one with the teacups printed on it and the pocket in the front. It occurs to me that I could have stopped and gotten dressed if I had thought of it, but I didn't, and it doesn't matter anyway because this is a dream, so it's only natural for me to be wearing sleepwear. I'm not cold at all, though. [The strange part, which, of course, I didn't realize was strange until I'd woken up, was that I wasn't wearing that nightshirt in reality; I was wearing my new purple pajamas. It does get cold at night in the winter here, so I always wear pajamas in winter.]

The scenery outside my house looks just like reality, too. When I get to the driveway, I take off and fly in the way that I've learned to do it, by pushing gently off the ground with my legs and feet while thinking about initiating the act of flying. [The mental process involved is very similar to the mental process involved in starting my bicycle moving with that first push on the pedals, now that I think of it.] It works, but once again, once I get airborne, I immediately start getting pulled backward. I try to relax and let myself be pulled along, as before, but it seems I'm not being taken anywhere in particular. Then I hear a male voice that seems to come from the air around me, and yet sounds like it's coming through a radio speaker. It says something along the lines of, “If you always expect life to go the way you want it to go...” but doesn't finish the thought. I finish the thought with, “...you won't be able to control it?” [Hmm. Very interesting.] [Because, once again, I've forgotten to concentrate and pay attention to the scenery,] the dream fades and I wake up.

[This next dream is from my next sleep cycle on this same night. I'm adding this section on 1/15/11. I didn't have time to write all this out on the day I had the dream, but I did today.]

I'm watching a series of commercials and reading some poster-sized ads for kids' day camp programs at a chain of big, fancy hotels. There are two such programs: one is called “adventure camp” and features soccer, while the other is called “non-adventure camp” and features poetry and other non-athletic, creative activities.

Then, I'm at one of the big, fancy hotels, sitting on the floor in the lobby, leaning up against a wall. I use my laptop to log in to a game website, not Neopets but similar to it, that I've been to before. I wonder, Do I remember my password for this site? The login screen plays music. A lady comes by and asks me to go outside, where the music won't disrupt the quiet of the lobby, so I do. I go out to a wooden patio with several metal table-and-chair sets on it. There are people sitting at the tables and studying, though, so I press the Mute button on my laptop. I ask one of the girls on the patio if the chairs at her table are taken. She offers me a seat, and I take it. Another girl sees my laptop screen, and we have the following conversation:

Girl: Is yours a dragon?
Me: (after figuring out that she's talking about my pet on the site I'm logging on to) Yes, it's a silver dragon.
Girl: They know about it.
Me: Who?
Girl: Your 'rents.

I haven't told my parents about this site. They know about my Neopets account, but not my account on this site. I wonder about the girl, Are you my dream guide? but don't ask her. [Yes, I managed to think that without realizing that I was dreaming. I don't even know.]

Me: We don't get along very well right now. This is part of the reason.

I log in to my account anyway. The screen shows animation of the digital creatures on the site fighting each other by shooting beams of various things out of their mouths, like some Pokémon and Digimon do.