false awakening

I kept waking up due to pain in my throat, so I ended up with six dream fragments. These are my dreams in chronological order.

DILD:

A friend I know in real life is walking beside me in the autumn woods just behind her house. She looks a bit strange to me, inflated like a balloon and stretched around the eyes, but I don't pay much attention to it. The path we're walking is clear through the brush and a light dusting of snow hides under thick branches. I already know where we're going: A large circular camp with an odd hide tent and fire-pit that has died in the cold gusts.
We both have guns slung over our shoulders (a Ruger M77 for me and a Ross rifle for her if anyone's interested) and mine was cooler! By the time we reach the encampment she silently moves behind the tent. I thought that was kind of odd, but whatever. It's a dream, weird shit happens. Seconds later, I hear a shoot ring out, and a bullet whips by my face. I got to seeeee the bullet. My dreams are the best bros ever.
Because I'm awesome in both my real hunting and dream hunting, apparently, I swing the rifle off my shoulder in a fluid move and engage the bullet. It only takes a moment for me to aim from twenty yards and pull the trigger.
Dream ends. Saltwater is gurgled and Benadryl is taken in copious amounts.

Slightly graphic
WILD:

I'm sitting in someone's living room with a government-style dossier in my lap. Paper targets litter the floor and the bulls-eyes are ripped apart by large-caliber bullets. The dull sofa I'm chilling like a baws on is torn and stained in more place than the dreaming human mind can count.
So, I open the flimsy paper book and a severed human head greets me. His skull is ripped open in five spots that look to be about .22-size organized in a triangular shape but it looks to have been bleached under water. A vague sense of familiarity encases the picture when I realize I passed the guy on the street last week.
This carries on with multiple people I can barely consider acquaintances: A late cashier I saw being yelled at by their boss, an elderly lady I helped walk across the street and another foolish skateboarder who fell trying to jump eight steps. Each had nearly identical wounds to the first but the last picture has thin blunt force trauma instead of entry wounds. Guess which one.
Dreams ends. I wake up coughing slightly.

DEILD:

I'm in a gigantic skate park in the middle of the night. I'm not on a skateboard: I'm on a hoverboard. With a laser gun. Not a ton to this dream: I just hovered(?) around shooting other people on their boards between my sweet moves. Nobody else was recognizable due to a paintball-esque suit, but I didn't the feeling that I knew them. You know how your dream tells you stuff like this. But, when someone got shot and fell off their board, they disintegrated on the floor in pixel-like dust.
I didn't win, but I didn't lose either by the time the dream ended.

DEILD:

So I was a swan. A black swan, precisely. I'm not really sure why, but when I tried to move my arms they were big black wings. "Oh, I'm a black swan!" Not gonna argue with my mind there. I flippered, floppered, swan-walked around a little on a strange little hill before I decided to go flying.
It was pretty awesome. One of the better dream flights I've had, because I felt the need to actually FLAP and all. But I knew what would make it cooler: Mid-air fights. Another swan, maybe. I just let my mind process it. Before I had time to really react, three Arado Ar 76 (German jet fighters) pull out of the clouds.
Aaaand, I spit fireballs at them, from my awesome black beak. Rolling, diving, twisting and turning around the pit-patters of machine gun fire and then fireworks as I ignited their engines. Every time I put a plane down another one came out of the clouds until the sun set.
Dream ends. More saltwater gurgling.

WILD:

This one was pretty awesome. When I used to LD a LOT, I created this thing called the Hallway. I used the Hallway as a cool way to access dreams I could remember or plot-lines that my subconscious would be cool. Basically, my mind's eye thinks it's this insanely tall, narrow corridor that stretches out longer than I can see, with monotone brown doors on both sides. Each door has plaque on it where I can "write" whichever dream or things I want in my dream.
I got to revisit the Hallway again, and I picked a dream that looked exactly like the Hallway, because I figured that'd be awesome dream-ception. When I stepped into the new hallway, however, there was only one door. And a centaur behind me. Just as I was stepping through the next door after dodging a charging centaur, the dream ended.
I had to get up and do some crap, but I just passed out on my bed later.

Non-lucid dream:

I was playing a violin. I have no clue how to play violin, but it sounded quite nice. As I played the violin, however, surges of strange colors would flood my vision and twist the environment like I was stuck in a kaleidoscopic tube. There's not much I can say other than each note turned into a specific color or in a predictable way. Associating sound with visual context would be a cool way to learn music in real life, though.

At about 3:15 today (~2 hours ago), I felt really tired. I went to the YouTube app on my Xbox and played a 25-minute power-nap binaural beat with an alarm at the end. I considered trying to induce a lucid but figured it was futile, so I fell asleep.

I woke up and started looking for other videos to watch. However, I eventually woke up again and heard the video's alarm. The video had ended. I was confused at first, but I quickly realized that I had been dreaming all along -- I had a false awakening.

Major rise in confidence during this dream! Got an animal transformation, Advanced TotM, and was getting there on a Task of the Year, too. Thanks to NewArtemis for the dream control suggestions!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #171: I Am the Wolf

I have a false awakening that places me in my bed at home next to Wife. All of the lights are on and she's fiddling around with some papers in bed, something to do with my new business. "Oh good, you're awake," she says. I grumble about how unhappy I am that this is the case.

"Sorry," she responds, "but we really need to work on this." I whine that it should be able to wait until the morning and that I was trying to have a lucid dream. She turns back to the papers, not bothering me any further. I'm a little worried that I was rude and have maybe pissed her off, but I decide to just take my chance while I can. I roll onto my side and begin my mantra of "The world is yours". I'm shocked to find that almost immediately I start a WILD transition. (Obviously just an in-dream WILD, but I didn't realize it at the time.)

In the transition state, my dream hands are grasping at something rough that's rolling by beneath me. I grasp at it and start clawing my way along. A gravel surface comes into view. It seems like I'm floating while climbing a ladder made out of gravel that's been crudely mortared together. After a bit, the scene solidifies and the gravel becomes a path. There's one more odd little jump as gravity takes hold and now I'm walking along the path in a full-formed scene.

It's dawn and I'm on a path that cuts through a park, not far from a street. Most of the DCs are dressed like it's chilly but it feels mild to me. I remember my intention to be extra confident in this dream and I start shouting my intentions at the passerby. "I can do anything I want! This is all mine!" I shout, interspersing lots of profanity and generally sounding like a total nutjob.

I remember Task of the Month to turn into a white wolf, hide in the snow, and hunt down a meal. I still feel all crazy from my mantra and the insane confidence I had at the start of this dream. I shout in a booming voice that's not my own that "I AM THE WOLF!" Immediately my hands curl into white paws. I practice running a bit on all fours and it's not bad! I kind of get the sense that I'm sort of bent over like a loping hunchback / werewolf thing but hey, close enough!

I go on a brief, profanity-laced tirade about how there's a bunch of snow to my right, and yep there it is. I hop my little wolf-feet into it and crouch down, looking to my left for some prey. Immediately I spy two potential targets: the closest is a large skunk and the other is an orange, semi-spherical alien thing with tentacles. The skunk's closer and the alien makes me a bit nervous, so I pounce on the skunk.

My teeth rip into him and I tear a big chunk away. Fortunately none of this is bloody but the skunk stares at me in shock. The skunk meat tastes atrocious. It's like chewing on a fart. I can't remember whether I'm supposed to eat the whole animal so I take another bite. This time it's more gummy and tasteless at first but after a bit of chewing, nope, this bite's all farty-tasting too. I hope this is good enough because I've had enough of being a carnivore.

I allow myself to change back into a human and walk further into the park. I come to three identical stone buildings with opaque green windows, standing side by side. I think of the Colosseum Task of the Year and shout that the building which leads to the Colosseum needs to light up. No immediate result, so another attempt, more yelly and with more profanity does the trick and the middle building's door lights up.

I move through a series of three automatic glass doors where a steady stream of children is walking in the opposite direction. I say that the kids need to get out of the way and DC parents appear from out of nowhere to pull them to the side as I pass. I emerge in a restaurant area filled with DCs enjoying a meal. An Indian man in his early 40s is playing on a slot machine against the left wall and he turns to look at me with an expression of surprise.

I push through the back door out into the early morning next to a crumbling sports arena. It's huge and looks a lot like the Colosseum apart from some weird details like the rebar that's sticking out of the top of it. I fly up toward the top and as a gust of wind carries me sideways away from where I want to be, I shout and mutter that "this is my world", and things get back on track.

I come over the top of the stadium to see that inside it looks like a grassy version of the Circus Maximus! There's even a little chariot racing by itself around the track. I know I can make this work, so I fly down toward the field, shouting that down there will be someone for me to fight. Before I'm even halfway down, though, the dream ends.

Side-note Lucid

Talking about lucid dreams
I'm standing on my driveway talking with my pastor and MB. The kids are sitting in camping chairs on my side of the garage; my car is nowhere to be seen. All of us are talking about lucid dreaming. I say something about WILDing and I'm surprised when my pastor knows what it is, saying that he'd once done it himself many years ago. I mention that one of my long-term goals is to learn to have WILDs quickly, on demand. My pastor asks how long it usually takes to get into a WILD. I explain that a skilled WILDer can do it in under twenty minutes, but that newbies can often take more than an hour. I confess that I haven't managed it at all, yet, but that I'm determined to succeed. The conversation continues for a little while longer.

Now I'm in one of the kids' bedrooms doing something. Now I'm downstairs. Bethany is unhappy with the kids - she'd told them they could be outside barefooted or in shoes but not just in socks, since the socks would get dirty. All of the kids wore just socks while outside, so now they're covered in leaves (from the driveway) and oil (from the garage floor). Even though I was wearing both socks and shoes, I check my socks anyway. They're damp from being sweaty but are otherwise fine. I take my socks off and put them in a nearby cabinet which seems to be a make-shift clothes hamper, as it has a small (but growing) pile of colored laundry. My wife tells me that if my socks are dirty like the kids are then I need to put them in the separate "dirty sock pile," but I tell her they're just sweaty.


Gift of a hymnal
After a failed WILD, I'm trying to sleep. I'm laying in bed and remember that I just had a conversation with friends (JB and BJ) in my kitchen. I realize that that can't have happened, that I must have dreamed it. Something feels off, and I do a nose pinch RC. I can easily breath through my pinched nose, so I know I'm dreaming, experiencing a false awakening (my first!). It's pitch black. I decide to try voice commands and try to command LIGHT, but my voice is hoarse and I can barely hear myself. I try again with STABILITY, but again, it barely comes out. I realize that, even though I'm convinced this is a dream, I'm still hesitant to shout in case I'm wrong and I woke up my wife. I decide that this really is a dream, so it doesn't matter, and even if it's not a dream we'll just laugh about it and go back to sleep. I really don't want to lose the dream, so I keep my nose pinched and keep focused on the strange feeling of breathing through it. I keep trying my voice commands, and eventually the light in the room (especially near the door) "dims" up. It's dim, but it's enough to see by. I shout STABILITY and LIGHTS again for good measure, and I find that I can actually shout now.

I'd just been listening to the podcast where they were talking about extending the dream, and CanisLucidus talked about just looking at all the detail the mind comes up with. I look around my bedroom, trying to take it all in. I notice that it's larger than life, but it's decorated pretty much how my real room is. The doors, windows, bed, and dresser are all in the right place, and I think the walls and floor looked right, though I'm not positive. I notice a small shelf on one wall that's not there IWL, with some very small framed pictures of people. I walk over, pick one up, and look at it. It shows couple of people, including a woman in a purple dress. I don't recognize them, and I realize the danger of putting too much attention into the picture, so I put it down. For some reason, it ends up on face down on the shelf. I kneel down and run my hands through the carpet - it looks and feels exactly like my real carpet. I think about what to do and realize that one of my simple goals was to try the "internal nose pinch" and see if it was reliable. I tried it, and alas, I couldn't breathe while doing it. So much for that RC. I consider phasing through the wall and flying off, but I decide that that's a little too advanced for right now: I want something I know I can accomplish so that I can boost my confidence.

I remember I want to do the basic TOTM be given a gift by a DC, so I walk towards the hallway. The stairs are in the right place, though the hallway layout is odd. I remember that, to get something to appear, I need to not just casually think "It'll be there" but to really strongly picture it, almost as if I can already see it. I start trying to imagine in detail that my wife is around the corner in the hallway; but as I'm doing it, she comes up the stairs. She says something and goes back down; I follow her.

Now I'm near the bottom of the stairs. I feel like I'm in a mansion. Downstairs is a huge area, well furnished, with a very high ceiling. I'm on a grand staircase, at least 10 feet wide, flaring at the bottom, going straight up behind me to the second story. My wife is a couple of steps below me. I ask my wife if she has anything for me. She says she does, but she wants a quick kiss first. I kiss her, and she walks off towards the kitchen to get whatever it is. I realize that I shouldn't let her out of my sight, since she might disappear if I do. I go after her, following her into the kitchen (which is outfitted with lots of shiny black appliances). I don't see her in the kitchen, and I get worried. I shout a dream command WIFE, but nothing happens. I walk through the kitchen, though the dining room, and back into the living area. I pass an older, well-dressed man carrying a Psalter; I completely ignored him, but I think he was the butler. As I'm walking into the living area, my wife comes out of the kitchen carrying one of our old hymnals. She gives it to me, saying it'll go well with the hamburger.

Often, when I wake out of a dream, I'm aware of it fading first. Not this time. Poof I was awake. I tried to DEILD, but nothing happened; I was probably hampered by a strong desire not to lose the dream memory.


Fragments
I'm looking at pictures of different people. I have a program(?) that lets me alter reality by altering pictures of the reality. I'm trying to copy an aspect of a person from one picture and paste it onto a different person in a different picture, but it's not going well. The perspectives of the pictures are different, and the pasted image isn't lining up right.

I'm outside, in a park-like setting, watching people. There are nine people who have successfully done ... something ... but they need ten to fully win. They're pleased at having come in first again, yet disappointed that, once again, they failed to get the full ten.

I'm looking at Gunnerkrigg Court. Annie is watching two forest dwellers talking to / examining a boy from the Court. He's strong and somewhat puffed up, and the forest dwellers (a youth and an old man) are pondering over him. His muscles should only be about half the size they are, and they want to know how he made himself strong, if he used some kind of magic or trickery or what. The old man especially is throwing out more and more strange theories about the boy's strength. I (or Annie?) starts to wonder if there's something to it, and if this is how Eglamore gets some of his abilities.

I'm driving on a 4 lane road in the right lane. A tan van is to my left and starts to come into my lane. I stand my ground, but she keeps coming, eventually scraping against me. Now I'm in the left lane and she's in the right, ahead of me. I can see a silver line running along her driver's side where she scraped me. Somehow I see the driver's side of my car, and I see a long scuff mark but no scraped paint. I'd been trying to decide if I should chase her down and get her insurance information, but since my car isn't actually damaged I decide just to let her go.

Dream 1 :[COLOR="#800080"]I run from someone that chases me. I get into a train station and when I try to cross it I see a train(A grey one) that comes. I keep jumping around there and wait for the train to go away.The train comes and it is HUUUUGE. Then an earthquake happens and that's all I remember. [/COLOR]
Dream 2 : [COLOR="#800080"]Something about a girl saying that I don't know what couple took I don't know what pills and that they're working hard to make a baby now.[/COLOR]
Dream 3 : [COLOR="#800080"]Just me getting ready for school. I see new socks in the drawer so I wonder how they got there and then I was like : Probably I bought them yesterday and I forgot.[/COLOR]

I haven't tried to go lucid in about a year now, but attempted tonight. After a bunch of pretty (weirdly) normal dreams, I woke up while in a sort of continuation of that dream where I was currently outside a school entrance. I was sort of spinning around without gravity, and half-knew it was a dream. When I woke up, I immediately tried to go back, and did successfully, but sort of waited 5 seconds of the dream actually happening and DO doing things to realize, but then there was this sort of pulse in my head (I don't know if it as real or imagined), and I soon woke up. I tried to go back into the dream and succeeded again, this time appearing inside the school and a teacher was giving a lecture. A woman proceeds to pull me out of the classroom. It is assumed that I am in trouble and I am very angry at her. The teacher then appeared out in the hallway to ask me a geography question. The school obviously had something wrong with it. I thought doors were going to shut down and it would turn into some sort of haunted prison with laser eyed students at anytime (this, my friends, is anxiety). I tried to answer the questions like it was my last, saving breath, but I couldn't open my mouth. I have never had one of those dreams before (I remember all of my dreams). I did get to speak, but instead I was speaking out loud and found myself in my bed ("n-n-n-n-adi-") Nadir isn't even a specific place??? I don't know if the word had any significance, but it was my eighth grade vocabulary word. I'm not actually sure if this happened or was a FA, but I continued to go back into the dream, and this time was standing while a classmate (who I never had a good relationship with) came up to me, red laser eyes beginning to emerge. I think I tried so hard and was so angry at her that I managed to shut the dream down. AGAIN.

Conclusions: What I found interesting was that I was able to wait 5 seconds ish before I realized that it was a dream so that it had a chance to start. The pulsing in my head (not sure if real or fake, again) occurred several times later once I had the realization it was a dream. I think I wasn't never deep enough into the dream to be able to change it.

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.

Church wierdness
I'm at home; Frank is at the computer, watching a video stream from my church. The volume is almost all the way down, but the audio is only slightly too quiet. He clicks half way up on the volume bar before I can stop him. I know that this will make it WAY too loud; it does, but it does it by raising the volume at the church. On the stream, I can clearly see everyone looking around with surprise as the speakers get so loud they distort. I quickly click it back down to where it's supposed to be.

Now I'm walking on the path that runs around the sanctuary. A group of older teen girls is waiting near one of the windows. I can hear one of the guys inside. It's a serious topic, but he's trying to ad levity to it. At the prearranged time, the girls go to the window and start making "ghost sounds." It's pretty obvious to everyone inside, and they laugh. The speaker says something about trying to fix the audio, again to much amusement. Eventually he "fixes" it and the girls stop.

Now I see a bunch of large cooking pots near the front, one of which has a burner built into its base. Something is wrong, and flames are licking around the side. Linda sees it and heads over with a giant cloth napkin. I think she's going to try to smother the fire, but instead she drapes it over the whole thing. I don't think this is going to work - the fire will eat through it in a couple of seconds - but she realizes this too. She quickly bear-hugs the whole thing and carries it over near the door.

Now there's a whole pile of large pots and pans near the door, many with fire seeping out of them in one place or another. She's trying to figure out the best way to deal with them. I'm standing nearby, trying to figure out if I can help, but not being able to bring myself to. I tell myself it's because I don't want to get in her way, but really it's because I don't want to get hurt.

Now I'm outside. My wife and I are talking to another couple. The woman is remarried after her husband divorced her. My wife makes a heated comment that she doesn't trust the woman's x-husband. I have to think for a moment to remember who it is, but when I do remember I nod my agreement.


Taking the train
I'm with my oldest daughter in the car, driving to the subway station. I have some kind of thought about rerouting the major roads to be more direct, but when I picture it on a map, I realize it won't work. We're waiting at a light inside a steel and concrete structure. The ground is a steel mesh. My daughter is excited because it looks neat, but I'm not because it's hard to drive on the stuff (you have to pay a lot of attention to make sure you keep going straight). Up ahead, the passage turns 90 degrees to the left.

Now we're on foot in a hallway, waiting for the train platform to open (a physical gate is blocking the way). There are a couple dozen people ahead of us. I'm telling her that we'll need to hurry if we want to get a good seat on the train. I realize that, since we have to wait to get onto the platform, this is clearly the beginning of the rail line, so they should park the train here for a while, meaning we should have an easier time getting good seats.

Now the gates are opening. They're sliding straight into the walls, multiple segments going different directions. It's actually a really ycool effect.

Now we're walking on the platform. I don't see a waiting train, though I do see a bunch of trains nearby at the train yard. The platform is C shaped, wrapping around two different tracks. I don't know which track we need, so I look for signs. Walking on one arm of the C, I see machines that look like coin operated newspaper dispensers, one of which has the line's name. This isn't the one we need, so we walk to the other arm of the C. The sign there shows our line.

Now the train is here, and I'm boarding; except my daughter isn't here any more, it's my coworker Scott K.

Now we're on board. I'd been planning on taking the first row, since that's what my pastor had advised; but going in, the first row doesn't look that special, and something actually turns me away from it. The last row is pretty special, though, wrapping around from one side of the car, along the back, to the other side. It even looks extra padded, in black as opposed to the gray of the rest of the seats. It's clearly popular, since a bunch of people head straight for it. A couple of people head for the first row, too, so we end up taking the fourth or fifth row. We're close to the middle of the car - there are fewer than a dozen rows.

Now we're on our way. Nearby, a group of coworkers is talking. D?? is saying something about thirteen being unlucky. I turn and say that sometimes thirteen is considered to be the luckiest number. The other guys seem a bit skeptical, but D?? laughs at the idea, saying that anyone who thinks that thirteen can ever be lucky is in for a world of hurt.


The new van
Frank is driving the rest of us somewhere. At the bottom of a hill, he has to pull off the road for some reason. The rest of us get out as well. We were in his car, an older-style red SUV. A sedan comes down the hill, slows, and continues off the road straight for us. It stops at the last moment, coming within inches of driving over my oldest daughter's foot. The driver - a woman - gets out and asks Frank for some kind of assistance. Something seems a little fishy, so Frank and I try carefully to find out more about her. In the end, we figure out the car was stolen from one of the houses on the hill. We get the owners of that house to come out and check, and the husband quickly recognizes his car. He runs a car dealership, so he knows things most people don't, and he's able to recognize his car's VIN. His wife comes up to me with tears in her eyes and gives me a big hug. I hug back, though it feels a little weird; I know she's doing it partly out of gratitude, partly out of shock from having her car stolen. Eventually, she breaks off the hug. She doesn't fully break contact, so I keep a hand on her shoulder as well.

Now I see Frank driving down the hill in a new vehicle. It's a van, courtesy of the dealership owner. It's not much to look at, being rather blocky, but it's large, so it should fit my family nicely.

Now I'm walking around inside the van. I'm amazed at how well everything is packed in here - I see a bathroom and at least four bedrooms, plus a kitchen and living area. I walk into the master suite and see that it's a number of rooms all in a row. The first room is a bathroom of sorts, with a sink, mirror, hair dryer, tiny wall-mounted coffee maker (I hope this isn't the only coffee maker in here), coat rack, and other odds and ends (but no toilet). Passing through there I come into the master bedroom proper. Past it I see a room with the toilet. I walk back out of the suite to the "hub" where all the rooms come together.

Back at the hub, I chose a different path. Now I'm in a room with two bath/shower combos side-by-side. I wish they'd put them in separate rooms with doors, but I know they were under severe space restraints, so I understand. I take a closer look at the left-hand shower. The curtain is clear, which I find odd in this kind of shared setup. Inside, it's deeper than a usual bath, going back about 5 feet. It's got some steps leading down into it. I assume there's a place inside to take off your clothes once you're in the shower (and somewhere to keep them dry), but it's not obvious from where I'm standing. There's a nice large shower-head on the wall, controlled by a normal looking shower knob. There's also a sprayer (controlled by its own knob), though it doesn't look very nice - it looks exactly like what you'd find on a kitchen sink. As I'm looking at it, I realize that water is coming out of it. It's not a torrent, but it's more than a drip. I pick it up and fiddle with it and its knob, trying to get the leak to stop, but I can't manage any improvement. I put it back down, resolving to deal with it later. I notice a funny construction on the front of the main knob and fiddle with it, causing it to shoot out a stream of soap. I'm impressed. Now I'm looking at the other shower. It's identical to the first, even including a leaking sprayer.


Arriving at the nurserey
I'm pulling into the small nursery near our house. It's not a very nice driveway - it comes off the street at an angle, going downhill, with a small parking lot to the right. I turn left off the road, swing down the driveway, then look for a parking space. The only space available is right next to the driveway, so I try to pull a tight U-turn to get into the space. I manage to avoid hitting the car next to me, but I run into a little warning flag right at the edge of the parking lot, knocking the flag off of its pole. Now I'm getting the kids out of the car. It's now a church, and some of the ladies have come out to help me. My wife wasn't able to join me today, and this is the first time I've been to this church, so I'm feeling very awkward.


Fragments
I'm sitting at a table with another man. He asks me who I work for, and I run through my usual story about where I physically work, then about how I was hired by a company that was bought out by my current company. After I finish, he starts to make me an offer. Now there's something going on in a convention center. I see some security people talking about preparations.

I'm totally new here. I suffer from a chronic pervasive sleep disorder. Too long of a story for here and now and this place. In any case , yesterday, I finally screamed in my bathroom at the sink. "Why is this house drowning me in negative energy no matter how much I try". i should have known better than to speak it. that night, i dreamed 3 men outside with guns. They are threatening harm, rape, and death. I feel helpless. It was so real I wasn't aware I was dreaming because typically My dreams become lucid as soon as I have passive triggers mostly unrealistic dream events pretty much 3-4 times a week i become conscience. I often then become a passive participant and even kick a** in any way I Please or just enjoy making things up as I go along. i even like to just stay assive and let the dream unfold while I'm completely aware I'm dreaming.

By no means would these intruders on my property in this dream had any power had I become lucid. I would have been a bad B with a samurai sword (in my dream of course) chopping these guys up flying all over the place. But noooo, I'm calling 911 with a woman who seems totally unconcerned and I'm begging away for help. She says help is on the way. Some time passes, banging on my door, more screaming outside. I'm frantically trying to figure out how to protect myself and my child while I wait for help. I dial 911 again pleading. The lady could care less and says she forgot to dispatch help. I wake somewhere in to be greatful I was dreaming.

I fall back to sleep and have this amazing lucid dream I didn't want to wake from where I spent the day with some lover I've never met. He loved me to my soul and I had no anxiety or stress just companionship. I can interpret the 2nd dream easy cake but the first one I still have trouble channeling and changing circumstances when my dreams are too realistic and negative. I'm trying techniques. Even in sleep paralysis. I can't control the circumstances. I left once when I knew it was safe but I was hoping to meet someone and it was just sunny and the streets were empty. I thought awww boring...just decided to go back to my room and lay on top of my sleeping body. Sounds strange to someone who hasn't experienced it but but I've done it many times since Ive been doing this for 20 years since i was 10. I'm just scared to leave the room.

Well, a close-ish call with getting to the Pyramid and some fun play with a few new techniques. Still have a lot of refining to do!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #168: Pyramid Artwork

I have a false awakening where I wake up excited about some video game idea. I’m desperate to write it down. I grab my dream journal, deciding that’s the best place I’ve got to write the idea down. This makes me think of dreaming, though, and I become lucid.

I walk toward the window, glancing over at the bed as I go. I see Wife sleeping peacefully on my side of the bed, and my sleeping body is nowhere in sight. I’m amused by the unusual layout and note that this is definitely not an OBE. I think about saying something to Wife as I pass but decide to just leave her alone.

I phase out through the external wall, winding up in the void. I imagine the scene as it should be, though, and after a few seconds it works itself into a convincing replica of my street at night. This gives me a nice confidence boost, so I imagine that the Great Pyramid is behind me. I turn around to find that it hasn’t worked, though, and it’s just more houses as far as I can see.

I’m feeling aggressive, though, so I use my fingers to draw a triangle in the distance. The triangle isn’t perfect, but it comes out in a shimmering neon green. With some focus, I’m able to slowly change the green outline into the distant Great Pyramid!

Seeing the Pyramid gives me a target to be excited about so I immediately attempt a zoom teleport. Something goes wrong, though, and the Pyramid actually gets further away rather than closer to me. This frustrates me and I start making a half-hearted attempt to fly there instead.

The scene resets somehow and I’m in a huge aircraft hangar. Okay, starting over. Again I go for the “draw a triangle” trick and I get a decent-looking triangle. I try to change it into the Pyramid but it stays stubbornly neon and triangular.

Several other attempts follow, including erasing and redrawing the triangle, chopping the top of it off and reforming it into a trapezoid, and drawing several copies at once. I can never quite make any of this work before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #167: In the Game

My friend “Leroy” and I are meeting with another programmer at a restaurant to discuss a video game design decision. We’re seated outdoors having an animated discussion about some finer point of the design of a first-person shooter video game.

The dream turns from a discussion of the concept into the three of us actually in the game, all armed with sci-fi style weaponry and fighting for our lives against some kind of menacing cyborgs.

There’s one particular boss character that can warp in from out of nowhere, making him especially dangerous. and we’re debating the best way to face him down. At first we talk about hunkering down somewhere kind of back to back, but in the end decide to get to higher ground and try to ambush him.

I believe on some level that this is a video game and as the three of us storm up a gently turning ramp, I marvel at the “graphics” of the game. I wonder how the game would look with lower graphical detail, and immediately everything looks pixellated and 90s. This is enough to make me realize that this is a dream.

I continue to the top of the ramp. Leroy is still with me but the other programmer has vanished. We’re in a high-ceilinged room with organic, alien-looking walls, perfect for the setting of the game we’re in. Everything feels far less threatening now and I feel sure that the cyborg isn’t coming after us any more.

My youngest son R (2 years old) is running around here. He runs into me, bounces off my leg, and goes sprinting happily away again. A girl from my oldest son’s class wanders by with her mother. She looks like she’s a couple of years older than IWL and her hair is twisted into an unusually long braid that encircles her head.

The girl takes R’s hand and begins leading him toward a downward ramp. I step in front of them and sort of herd them back onto the platform, feeling uneasy about them wandering off into the world of a first-person shooter. Then other kids start showing up, some that I recognize, others that I don’t. They start wandering in various directions and I fretfully start trying to keep everyone together.

It takes me a moment, but I finally realize that I need to just let this go. I watch as the kids wander off various directions. The girl with the braid leads R out of sight down a ramp. It feels strange to just let this happen, but I sense that if I just relax, everything will be all right. As the kids disperse all around me, the dream transitions into a false awakening in my bed.

I roll out of bed, grab my journal, and prepare to write down the dream. Just as I’m doing this, I hear my oldest son E shout over the baby monitor that “Daddy!! I! Need! Waterrrrrr!!” I put the journal down, hoping that I can remember the lucid dream for later, and head off to help E. I perform a few mundane steps of this before the dream ends.

There was a dream where I was at some sort of island theme park. It was supposed to be pretty scary. I was with Nguyen and a few other people. We stayed there for a while. There were a few of the higher ups frying there as well for some reason.
There was a pretty intense part of the park, probably one of the three parts of the park where you get toured around by some clown looking guy, and randomly throughout the ride he would go crazy and you have to calm him down in order to progress without anyone having to be taken. It was a very intense and somewhat scary ride. There was a whole fiasco with who I was staying with and the clown. They didn't look like the clown from it, but they somewhat did. The face paint on the one clown would change color when he went insane during the ride.
Watson was there with us, and he ordered a bunch of video games to the park address but he wasn't there to pick them up the next day because he was probably missing or something.
Then I went with some of the higher ups from my work from the park to another part which was in a house hotel area where my grandma and aunty were staying. There were a few interesting things that happened there and then I got a ride with them back to the park. There was another part of the dream that involved them and my work more heavily but its pretty hazy.
I get back to the park and have a pretty intense moment where an entire hall of people turn into the clown looking things, it was kind of scary but moreso just intense and in tents. I end up finding out why the clown was so crazy though when I try to escape from the park one night through a flashback.
In a past life the clown was in fact a starfish whose daughter starfish got destroyed by the waves and rocks and environment. Life is hard for other creatures. He dragged her to a place near the ocean and rocks where he could sort of protect her and try to help her heal, because starfish can heal relatively easily. He ends up turning into a large barnacle to protect her. I just remember intense feelings of sympathy for the clown starfish barnacle, and it all made sense why he was so angry to me at the time. Then the dream ended.
~~~
There is a pretty major dream, kinda vivid, where at the end of it, we end up somewhat around Las Vegas celebrating something and a small cruise turns into a large extravagant one.. It seemed to be around Hawaii because there were huge boats and also F15's in the water that we were all riding. It was an amazing celebration There was some production as to why it was being recorded as well. I think it was after work in my dream. I had a feeling that I had never seen this before even though I am from Hawaii.
I cant recall the rest of the dream as of right now.
~~~
an extensive dream about me, Nguyen, Scott and my Catholicism teacher as well as all the people in my weekend catholic school as we go out, learn, and get into hi jinx. we end up having some lessons I forget which kind. Then I end up talking to my friend Nguyen, as we need Halloween costumes... We go to a mall and we buy two nun costumes that pull away into other costumes like party boy. we the go to our catholic class via shuttle, where we meet my friend scott, who has now turned into a douche for some reason and feeds me some bs story about how he had moved or seen his house where his mom and him used to live where he was beaten by his dad as an excuse for being a douche. He slaps an old man on the face in the subway.
then we go back to class after trying to figure out what we re going to eat for lunch as we cant decide, we almost don't have lunch.
At class there are many people i know. It is held on the top floor of some building in a city like pearl city. we talk and our teacher seems like an asshole. I see some of my cousins in my class and one of them is singing a song by Die Antwoord. I am pressured by the teacher to see if I am going to volunteer for whatever thing they had going on the next day, which I was hesitant to do because I had no clue. Then we went on with our lives after the class and having decided that I wouldn't go on this excursion the next day, as I still want to have a weekend. Then the dream ends.
~~~
I go to a convenience store with my mom and sister and Martinson. We get into a small confrontation.
~~~
Had a WILD. Went into SP then got woken up by a little boy. Room was small. He said "she" wanted to see me. Went to see a somewhat scary dream lady that I turned into my memere. I decided I wanted to get away at that point so I fell through the ground into a backyard. There was a few trees and dogs there. Pretty vicious dogs but I love them so I let them bite me. I go into another scene where its a beautiful open field and I fly around. The weather is so nice, and there's pine trees. The weather gets darker and on top of a hill I see Kim Jong Un. I fly away to a desert area where the world gets like runescape and I think im in WoW. I start to walk around the crowded halls. I have a movie like vision of two girls in the town. Sisters.
~~~
Had a crazy dream where We were travelling across country with a bunch of people, some high school classmates and whatnot and we went to a very high class party. There were a lot of drugs and debauchery going on at this party. That was pretty much the extent of it.
~~~
Had a dream where i was in my old house and every night a demon dog would come and try to harm us but we would hold it back.
Had another dream where a dog used a paint brush in its mouth to paint a large canvas in the back yard
Had another dream where we were all staying at my cousins house and we were going to have a huge pot luck. Some of the people that I work with were there such as Lawson and Harris.
~~~
Bunch of awesome dreams last night. Had one where I was going through some sort of fun house where some somewhat evil things popped out at you and it was a test of whether you could handle them all. Spirits and stuff would try to enter your body. After I got out of there I went up to this other place and saw my aunty who turns out was taken over somewhat by these evil things. Then I woke up in a somewhat military barracks where we all had bunk beds. They said it was code red mopp 4 because the room was painted red.
Then I had some other dreams which were all very vivid. After flying around in one of them because I knew that I was lucid, I tried to conjur something, but for some reason it wasn't working. I also toured my aunty around because I knew that she was taken over by demons. When I got tired of the dream I fell through the floor to see where I could go to next.
~~~
Had a dance battle with Nguyen just while i was taken over by the grim reaper who actually looked like a muppet. I was part of an organization that was housing a girl child that its members were keeping her hostage because she was the key in unleashing the Old Ones. There was a jerk at the head of the organization now who basically runs things in the background Me and a bunch of my real life co workers were all a part of this organization. He tried to get all of our contacts through each other by forcing us to give him our contacts but some refused.
Had another dream where I went to a mall with some friends, but it wasn't a huge mall. I tried to impress my friends with a display of acrobatic skill by jumping all over the place in the mall and doing some cool stuff. There was an upper area in the mall which was a sort of play area which was like a rotating skating rink but instead was a moving platform that span and you had to run with it and try not to fall off of it because it was very high in the air.
Had another dream where I was back at home and for some reason my dad was there as well as my mom. My dad basically took over my moms room and my mom was left to stay in the living room, which was weird because it was her house. There were quite a few interesting dreams this past week and this past night The most interesting was the one where we were part of an organization that was corrupt and there was a figure head that was a little child who was a mere pawn in the whole thing.

Dream recall from today's WBTB/naps.

Dream 1(fragment):

Something about piloting some craft.

Dream 2(fragment):

Something about dragons.

Dream 3(fragment):

Some shmup boss fight.

Dream 4:

I try to do DEILD but it fails but then i try for WILD and soon transition occurs and FA fades into my view. I get up but it"s very unstable, it's hard to stand and navigate, i try to stabilize but that doesn"t works, then i switch to quadruped stance and go towards balcony door. I try to break through but whole unstability makes me just bounce away. I notice weird mechanism on the wall and there are a few clocks on it, i pick two and one of them is at 4h and another is at 8h, dream fades.

Dream 5(fragments):

i was browsing dreamviews and there were weird spammy posts around.

11/25/13 10:35AM
I already got sleep, so I'm sure this is why this happen. I was reading bout ppl's LDs in bed than decided to sleep a little more without intentions of LDing or anything. I just had SP but like in the dreamworld I guess I'm in a room that looks like mines but not really but i'm stuck in the bed and all I can do is barely toss and turn while like breathing hard. Than I have a FA still in bed with SP I try to move but same barely can only move in bed and something is attacking me. I hear like a roar and it's attacking my thigh, it hurts. It ends and I have another FA/SP I guess, again in what looked like my room but not really but this time I see my covers are brown instead of blue and out the corner of my eye I see someone in a wedding dress which I guess was a mannequin because a mannequin hand slowly stretches towards me, which freaks me out a bit. I try moving but my body and limbs feel so heavy and it's very hard to move. That mannequin hand continues to stretch more and more but very slowly, I eventually managed to get out the bed but my eyes are still glued to that hand while I'm trying to put my feet in my addidas slides lol. Since my body is so heavy and I move slow, I give in by reaching for the mannequin's hand. I grab her hand, expecting to feel a plastic hand but instead I feel as if I'm clenching my covers. Now finally awake in my bed with my eyes close and that same hand I used is in fact clenching my covers lol. That felt so real!

We were on a field trip and one of my friends that had traveled to America was there. (In the dream though he said that he just got back from Canada). All around me are some teachers but they are leaving. He gives me a hug and continues hugging me until i pull away and tell him we can't hug now. (In my school if you hug someone of the opposite sex you get suspension
) So he stops. When we go outside, we walk and we talk for a bit. After all the teachers leave i tell him that i have no problem hugging him and that the only reason i told him to stop hugging me is so i wouldn't get suspended. So he looks around to make sure that their aren't any teachers and then gives me a longer hug. We sit on a bench and we keep talking and one of my friends come up to us and sits with us and says "I know i'm being a third wheel" so i give her the get lost look and she still goes "I know this is awkward" and she makes no move to get up and she says "I can stay here for hours". Right now i'm proper pissed off at her and then i wake up in my dream. Then i don't remember what happened but then i woke up for real.