false awakening

I dreamed that my old pet rabbit was alive. I was in a room that was sort of a cross between an old apartment I lived in when I was 12, and my current apartment. The floors were the old ragged brown carpet from the old apartment... the layout was like the bedroom of my current one, except instead of a regular closet, there was a walk-in closet. I was keeping my bunny in there. I didn't want to keep her in her cage. IRL, her "cage" was really just her potty, and she was able to come and go as she pleased... it was basically just the crate I used to transport her to and from her vet, combined with being a litter pan. She didn't spend much time in there. She actually liked to just lie there in it with the door open, for some weird reason. I guess because it was "hers".

Anyway, in the dream, though, somebody wanted me to keep her in there. It was way too small and dirty, so instead I kept her in the closet. In the dream, I remember sitting down in the closet and petting her, and playing with the fuzz on top of her head. I miss her.

Then, I started wandering around the apartment naked. I recall lying on the carpet on my stomach (still naked) using a laptop. The carpet was the same sort of dull brown that the old apartment had, but sometimes it was also a wooden floor like my current apartment. It was late morning or early afternoon and there was a lot of sunlight... it may have been summer. The bed I was next to was a mess, unmade and covered in clothes. The mattress may have been lying directly on the floor.

Then realized maybe i should wear some clothing, and put my fleece leopard-print onesie on.

I woke up and I was cold, so that explains at least some of that dream. It was about 4 a.m. Tried to do visualizations, but too tired and needed all the sleep I could get, so I let it go.

Then I dreamed I had a roommate who was a huge asshole and then suddenly stopped being one and I was suspicious of it. Tall dude with long blond hair who fancied himself a "metal head".

Them I dreamed mom and I were driving around the city I currently live in with my brother, and she kept stopping and giving me painkiller injections to numb my mouth. Except they didn't numb my whole mouth. Specifically the left bottom side of my front teeth. My gums were all torn up and bloody there. So eventually she just gave me a syringe full of clear fluid and told me to use it. i asked what the dosage was, and she just shrugged.

Then... We were on the upstairs part of a store... it had a similar layout and looked a lot like the grocery store down the street from us but also sold clothing etc... I wanted cupcakes. The ones on the upstairs clearance rack near the checkout lanes were gross looking and overpriced. Like $3.99 for 2 cupcakes with the frosting all messed up. The rest of the baked goods weren't what I wanted. I really wanted cupcakes.

At some point, mom handed me 3 candy bar things. They were really thin fragile sheets of milk and white chocolate split diagonally along the length of the bar. They were in packaging that was simultaneously gold and shiny but also completely transparent. Unfortunately, they were so fragile that I accidentally broke 2 of them, one quite badly. I was worried they were ruined, that nobody would enjoy them that way, and apologized profusely to my mother. She didn't seem to care very much.

After picking through the shelves of baked goods upstairs (it was really just one display), I went downstairs (the layout of the store was the same as IRL in a lot of ways, but had escalators instead of stairs) to the bakery section, where they weren't much better. I picked through what was there... A helpful employee tried to help me find something, but all of my options sucked, and the store wanted like $18 for a pack of 4 cupcakes. The cupcakes were all in terrible shape - chocolate cupcakes with the blue and green frosting sliding off or mostly stuck to the plastic package.

Then at some point in between, we were driving around my old hometown, around one of the more run down areas... Brown figured heavily in the color palette... Lots of crumbling parking lots and dried out grass... it was midday, warm and very sunny, maybe it was late summer or early autumn. Mom was driving, I was in the front passenger seat, and my brother was in the back seat. I don't remember much about the car. It may have been my car, but I don't think it was. It wasn't a nice new car, in any case.

Anyway, I had decided not to use the mystery syringe because I didn't know the dosing. So I had put the syringe in the glove box and was worried the cops would pull us over, find it, and think it was illegal drugs. But I didn't want to just throw it in the trash because I didn't want anybody to get a needle-stick. For some reason I had a cap, like a pen cap, that could go over the needle... I put it on and put the needle back in the glove box. I decided I'd find a sharps container in a bathroom somewhere and throw it out there.

Then, I was back in the bakery section of the store, still trying to find cupcakes.

There were big security monitors above the cashiers lanes, and writing would randomly appear transposed over the images and then disappear. At first it looked like it was that the monitor was scuffed up. I reasoned it was actually Security doing it from their office. Like they were "writing" on the images in real-time, although I couldn't figure out why.

Woke up and thought about the fact that my dream recall hasn't been great and I hoped I wouldn't forget everything in the morning again. Fell asleep and dreamed about writing in my dream journal... In the dream, I had a notebook and pen on the nightstand. And my boyfriend wasn't there for me to wake up, I was alone in the bedroom. I had the light on and wrote in the notebook while sitting in bed. The walls were a sort of warm creamy yellow color, which they are not IRL.

Then my alarm clock rang.

The false-awakening dream journaling did actually help my dream recall. I really did basically write down everything from the past two dreams I'd had, which helped me remember them when I woke up for real!

It's been a while since I posted anything.

I dreamed I was trying to fit my cell phone into a side pocket on my purse and it wouldn't fit.

I dreamed I got up to check my phone (which I had, at one point in the very early morning, when it went off) but for some reason I went to sleep on the couch. When I 'got up', it was pitch black inside the apartment even though I knew it was morning. That didn't really clue me in, though, I just accepted it. Then, I tried to turn the light in the kitchen on. It didn't work. I then tried to turn the bedroom light on - it also didn't work. I realized that this probably wasn't due to the fact that both lightbulbs weren't working, but probably because I was dreaming. I shouted "It's too dark!" to try to create some light, but it didn't work.

I wound up back on the couch, trying to get up, and realizing I was still dreaming. I actually wanted to wake up for real, since I knew it was probably getting late in the morning and I didn't want to sleep in too late, but found myself in another false awakening. Frustrated, I tried to rouse my sleeping body and managed to turn over in my physical bed, waking myself up (for real).

I had a headache. I got out of bed and made some coffee.

Fell asleep meditating on the idea of lucidity, and a particular location ("Home Base"). I don't generally expect to attain lucidity during my first few periods of REM, nor do I really want to. Zoning out and just letting sleep happen is nice, in and of itself.

I had some new forms of success and ran into some familiar problems...

Had dreams. Don't recall them. I need to get better about writing stuff down, but don't want to disturb my boyfriend, either. I still don't feel like they were particularly vivid, coherent, or noteworthy... dreams from the first few hours of the night generally aren't.

Settled back to sleep meditating on home base. Slipped into gray fog. At some point, attained lucidity... had the sense that it was near the very beginning of a dream because I have no recollection of a dream up until that point, but suddenly I was sitting at a table with a pile of colorful alphabet-letter magnets on it. I touched and examined them, and then the grey fog reclaimed the dream. I slowly woke up.

Settled back down and began meditating again. Body slowly settled back into sleep; my limbs became numb and I felt like I was drifting.

This is normally the point I'd have trouble with a WILD. At this point, I would normally try to start moving, sit up out of my body, and feel a way that I can only really describe as feeling "tangled in a blanket" - mentally flailing around but unable to really get anywhere or do anything, still stuck in the fog. Sometimes, it's instinctive, so it's been hard to shake the habit, but last night I was actually able to remain mindful and stay still.

I felt as if I was drifting in a river. My body was numb and the idea of being attached to or "in" it was going away. I tried to sink into the river even more... I felt my head sink through the pillow and my body sink through the bed, and sank down into the gray fog.

Drifted for a while. I watched the fog so that I didn't end up drifting out of lucidity. I waited for shapes to appear in the fog. Sometimes shadowy shapes would appear. This is normally where I might have trouble again - trying to will them to BE something, without anything really coalescing... wanting them to BE something... getting frustrated and exerting myself too much mentally and waking up as a result. This time, I just let them fade in and out. I still paid attention to them and tried to examine them, but I tried to remain as objective as possible - trying to see patterns and shapes in them without trying to force them to "be" anything. I knew that if I kept doing this, eventually I could coax one of them into reality.

Eventually a shadowy room came into being, and became reality. I was standing in the living-room of my mother's old apartment in Florida. It didn't have any furniture and was fairly empty. The alphabet magnets from before were scattered on an end table in the center of the room. It felt pretty "solid". I examined the brown carpet and patted the wall. I walked through the room, toward the hallway, running my hand along the wall so that I didn't lose lucidity. I wanted to do a scene change - this place wasn't where I wanted to be, and it was boring. I walked up to the door and willed it to open to a location I actually wanted to be in (again, home base).

I opened the door, and there was... another door? I opened that door, and behind it was another door. I felt irritated and opened that door, willing it to be the location that I wanted, but it opened into the apartment atrium.

I walked across the atrium and opened one of the doors to another apartment. That door led back into the atrium. I got an idea - something told me to try to dive through a door and use it like a portal. I dove through a door and opened my eyes to my actual bedroom. I should have known that this was potentially a false awakening, but instead I just went back to sleep.

I dreamed I was hanging out with a few of my friends. We were going to Full Throttle Bottles, but in the dream, Full Throttle was not the store I was familiar with, and it was not in the location where it would have normally been. Instead, we were all walking down a street full of nothing but liquor stores. We went into one of them and a friend bought a bottle of vodka that was in a bottle like a soda bottle and tasted like orange-flavored cream soda. I liked it, so I bought one myself. I kept thinking that it was odd that the store clerk hadn't carded any of us, but didn't manage to figure out that it was because this was a dream.

We walked up to a place that looked kind of like a castle. It had brown, smooth bricks. I jumped down a wall and my friend grabbed my arm and jumped down with me. I remember thinking it was a very long way to jump and was surprised I hadn't hurt myself a lot, but reasoned that it was because my friend was taller and had held me up kind of like a balloon.

I then dreamed about a flying cartoon skunk whose super power was smelling so bad that the odor killed evil things.

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.

I dreamed that C lived here, and I was living with him. My mother had also moved here. The place C had was pretty nice, but I was irritated because he was ignoring me. I was thinking of moving in with Mom, but my brother was already living with her, and the place was pretty crowded. At first, Mom lived somewhere niceish, with cool painted/tiled ceilings, but then she moved somewhere less nice with more rooms. It had ugly leaves painted on the walls and ceilings (the walls were a gross yellow, the paintings were brown). I couldn't live alone, because I didn't have enough money to.

At some point, I was riding the train downtown, and I realized I was dreaming. I tried to fly through the ceiling but got "stuck" and had what I believe was a FA. Then the apartment dream (from above) started up again from where it left off.

I dreamed several dreams, and woke between each.

*side notes
*gaining lucidity
*lucid

#1 - I was having difficulty doing something. That's all I remember. Dream fragment.

Woke. Did Reality Check. Attempted WILD; failed, fell asleep.

#2 - I am in a house. I'm looking for a bathroom. There's no bathroom, because I didn't have enough in-game gold to buy an expansion. I discover that some of the red and white scented candles I've been buying were made by my cousin. He's been lying about having a regular desk job.

Woke, used bathroom. Reality Check. Attempted WILD; failed, fell asleep.

#3 - A wife and husband are fighting over their finances. The husband is unemployed or doesn't make much money, and the wife is burnt out and tired of working overtime to completely support them. The wife decides to make adult videos, and her best friend offers to help her. Her husband finds out and is extremely upset.

Woke. Rolled over and fell asleep.
#4:
I dream that I am riding a bus through a sweeping countryside. It appears that I am somewhere in New Zealand. The landscape is mountainous and verdant. It has just rained, the sky is full of gorgeous, radiant clouds, and it's is very beautiful (note: sweeping landscapes after a storm are actually one of my dreamsigns)

It begins to storm violently, and I'm up in the mountains. I am both riding and driving the bus. It's storming like crazy, and the mountain road is winding and dangerous. I'm high up in the mountains now, going over a narrow bridge. The choppy water has risen to the very bottom of the bridge, and it churns dangerously. The bus hydroplanes, loses control, veers off the bridge. The bus is now an old cadillac. The bus now disappears from around me as I enter the water. Frigid water envelopes me as I sink, and places immense pressure on my body; I debate fighting it, or merely letting myself sink. I allow myself to be pulled under and away with the current.

I wake up on a bus. I don't wake up on a bus; I am driving a car. I'm going to pick up a friend's dad. My friend is a chubby blond teenager wearing a Hulk Hogan shirt. We pick up his dad at a fast food restaurant that looks like McDonald's. He jokes about us being a software development team. He is actually a developer, himself. He looks really tired, and I ask him if he's been pulling long hours. He says, "Yes, and driving is a challenge. I'm practically cross-eyed." He decides to check his voicemail and starts swearing; apparently, his boss/team lead is asking for a whole bunch of ridiculous stuff that he can't possibly do on such a short deadline.

I wake up on a bus. I have stretched out across the seats, and a little girl is commenting to her mother that I'm taking up too much space. I try to pull myself up into a fetal position to free up more seats. My friend and his dad are also on the bus. The landscape is the one as described before; the sweeping New Zealand landscape.

I wake up and feel a bit irritated that my prior attempts at WILD have failed. I see light seeping in through my bedroom window and am a bit upset that it appears to be so close to morning. I'm also irritated that I didn't pick up on my most obvious dream sign.

I fail to do a Reality Check. In retrospect, my bedroom window was INCORRECT. The curtain wasn't there. I shrug it off, telling myself that it's just another chance to try to WILD again. I settle down in bed (note: I am fairly certain this was a FA and I am actually trying to WILD from my FA, which is kind of hilarious because it actually works)


#5 (?) -
I begin to see something forming in front of me, very blurry - it is a field of large, smooth pebbles. I decide that it looks somewhat like a beach, or is close enough to make into one. I try to make it solidify, but it fights me. I try to imagine it as part of a landscape, but it remains a flat plane - almost like a pattern. It is supposed to be the ground, I understand, but it takes up my entire field of vision.

I can feel it there - the dream is blurry, but it's forming. I don't want to lose it or lose consciousness, so I start actively trying to make it stabilize. I focus on the pebbles; they sharpen a bit, and then go all fuzzy again. I run my hands through the pebbles, then dive to the ground and shove my face into the pebbles. They're still fuzzy and immaterial, although I feel the ghosts of sensations from them. I enthusiastically rub my face back and forth in the pebbles. I feel like they're fading away and get upset, so in a moment of desperation, I lick the pebbles. They don't become any more material; they taste like grit and sawdust. I roll around on the ground like an idiot, grabbing handfuls of the ground and rubbing it into my face. I feel and smell dead leaves. Suddenly, there are dead leaves mixed into the pebbles.

I look up. There's more landscape forming! I see fuzzy green. I feel like this is like the edge of a lake or swimming hole. I stumble to my feet and pick leaves out of my hair.

The world suddenly solidifies, as my lucids often do - everything goes from a blurry mess to absolute perfect clarity. I am now on the edge of a small lake or swimming hole, on an artificial beach. I'm at a cook out!

There are tons of people milling around. The dad from my prior dream is grilling food, and there are a bunch of fat guys in tank tops drinking beer out of a cooler. There is a little girl in a purple swim suit playing with the sand. She has a toy shovel and those little plastic sand castle molds, and she's making a castle. She has white-blonde hair that curls in little ringlets around her ears, and blue eyes. She looks like she's maybe 3 or 4, and she's adorable. There is also a black and white Border Collie lying on a red and white checkered blanket next to a guy in a t-shirt and his kids. The dog is panting, because it's hot outside.

The swimming hole has a tall, metal slide where you can slide into the water. The sky above, unlike 99% of my lucids, is vivid blue and brilliantly clear - this is a hot summer day, probably July or even August.

I clap my hands together and yell out loud "YES! Finally!" I immediately run up to the dog and pet her. Her fur is thick and somewhat coarse. I scratch between her ears. She's very friendly, and enjoys the attention. As I scratch her behind the ears, I recall my lucid task.

"I need to destroy something right away!" I tell the dog. I had decided on Simple Task I, which was to destroy an object by any means.

I look around. One of the first things I see is the little girl's sand castle mold, but even thought she's a dream character I feel kind of bad about that. I see a plastic drinking cup with Vash the Stampede on the side of it (I haven't watched anime since the 90s, I don't know where that came from) but decide it's too solid/not interesting. There's an array of picnic stuff - plates, cookware, food, etc. I settle on the one thing that I feel is out of place: an empty carton of half & half.

I point at it and try to make it explode. Nothing happens. I get angry and pick it up and throw it, yelling, "This is MY dream!" It still does not explode. I chase after it, scoop it up, and tear it into several pieces. I begin to throw the pieces at the two fat guys who are sitting in plastic lawn chairs and drinking beer. They think this is hilarious.

I hear the little girl calling to me from behind me. She is running toward me, waving a huge syringe. One of those big, scary-looking ones they use to inject things into your rump. It's almost as big as she is (and for some reason, empty). I laugh and launch myself into the air, hovering above her. She runs around below me, waving the syringe. I rise higher into the air, using swimming motions, and taunt her. She begins to climb the ladder to the slide, which has now somehow gotten higher and scarier-looking and is turning into a bridge.

The dream fades, and I wake up. It is 3 a.m., which means that it couldn't have possibly been light outside last time I woke up.