Dream Dream Dream Dream Dream Dream

So yeh after falling asleep I had a dream I was in Stone Harbor and/or in a movie.

Dream - Stone Harbor in Winter, and Overpriced Pizza
I really hate these Stone Harbor dreams sometimes because Stone Harbor is where we vacation every year and I love love LOVE that place, and generally the dream starts out the day we're leaving. This time was no exception, with the implication being that we'd been there for two weeks, and now it was Sunday and we were leaving (I even checked the day on my computer, whoa that's kinda trippy) and were starting to get packed up. I told Ben that we hadn't even done anything this time, not for the whole two weeks: we hadn't gone to the beach, or into town, and now we were leaving? It would be an entire year before we came back here again! At this point Ben corrected me, saying that HE had gone into town and to the beach, or perhaps implying that I had done those things and just didn't remember. I found this incredibly unfair.

There was another bit focusing more on Jess, where she'd been part of a movie or something. That may have been before the Stone Harbor bit, but it still tied in, with us watching her movie at some point. She was a relatively minor character, I think.

There also may have been some tie-in between the movie and our "real life" in Stone Harbor but I don't quiiiiite recall. Like, maybe some of the characters were wandering around the apartment for a little while, being dramatic. But I'm not sure.

Anyway then Jess and I decided to go into town that night, on rollerblades. On ice. For no reason. Which was pretty fun. I somehow managed to master skating uphill in roller blades over ice while near the water (which I recall being ... somehow very striking). However, the risk of falling in made me a bit uncomfortable, so we decided to move a street over and head back down.

On this street there was a more lively feel, as though it were daylight, perhaps, although it probably wasn't. It was still pretty icy and I had to be careful, but although we were going downhill it didn't FEEL like it was going downhill. Also, where the street would normally be, right at the edge of the sidewalk with no railing, was a deep channel with ice at the bottom, where various ice skaters were happily skating. Close by, a bridge connected the two adjacent sidewalks. Jess was, at first, unconvinced that such a large safety hazard would be allowed to exist like that, but when she neared the edge she realized that not only was the sidewalk around there icy, yes, there were no safety precautions at all.

At this point I got hungry! And I'm pretty sure this is a first in my dreams. It led me to decide to wander into a nearby pizza store that sort of doubled as a fairy tale store place. A strong fairy tale theme, where one would normally expect a beach theme. It was run by a young lady and her macho male assistant, who was a pretty cool guy I suppose. In waking life he probably would've been considered borderline insane.

So yeah I went in there and decided to order a slice of pizza. She said if I had a slice of pizza from another place, I could take advantage of her "two for $6" bargain, or something like that, and get a slice of her pizza for $3. I did not have a slice of pizza from another place but nevertheless I somehow managed to give that impression up until the point at which I was actually ordering, which took like 10 minutes, because of reasons.

I believe I made comfortable small talk for a little bit (which is unusual in dreams, probably because it's unusual IWL, except when I've had caffeine, which I did yesterday, and which I noticed allowed me to be a bit more comfortable in social settings so maybe that's whyyyyyy~), asking her what it was like to run a shop (because I was genuinely curious, which is great because in previous dreams my reactions hadn't been feeling self-motivated and it's great to be back in the swing of things). I tried to ask what she did during the off-seasons when nobody was at Stone Harbor, but what I accidentally said instead was "What do you do on nights and weekends?" and she responded with an uncomfortable silence. I only realized my slip when I woke up, and now I realize it looked like I was going to ask her out or something. And I didn't realize that until I woke up and had a slightly different perspective. THIS WHOLE PARAGRAPH HAS BEEN VERY STRANGE AND INTERESTING TO ME. AHHHH.

Anyway, then while she was getting the pizza ready I had to wait like ten minutes, or I don't know there was something about how I had to be read a fairy tale by her assistant. So he gets a book that's really just a bunch of sheets of paper with illustrations and writing on 'em, and starts to sing/read me this long poem/fairy tale. I can't remember the specifics at all, but it was really interesting because we were sitting on the floor, him singing with an absolutely astonishing amount of emotion in his voice, just absolutely belting it out and somehow managing to be very sad at the same time ... and me moving the pages out of the way as he read them, and laying them on the floor in a pile. I must've been semi-lucid, because while he was singing I noticed that I felt totally comfortable, whereas IWL, when somebody fakes strong displays of emotions near me, I automatically feel awkward and uncomfortable. Same when people are singing, though that's been improving lately. And I think the thought had occurred to me earlier as well, while Jess was acting. So I was certain it was a dream and not waking life, since I was directly comparing the two, but that was the extent of my interest at the time (as opposed to wandering out and trying dream powers). I think dream powers just weren't a focus for the moment. Maybe I was too sad about leaving Stone Harbor, and too immersed in what was happening.

Anyway he sang the whole stinking thing, and I listened, and then one of us helped the other up (I was wearing rollerblades so getting up was a problem) and I went to get my pizza. Or something. I think there was a brief bit where he'd picked me up and I was trying to make sure I didn't rollerblade his feet as he was setting me down.

Anyway then I finally told her that I didn't have an outside slice of pizza and she produced a second piece like it wasn't even a problem, and said something about it being 2 for $6. At this point I took a look at the slices of pizza and realized that she'd cut off about half of each of them with a semi-diagonal cut. All in all, I thought it was an absolutely terrible price, and as I was starting to move my pizza slices towards the cashier to pay for them (for some reason she'd given them to me at a different counter than the one with the register), I tried to remember what the pizza back home was like (I wasn't semi-lucid anymore, so instead of comparing her dream pizza shop to one IWL, I was actually comparing her Stone Harbor pizza shop to one back home), semi-successfully managing to remember that in my (IWL current) home county, a small pizza from Little Caesar's is about $8 (home IWL happening to equal the home in the dream, but not because I was semi-lucid). But Little Caesar's couldn't compare to this pizza. I said about as much, making a sort of awkward hushed comment about how the pizza at home was cheaper, but then stating that this pizza was of a far superior quality, so it worked out (which is a lie, because at my college campus I can get a slice of pizza about as big as her two slices, and just as delicious, for $2 and now I'm really hungry, frick).

I was about to dig through my (IWL) Mega Man 10 bag for a good $9 (apparently the price had jumped thanks to my mental number-juggling), but I woke up soon after, I think. Which sucked because I was really looking forward to that pizza, yo.

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Btw I think I prefer not being in a lucid dreaming competition right now. Like, I just took an hour or so to write out that dream, I think, and were I in the competition right now it would've been worth one point. Goodness.

In other news I'm going to differentiate between what "low-level lucidity" and being "semi-lucid" mean to me. I'll consider myself semi-lucid when I can compare the dream and waking life to some degree, while not viewing the dream as something to be manipulated or changed. I'll consider it low-level lucidity when I'm thinking about how to trick the dream and use dream powers, but am not necessarily aware of the fact that I have a separate life outside the dream. YUP. I hope I made that clear because otherwise it will give me a headache :U