Dream Dream Dream Dream Dream Dream

I don't feel very aware in my dreams, which bugs me because instead of encountering something weird and going "Oh, maybe this is a dream," I just accept it. Guess I should practice my reality checks. Probably something like "what if this right now is a dream?" and then giving everything a good hard look would help. And also being like "wait maybe this is a dream" and doing a reality check every time something weird happens.

ANYWAY.

Dream: "It's Not the Actual Her"
Dreamed that various relatives had gathered for whatever reason, which was fine by me except that one of them was my recently dead Granny. She seemed to be acting pretty normal, so it wasn't as if the doll-looking thing that served as her corpse in the viewing had been cruelly reanimated. It really was like she'd somehow come back to life. And I was like, what, this is impossible (because I do have SOME dream awareness, I guess). I said as much to my sister, who scoffed and said that of course it wasn't the actual Granny. And then something like, "It's like if they made another one of you. It wouldn't be the actual you." So then I was thinking, what, like a clone? They grew a clone of Granny in that little time and now it's here? They could make a clone of me? And I was just, like, confused. But I didn't think it was a dream. FOOLISH ME

Then there was a bit about Granny being casually psychic her whole life and not wanting the ability to go to waste, so sometimes she'd inform us of stuff she knew. Like, okay, to describe it more fully, I was in some building, and when I looked out one of the windows I saw a younger Granny driving her car and boasting of her never-wrong ability to just know things, viewed from the perspective of the front seat. So I was like yo, cool, if she's 100% psychic then maybe I'm like, 25% psychic?

Then I was in the 1319 house and saw these two black cats outside in the rain, so I let one in (the other was still away from the door for some reason) and got a towel to dry it off with. And it was very well-mannered about this, snuggling into the towel to make things easier, and I was like yo this cat's pretty smart. But again, even though I got this mental ping like "that's weird" it didn't translate into a reality check. I needa practice these things IWL aaaaa.

Eventually I let the other cat in and toweled him off as well, and it was pretty vivid. So that was cool. Tryna dry off these cats. Man, they were really soaked.

I woke up and I was like ehhh I could use more dreams, maybe I could WILD? And then I just fell back asleep like normal so whoops.

Dream: Chillin' with the Bae
Then I dreamed the bae and I actually lived within walking distance of each other, which I then got totally confused with waking life. I was like, dude, we live so close to each other, how come we don't hang out like this all the time? So I was a little confused. Also I was going to college, and although we didn't really go to the same college we'd walk to class together. It was super nice tho. Bein' able to hang out with him.

Ugh I am too lazy to remember much more, but there was some part where I think the bae and I went to some kinda welcoming seminar to welcome me back to college, and it was pretty hella boring. Oh right, and then I met Mang0 the melee player which was rad. He was super chill.

Last night's theme was my siblings and I as kids again b'awwwww

Dream 1 - Good Times Part I
So real quick uhhhmmm last night I dreamed my siblings and I were young again and the family was moving so we had to sort through all this old stuff in back rooms. A lot of it was bringing back memories of some of the business work we did for dad and stuff, which was interesting. I think we were all surprised how much we'd gotten done over the years.

And then alsooooo there were tide pools or creeks or somethin' in the floor with load of minnows in 'em, ranging from the tiny little guys that're impossible to catch to some big ones that were chilling all relaxed. I picked up one or two of the big ones 'cause they're so fascinating and stuff and they were perfectly cool with it. So that was a nice dream.

Dream 2 - Good Times Part II
I fell back asleep after that, and the setting was about the same, but now we were in the 1319 church auditorium. I don't remember too much about what happened there, except I had Spiderman powers and if I held my hand in that classic Spiderman hand pose I could shoot a web out. The web was super elastic, so it seemed to have about the same physics as one of those weird grappling hooks that pulls the person up after it attaches to something. So I had a lot of fun just shooting web at the ceiling and then bein' launched up there and clinging to it.

I also tried launching myself off the ceiling using two webs as a sort of makeshift slingshot. Looking back the physics were totally wrong but it worked exactly as expected. So that was fun.

Hmm fell back asleep and had a nicer sort of a lucid, although I'm tempted to call it low-level lucidity since I was so immersed in the dream and yet using dream powers... but the exploration of dream powers was super nice so 8>

Lucid #7 - Condensed Milk Run
Finally a dream with a straightforward title. Guess that means it's one of the more rational ones I've had...

... OR IS IT the dream starts out with my mom, dad, sister, sister's boyfriend, and some stranger and I all eating cake in the 1319 backyard together. The cake itself is so big it's essentially the dinner table, and we're all sitting around it at various spots just eating it with forks.

Unfortunately it's not the best cake ever; whoever made it definitely made an excellent attempt, but we still find fault with it. So Dad tells me to go up the street to the CVS and get some condensed milk.

I'm still sort of lucid so I'm happy to oblige so I can have a chance to try out dream powers; I fly overtop our house, land on the sidewalk, and start to make my way up the street.

I start experimenting with a new way to fly: I hop up in the air, and then sort of skim forward somehow. I'm really moving, and the speed feels great, but as I'm going forward I'm also drifting back down to the ground as well, and finally I land. I decide to try again, this time thinking "What if there was less gravity?" ... now my initial leap carries me a fair bit higher, and I can really feel the weightlessness; I start skimming forward, just as fast as before, and make it all the way up the street. I end up passing the CVS and skid to a stop when I land; it takes me probably like 10 feet to come to a complete stop, and it feels great.

(I love this kind of flying. I think it's the same I did in my dream where I was part of the alien-dinosaur resistance hehehe, I forgot to try to revisit it though. Puttin' that on my dream powers list.)

So I enter the CVS and a clerk helps me find the condensed milk; it's in a fridge just standing by itself against the end of an aisle. He's super helpful and takes out the condensed milk to show it to me. There're two types in a bottle with a wrapper: half of it is mixed with lemon juice, the other half is just regular condensed milk.

By this time I've realized I don't have money to pay for it. Dad completely failed to give me any cash. For a moment, part of my mind reminds me that it's a dream, I can do whatever I want, I could take the condensed milk and leave, nobody would be able to stop me—but that train of thought is utterly overruled by a different decision-maker in my brain. I choose instead to use the psychic poke technique, where I stick two fingers into someone's mind and concentrate on what I want them to believe or do.

So I try it on him, trying to give him the idea that he should just give me the condensed milk for free, as a gift. He seems perturbed by this train of thought. It seems he's pretty dedicated to his job, because the idea doesn't stick the first time. Also, there're four or five people who all seem intent on getting help from him, and they're all just sort of standing by in a semi-circle around him. I have to move somebody out of the way to get up front, close by him again, and I try the psychic poke again.

This time he's slightly more convinced, but before giving the milk to me he decides to do something in the back of the store.

I don't think I was lucid by this time. I remember Mom showing up in the store to tell me about a game I was supposed to play with Ben in the back of the store.

I head back there, go through a door and head up some stairs, and suddenly I'm playing a video game. It's like the video game's world was existing in a 3D space, and I just walked into it and was suddenly playing it.

It was some sort of Final Fantasy fighting game. The characters I remembered were Sephiroth (who I played as/was for a short time, and having that frickin' long sword was awesome), and Cloud/Zack. When you chose to play as Cloud, initially Zack would show up lugging a young, comatose Cloud over his shoulder. I was like "I thought I chose Cloud" but yeah Zack was just there to drop him off. And Cloud would get better and stuff. Like, grow up and turn into normal, Advent Children Cloud. Good times.

-

I've gotten into a good habit of thinking about my dream while I'm still waking up, just sort of automatically musing on it and trying to remember it. This time, it took me sort of a while to realize that the dream I was musing on was new, and not just a continuation of the one I'd had a couple hours back. So that was cool.

sleepyyy

This one was lucid but Imma be relatively brief writing it out 'cause first of all it was long as crap and secondly it was sort of
... off.

But y'know I did get SOME things done so let's see here.

Lucid #6 - Various Dream Powers Aw Yee
The whole dream was centered in 1319 but with a great deal of frickin' random, off-the-wall weirdness and so many different things happening so quickly that it was just incredibly difficult to keep track. For example, there was

- a segment about my brother and I back when we were young/living in 1319/being homeschooled
- a segment where a few others and I were fighting something that could totally bean us with these green spiky projectiles that we had to throw back, and our best hope was the white-haired girl with the tweezers who could pick them up before they exploded
- a short bit afterward where I had to fix the swollen lumps that I'd gotten from a couple projectile blows (and it was super icky, don't ask)
- a segment where I and some others encountered a sort of tribe living in a nearby 1319 house
- a segment where we were shipping pizzas "downstream" but there was no stream
- a segment where an anthropomorphic cat was trying to do the right thing but just ended up getting totally screwed over but continued to cling to her hopefulness (had to do with the tribe as well)
- something about me having some nasty, jaded little comrade, and for some reason we were quite close by necessity,

and then I guess I finally got lucid. Not that weird stuff stopped happening, because weird stuff continued to happen almost immediately.

I was standing on the 1319 back porch at night, and there'd been snow recently. It looked pretty great. I once again had the realization that I was dreaming, though there didn't seem to be any conscious rationalization involved. It was like, once even the flicker of "I could be dreaming" appeared in my head, it slid naturally into place because it made perfect sense. Also things were, once again, a bit fuzzy and dark and "dreamish".

So I went down the stairs and crossed the alley to the houses back there so I could fly up onto one. As I did that I had the stupidest spontaneous thought I've probably ever had in my life, which was something like "Demons, help me fly", and I noticed that my flaps (because I always fly by using my arms as wings) were now more powerful. This lasted about three flaps and fifteen feet, and then there was a green flash and I was boosted another five feet, and it felt like I hit my head on something. Strange. I had by this time grown fully uncomfortable with my earlier train of thought, and proceeded to fly the rest of the way "myself". >:U

So then I was on a snow-covered roof just kinda chillin', not sure what to do. Kept heading in that direction with a (maybe false) memory of how the street in that direction would look, and stumbled upon a parade with a literally larger-than-life Beyonce as the main performer AND the person the parade was for. So I guess it was sort of a moving Beyonce concert. There were colorful shops and junk to either side of the street, plenty of neon lights creating a festive air. Woo.

I remembered one of my dream power intentions, walked up behind a dude in the parade, stuck two fingers into his mind and convinced him I was an opponent. At this point either a second version of him jumped out from in front of him or from inside him or maybe it was just some dude who'd been directly in front of him and looked a lot like him who'd accidentally got my transmission. Either way he whirled to face me and pulled out a black handgun, and I had a good time wrestling it from him before (I think) shooting him with it and then immediately losing track of it. Nobody around us paid the slightest attention.

Beyonce had by this time managed to climb up onto the glass display of a nearby open-air sort of shop selling baked goods (with, I noted, a fairly liberal amount of dead bugs around them, as though the shop had had to fix an infestation), and I had decided to try my two-finger mind-control technique again (or idk it needs a FAR better name). I walked up to a dude who was sort of off to the side staring longingly at her from a distance, stuck two fingers in his mind, and told him he was in love with her. He immediately moved forward, climbed up onto the display case, and started making out with her. She was cool with it. It was like it was all part of the show.

Not sure what happened then. I DO recall at one point thinking that my lucid dreams last pretty long (a guy in the Skype Dream Views chat was hearing about another lucid I'd had and said 10 minutes was a pretty good length for a lucid and some part of my brain was like "OH YEAH WELL I'll show you grrrr" or whatever), or that I stay lucid pretty long. I even looked over at my bedside clock for confirmation (in the dream) and saw that it was 5:something AM, which apparently meant that an hour had passed since I'd become lucid, which I'm pretty sure meant that I definitively have no ability to track time in a dream. Bummer.

Then there was a bit where I crawled through a bunch of objects. I wanted to get back to the 1319 house and apparently the best way to do that was by going through a junk-filled tunnel that would open out back onto the alley. It being filled with junk, though, I decided to try phasing through it.

At this point, as though to distance myself from the discomfort of crawling along blind through a bunch of objects (I was ghosting through 'em but still) with the uncomfortable though that a random can might get lodged in my kidney, I switched to a sort of third person perspective. It was almost like the sequence wasn't really happening because I seemed to just be sort of imagining and narrating it. But it was, because next thing I'd phased through basically half a house and was back on the outside, in the alley. Neato.

Think I lost some lucidity; then there was more stuff about my small, unwholesome companion, and then some stuff about super cute kids, and then I woke up. Like seriously I can't be bothered to try to write this all out, especially since my mindset during the whole dream was sort of off and strange and not all there. So oh well. 8>

I don't have too much time for this but I wanna remember this oneee~

--one midterm later--

SO OKAY now that I've taken my midterm aw yee feels good~

Dream - UHHH. Title. How about ... Ben Driving in 1319?
So I dream that Ben's home and he's somehow ended up as another group member for this class presentation I gotta give for college, and he just goes right along with it without complaint (even though I'm pretty sure he was only staying for a little while so how was that gonna work). He does some research and consolidates the info into a neat little file that has an HTML outline up at the top with hyperlinks that'll dodge you down to the relevant part of the file, 'cause that's just how much research he did. I mean, either that or the links popped open to reveal the info. Either way, I clicked one and saw some kinda math related circle thing. Actually the info looked a little incomplete or sparse but that was probs just the dream bein' weird.

So next thing we're driving through Washington, DC. Actually Ben's driving, though he doesn't know how to drive IWL. Potentially as a result of this conflict, his driving is sort of slow and awkward and I'm watching him and his driving choices with some concern. At some point I notice a cop tailing us, apparently experiencing the same train of thought I was. I get the impression he's sort of amused by Ben's poor driving decisions, that maybe he's tagging along because we're entertaining and/or to make sure we don't run over a bunch of schoolchildren or whatever. At any rate, he's not trying to pull us over, just sort of following us around.

Oh and we're heading towards the 1319 church I used to attend, apparently that's where the presentation is or the class or the group meeting or what have you. That's where we're going don't question it gosh. And that's despite the fact that it's pretty late in the day, and classes or whatever oughta be already over. We're late, I know that much.

We end up at a roundabout, where Ben decides to park (on the wrong side of the street). Nobody's around except the still-tailing cop, and when Ben parks in what is basically the middle of the one-lane street, next to the roundabout, he parks behind us and gets out. I expect him to be a lot more amused than he actually, upon approaching us, appears to be, with sunglasses obscuring his eyes and some neato fancy blonde hair that for some reason caught my attention. He barks something that I don't quite catch, but that sort of sounds like "You're in trouble" or something like that. I'm like "What?" because (1) I'm surprised by his anger and (2) I didn't quite hear what he said, but he doesn't respond. He just glares. Ben, meanwhile, doesn't react in the slightest. He doesn't even seem to be looking in the cop's direction.

The cop leaves without doing anything else (probably because I don't know how the ticket-giving process goes, exactly), and Ben pulls over to the proper side of the street and parks in front of a townhouse. It's pretty dark, probably around evening.

At this point my attention turns to the junk in the car. The stuff we're bringing for the presentation appears to be a lot of folded clothes in various small, separate piles, and there's also a hungry praying mantis. I allow the praying mantis onto my hand, where it demonstrates its hunger by starting to nibble gingerly at my skin (this part had a lot of detail). I'm rather concerned that it'll start painfully biting my hand, (though on a separate level, I'm also concerned that those expectations will cause it to happen), but I allow it to remain anyway.

On closer inspection, there's actually a bunch of dried mud on my hand that it's nibbling on (it's just that hungry :U ), and I can see and feel its mouthparts moving against my skin, and knocking off/scraping off the bits of dirt. Nice HD. Very detailed. I liked that a lot.

So I check around the car for food for the poor thing, and see a small fly chilling on a brown plastic bag. I move my hand down so the mantis can reach, and it instantly grabs the fly (along with some plastic bag) and presumably starts chowing down, but I can't really see it because the bag is sort of crumpled up and in the way.

There was also a short segment where the mantis's legs/feet ended up breaking off and stuck to my hand, which was fairly distressing. It seemed pretty unaffected though, I was just freaking out over the tiny little feet seemingly glued to my hand ;-;

Next some lady comes out of the house we're in front of and starts berating us for some reason. Either she doesn't like us parking there, or she's mad by proxy because we're late to the class/church/whatever. She ends up mostly ignored, though. Oh well.

At some point we'd realized it was like 5 PM and way too late for the class, but we still got out of the car and started trying to figure out which direction we were supposed to head. There were four streets leaving the roundabout; one led uphill to some sort of Buddhist church thing, another towards another roundabout that was supposedly DuPont Circle (except the statue at the center was sort of brick-colored, like the church). We ended up going towards DuPont Dream Circle, which was pretty much the right direction. And then I think I woke up.

WELL WELL WELL.

Lucid Dream #1
Note: I've had lucid dreams before, but only a few. I'm starting at 1 anyway.

It started off with a false awakening, which are rare for me.

I wake up in the 1319 house (J room) and start getting ready for my morning (not even remotely realistic for a false awakening). The first thing I do is take a bath in the 2nd floor bathroom, and it's sort of strange and scary; the water is oddly dark and near both edges lengthways (how 2 describe ??) I can feel an uneven edge in the floor, some sort of precipice, little rough bits that threaten to cut me. I can't see anything, though. I'm also wondering whether a bath is really how I start my mornings, wouldn't a shower be faster? Don't I usually shower? Or I suppose it's usually a bath. My mentality seems to be present-day, despite the surroundings.

I may have spent a brief amount of time getting ready in my (J) room post-bath, but the next thing I remember is sitting next to Ben (he's wearing a grey t-shirt) in the living room, on the blue couch. There are some hints towards present-day reality, such as the fancy computers he and I are using, BLEHEHH. I'll write this part later it's too frickin' sad. (My brother was home over spring break and yesterday he headed back on a train so yeah he's one of my favorite people ever)

*SIIIGH* so at first I'm just brushing skin foundation over someone else's artwork in a big notebook, I'm not sure why. They used some sort of wet clay marker or something, so the skin foundation sticks to the art but not the paper. I'm havin' a good time just brushin' it everywhere even though on some level idk if I'm just hurting their art. The feeling was pretty cool though, very realistic. Nice detail.

Then I'm showing Ben some kinda audiovisual webcomic, or more that I'm just letting it play on my computer and he looks over sometimes. I don't remember the storyline very well, although I do remember it was kinda urban and at one point four guys were in a car, and the driver guy suddenly passed out or something, maybe he pulled over first, they were kinda just waiting for him to wake up. One of 'em gets out and takes a phone call from their boss, tells him the situation, gets his orders, and then leans down, sticks his gun in the car, and shoots the driver. The perspective was from outside the car so you couldn't see anything violent.

Lastly... ;-; I said something to Ben like "did you miss your train?" in a sort of awkward teasing voice, and he looked at me like I was crazy and said no, he didn't. I said "So you're in [college] right now?", and he said yes. This all came as sort of a shock. I considered the implications of this, that I must have been talking to him over Steam while interacting with a hologram, except that explanation wasn't a way to cling to reality; it was more that, because this was a dream, that sort of thing was possible. I did the nose-plug reality check, found I could breathe, and fully realized I was dreaming. (sry for tense change)

I get up from the couch and say "I'm dreaming" out loud just to confirm it. Everything feels very real. I walk towards the front door; I'm standing in the living room doorway when I hear Ben on the couch behind me. I look back half-expecting him to have changed somehow (something I'm worried about in dreams, you'll see later with the lifeguards), but instead he's completely gone. Dad's grey blanket is piled up where I'd just been sitting.

I focus on trying to get outside. My first thought is to phase through the glass; it seems like glass would be the easiest thing to phase through, but I find myself pressing my hands up against it instead. I'm sort of frustrated by this. I try for a bit longer, and then I decide to simply break the glass.

I slam it with my fist and manage to break it somewhat. The door is actually split into two sections of glass, top and bottom, separated by a wooden bar piece. I figure I'll have to break both, though the logic isn't all there, and continue punching the glass and broken edges (sustaining no pain or damage). At some point, because it's not really working either, I stand back, hold out my right arm, sort of brace it by putting my left hand on top, and try to summon some sort of concussive blast to shatter all the glass, thinking of Mega Man or perhaps Kadaj with his materia. Nothing happens. Then I try breaking the lower section of the glass with my eyes closed so it'll be easier to crawl through (logic ??). (My eyes-closed view was sort of interesting, because it was all dark except for a mental picture of the broken edges of the glass around the hole.) Finally I just stand up and try the (old, loose) doorknob like a normal person, and it comes off in my hand. Underneath is another one, slightly larger but also very old and sort of ugly. I try that one and finally manage to get out the door, opening the next door after it easily.

Now I'm outside in the 1319 area, in the daylight, taking in how real everything feels. I start flying up to the roof, thinking about the dreamviews competition (#17), and have no problems getting to the roofs of the townhomes. There are some smaller townhomes on top, minis. One of them has sort of a colorful beach house design, with a sign out front explaining that it was designed by a 6-year-old and is up for auction. There's an open house going on inside.

I get the idea to summon Ben back, and start calling his name, then turning around expecting him to be behind me. That doesn't work, so I head into the 6-year-old-designer house, still calling him. He's sitting on the stairs inside (green shirt now), which are so small no one else can get by, and I hear people on the second floor. I come sit by him, a bit lower on the stairs.

There's a sort of odd brown mug with a cover/lid of some sort on a convenient wooden platform (there's a better word) in front of us. I decide to try passing my hand through it. I hold my hand out palm down, fingers together, and try moving it horizontally through the mug. At first it doesn't quite work, and then I find my fingers passing through it rather slowly. It seems to be solid all the way through, not really a mug. The sensation of moving my fingers through it is like passing them through slime of some sort. One successful pass later, neither the mug nor my fingers are changed in any way. I try it again, a couple times, and while I'm trying the last time I say "it's like air!" out loud, in the hopes that it'll be a more "professional" sort of "passing through", more like a ghost. It doesn't work, though. At least I'm optimistic.

I go outside next, and, still on the rooftops, head up the street towards the mall. (I think, for the sake of convenience, I'll designate the direction I'm currently heading "North". The houses I'm walking on face West.) I see some sort of Stone Harbor-esque structures in the distance (Northeast) and go towards them; there seems to be an ocean or perhaps a bay on the East side up ahead. There's also a weird metal structure that I'm interested in flying to the top of, for no particular reason.

Now I'm walking North-ish down the street in the Stone Harbor area, no longer on rooftops. I start thinking about whether I can turn this into some kind of chase dream (or more specifically, "being chased"). As I'm thinking this, I notice five-ish lifeguard guys behind me, reminiscent of some sort of gang. I wonder if they're going to chase me, and decide to keep a low profile for a moment. I go around a corner and then busy myself admiring the detail of the dream, peering very closely at the white-washed wall, which has some ugly yellow spotted stains on it, while they walk by to my right. Then I investigate another wall (slate gray?) so my back is to them.

At some point as they walk by, I think about the way that things can change easily in dreams. It tends to surprise me how stable dreams are, given that when I try to imagine things IWL, I can't get anything right visually and it can't seem to hold steady. At this point, thanks to my thought process, one of the lifeguards abruptly doesn't have a head; only a sewn-up and scarred neck stump (thx Outlast). He keeps walking just fine, and I think his head may have returned after a moment. idk if that counts as a dream power so much as a mistake.

Next I fly around a bit more, maybe up to the metal structure, and then land next to a tide pool with minnows inside. On closer inspection, however, I realize they're actually small piranhas (some are still actively switching to being a mini piranha). I say something surprised out loud about piranhas. Then I hear a sound nearby, and look down to see a small frog/toad-looking thing sort of snuggled among the wet stones. I wonder if my dream wanted me to throw him to the piranhas, but decline to and move on. I think I probably woke up shortly after, without my alarm going off.

Re: the WILD attempt.
I woke up after 6 hours, tried to remember dreams but only got fragments, decided to write them down anyway, briefly reviewed BillyBob's WILD tutorial, set my alarm to wake me up in an hour and a half, and then laid down, on my back, to sleep. Then, for a while, I could feel myself slipping closer to sleep by degrees. I was trying to monitor how exactly it felt: the heaviness in my chest, the deepening layers of almost-sleep, my mentality. I could feel it when I slipped down another layer, and realized this was the closest to sleep I'd ever been while WILDing. However, at some point I rolled over onto my side; it's more comfortable. I should probably just start out there.

Eventually I started getting the hallucinations, and this time I tried to simply observe them, smothering my impulse to tense up. I was surprised to realize that I'd felt this sort of thing as I was falling asleep before, where I would hear-without-hearing someone's voice or some noise close by my ear, although the visual hallucinations were less familiar. First they were quick, flashing images, and then, a bit later, some static and fuzz. I kept trying to focus on clapping my hands in the front office of the 1319 house, and when I fell asleep I woke up in the 1319 house. I wasn't lucid, though. Could still use improvement.

hrm. slept fine. nothin' to report.

Fragment 1
Dreamed about somebody being on trial and/or going to jail. They had a couple buddies who were hanging out in the court rooms during the hearings and/or were considering going to jail with him just to keep him company.

Fragment 2
Hangin' out in the youth group from the old church. I think it may have been a sleepover of some kind, and they may have played a movie, or maybe it was a nighttime church service for the night owls of the church?

Fragment 3
Walking down the street with dad during the day, heading home from the 1319 7-11. Some old lady ends up needing to go past us quickly so we have to move outta the wayyyy~

Dream 1 - In which I spend ridiculous amounts of time in a CVS but it's interesting anyway.
So it's nighttime and I walk into this CVS with Dad and I'm gearing up to buy a package of (Wonka) gobstoppers. I pick some up near the entrance and right away a store associate dude calls me over as if to make sure I'm not stealing 'em, and I'm not, so I go with it. Then he goes to ring me up, but for some reason decides that the goods he's selling me aren't up to the standard, and then neglects to sell me anything at all. I'm a little miffed by this.

I wander over to the toy section and see some horse stuffed animals like the ones I used to have as a kid, but when I pick one up it's objectively sucky. The eyes are too big, the head is too small, and the horse looks kinda awkward as a result, like a big ol' dork. I scoff at the follies of the manufacturer, with a bit of pretentious nostalgia mixed in. (This is based on a true story, where I recently bought a "gold edition" Bionicle Rahkshi 'cause I frickin' loved those things as a kid, and not only was it like twice as expensive as a regular Rahkshi, it also didn't have the gear at the back that lets you flail its arms around. For shame.)

I'm actually not quite sure about the timing of this part, but I'm putting it here because hhhh. I'm in the toy aisle, still, and I look up to see some dude I haven't seen in forever, and I'm like "I know you!" and he's like kinda sarcastic so he goes "Yeah, I'm [fake name] from [fake place]." and I'm like, "No, you're [guy's real name]." and there's sort of a flicker of surprise and/or alarm on his face, and then he goes to purchase some stuff and then leaves. I'm telling Dad that I just saw [guy's real name] and then I look over and he's frickin' gone with the wind and outside in the night already. I briiiiefly consider going after him and then figure chasing people around isn't my style.

I'm walkin' towards the back and I realize that I've got the world's dumbest hairstyle right now, with my hair pulled back in a very lazy ponytail and a terrible baseball cap slapped on top, but my conclusion is that as long as it's comfortable and I don't feel it, it doesn't matter how I look. Like in video games, or something. You don't feel your dumb hair in video games. OK I forget how exactly the train of thought went ..

Anyway I walk towards the back along the left side, and I see two young kids, brother and sister, playing table tennis on a non-table-tennis table. I'm briefly impressed by their ability.

Then, as I go around to the right, I see some other crazy stuff, maybe a way to the second floor? It's way more open back here, it's reminiscent of other times I've dreamed of a store like this one. I think.

I'm still loopin' around and I happen across a sort of grown-up daughter and her mother all chillin' on a couch reading books and being mother-daughterly, in front of this super awesome display that's supposed to sort of mimic the impression of being in a wintery house (This is my Decemberrrr... these are my snow-covered treeesss~). Or something like that, I'm not actually totally sure how it worked. It looked like the shell of a house with snow on the inside and glassless windows that somehow gave the whole thing a sense of real depth. Personally I thought it was great. If I'd been lucid I would've been able to step in and change the dreamscene to a wintery wonderland.

Arright then I wander to the pet section. I see a row of cages, first couple have rats (which I want to pet but don't want to stick my finger through the bars), and then a bit farther on, some guinea pig/rat crossbreed looking things that are somehow even cuter. And then there was a segment about how various animals in the pet section were feeling distressed and trapped in some way, like I saw a rat digging in his bedding and there was so much bedding and some of it was more like stone for some reason, and then after he'd dug out a pit some store employee, when I wasn't looking, put a plastic igloo thing on top of him and then he couldn't get out. I dunno what that was about or what my brain was trying to tell me but it was sorta sad.

Anyway then I'm heading back towards the front along the right side of the store (from the perspective of a cashier up front), and as I'm goin' down this one aisle I see these two guys with powers chasing customers around. I don't think they were all bad but honestly I don't now what their deal was. It didn't phase me at all anyway.

Lastly I went up front 'cause I wanted my fricking gobstoppers already, so I grabbed a pack and paid for it with a different cashier this time, and as I'm doin' that I look over and see fricking. Ketchup. Gobstoppers. And I'm like wait what, that's like a Japanese sort of flavor, and I'm simply flabbergasted by this development. I chat with the cashier about this crazy nonsense while I'm looking over the package, and then I notice it's a joint effort by Ford and a couple other companies, although I can't imagine why they would be so invested in it. Then I finally get my regular freaking gobstoppers and I think that's where the dream ended. I spent so much time in that CVS.

Btw even though that last paragraph featured a great deal of me being surprised by strange occurrences, I did not then, nor even now, consider it any sort of dream sign. I think part of me likes to take things as they are in the dream and not question whether it somehow means it's all in my head. And on the whole I think that part of me is tripping me up in my journey towards having a lucid dream for the first time since. Uh. February. Hehe.

But yeah I haven't been focusing on lucid dreaming so much as just recall, I think on some level I just want to be invested in the dreaming experience and now that I've been journaling again I've started to be invested again. My dreams are becoming more real, my thought process more natural and rational, my reactions more appropriate, and that's the main thing I was missing. It's so incredibly boring to have dreams where I just take what happens and don't even think about it... and lucid dreams will come next.