non-lucid

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

I'm not sure how I didn't go lucid last night. My guess is that everything was just so normal, and my dream memory just barely bad enough to keep me from reality checking in full, that I never even noticed the possibility that I was dreaming

See what I mean in these two dreams I recalled (I was able to remain still when I woke up and think about the dreams this time!)

Dream 1: All was as normal as could be; I went about my day as I would go about any day. That kind of makes a long story short, because the dream was long and vivid, but hey, it was normal, so why waste time on that stuff? Anyway, at one point, I stopped to tell my brother about lucid dreaming. When I got to reality checking, he was kind of confused. "Why would I ask myself if I'm dreaming when I know I'm not?" "You want to ask that when you are in a dream. The only reason you ask during the day is so that you'll remember to in that dream." After that I had to leave and run some errands, and the normalness returned, but I kept thinking about reality checking.

So close...but not close enough.

Dream 2: My mom was telling me how she had been unable to get to sleep lately. "I don't have that problem anymore." I said. "I just put myself into sleep paralysis and I go right to sleep!" "Oh really?" She replied. "How do you do that?" "Well, it's simple." And then I went through the process, mentioning the possibility of lucid dreaming with the WILD method.

Honestly that's all I remember from that second dream...it wasn't very clear to begin with. But the fact that both dreams have a lot to do with lucid dreaming tells me that I'm close. I had other dreams, too, (I just couldn't remember them because I slept all night long instead of waking up three or four times as usual) and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they had similar content. I guess today I better beef up my RCing and see what happens!

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Wow, last weekend must have messed up my LDing worse than I thought

I kept moving last night and letting my mind get distracted with other thoughts when I woke up, so I kept forgetting my dreams. I remember having at least 4, but I haven't the slightest idea of what the first three were. I'm positive none were lucid. Fortunately, with that last one, I was able to catch myself and remain still and silent to think about my dream. Not that it's much worth recalling, but hey, it's better than nothing.

I was keeping up with a house owned by a family that I know (IRL). They were on vacation and asked me to check their mail for them and do a couple other little things. Their daughter (who I have an...interesting history with) stayed behind, but she had to be out all day, which was why they asked me instead of her. Several days went by just fine, except for a strange woman who kept coming and asking if anyone of that family was there. When I told her 'no', she acted like she left, but I caught her stalking the place several times. A couple days, the daughter got home early, and actually was there when the woman (whose name, I learned from the daughter, was Maggie) asked if anyone besides me was home. Feeling a level of responsibility for protecting the daughter (if for no other reason, to help make up for our complicated and not-so-positive past), I still told Maggie 'no'. Somehow she knew I was lying; she persisted this time, but I refused to let her in. Eventually she left, but I knew there was trouble soon to come.

Finally, it reached the last day for this family to be on vacation, and for me to be at their house. Every time the daughter got home early, it was awkward between us. Neither of us really spoke. I decided to make the best of this last day. When the daughter got home, I looked her square in the eye, and cheerfully said, "Hello! Sorry I'm always at your house...I guess this is it, though!" She didn't respond as positively as I had hoped. "Yeah...I guess so." I didn't blame her, considering what we'd been through. I started to gather up my things. "Actually, I'm pretty much done around here, so I can go right now." "Ok." The daughter said. After a moment, she stopped me. "Hey! Um...thanks. You did a lot of work this week, and...well, I appreciate it." I smiled and prepared to leave. But just then, Maggie burst into the room. "What do you think you're doing!?" She shouted at the daughter. "After what he's done? You're just going to let him go? And thank him!?" and then Maggie prepared to spit out a bunch of dumb ideologies and philosophies about life. I can't remember exactly what they were, but think along the lines of "embrace your anger; make the dark side your ally." I had had just about enough of Maggie. So I grabbed a nearby PVC pipe, watched as Maggie turned to rant at the daughter, and then, when no one was looking at me, I took a swing at her, landing a blow right on the head. She turned around and glared at me something awful, then grabbed at the pipe as I swung again. She was incredibly strong, and snapped the Pipe in half like it was a toothpick. Unfortunately for her, this left a jagged edge to my half of the pipe, turning it into a very vicious weapon. We went back and forth, exchanging blows, blocking each others, and even though Maggie was unarmed, it took me a long while to land enough damage to weaken her. Eventually, though, I took a spin and plunged the sharp end of the pipe right into Maggie's stomach, knocking her back onto a nearby bed. She knew she was done for, so again she resumed spitting out dumb ideologies. The worst part of it was, that as I glanced at the daughter, I could see she was giving in and beginning to believe Maggie's words. "Can't you see he hates you for believing me!?" Maggie shouted. The daughter dropped to her knees and began to cry. I stood motionless for a moment, the PVC pipe raised and ready to finish off the strange woman. I had her incapacitated for a moment, so I lowered the pipe and carefully approached the crying daughter. I gently laid a hand on her shoulder. "I really don't hate you." She looked up at me. "I hate the devil; I do not hate the deceived." I extended a hand to help the daughter up, but it was also as a way to declare her side in the battle, and all three of us knew it. Maggie resumed her rant, but it didn't stop the daughter from taking my hand and standing up. "Go." She said. With that, I smashed the PVC pipe down on Maggie, which turned her face blue, and the next turned all of her skin blue, and the next turned everything--teeth, eyes, hair--blue, and then one last blow made a light shoot from her eyes and mouth, and then disintegrate her, just like Smith on the third Matrix. Actually, somehow I knew then that she was Smith, just in disguise. I woke up soon after that.

Just as a sidenote to this dream, I don't generally go around and beat people up with PVC pipes

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Day 2 of the reboot on my lucid dreaming schedule. No LD's from it yet, but that is to be expected, I suppose. It takes a while to make a habit. But the good thing is, I was successfully able to maintain decent dream recall last night, with the addition of reality checks during the day. Last time I tried doing those two things at once, working this hard at it, it took me days to be able to do one without forgetting to do the other equally as hard.

Three dreams again. So far I've had no need to set alarms; my mind wakes me up after each dream that I remember.

Dream 1: I was at my church, but for some reason the service was not in the main auditorium. Only a handful of people were there, my brother being one of them. The funny thing is, he goes to a different church closer to where he lives. All of a sudden, one of my sisters stood up in the middle of everything that was going on, ran over to my brother, and started crying. And I mean really bawling. IRL, my brother is thinking about moving to another country, and even though nobody mentioned it in the dream, I just knew that was the cause of my sister's tears. The entire service was cancelled because she was making such a big deal, and everyone walked my brother out to his car. Pretty soon, everyone but him and me were crying. He wasn't crying because he was the one that was leaving, so he couldn't miss himself, and I wasn't crying because I understood his purpose for going, and as a guy, going somewhere far away for fulfill that purpose isn't a sad concept to me.

I'm not really sure what to think about that one. Is there a part of me that feels that saddened over him leaving that it got into my dreams? Or is it instead that I see myself as the only one not feeling that saddened over it? This I am not sure.

Dream 2: I was part of some Zune hacking forums. My project: run Windows XP on my Zune 30. It's technologically possible, I suppose. Impractical, since my Zune 30 has no touch screen, but possible. It took the forum guys and me a while, but eventually we figured we were really close to success. I had to go on a trip, so I took my Zune with me and played around with the codes on-board. Not sure how I did that, seeing as there's no keyboard, but somehow I just pressed buttons and the right letters were typed in . Eventually, I actually got it to work! It booted up and loaded properly. I even opened Windows Media Player 11 on it and was able to import all of my Zune's music to it. "Yes!" I shouted, drawing the attention of everyone else in the plane. "Look, look! See! I got Windows XP running on my Zune!" I showed some random guy. I listened to a couple songs, watched a couple video clips...and then woke up.

There's not much question about my mind with that one. Yep, that's how it works, for ya. Always taking handheld computers and using them for things they were never meant to do. I haven't done anything on my Zune, but I ran Linux on my Tungsten E2, so maybe I'll make this dream a reality someday.

Dream 3: I was afraid I was forgetting my previous dreams. I had fallen asleep too quickly to take down notes, or even come up with some catchy phrase that reminds me of the dreams as I usually do. I was in my room, so I woke up my computer (which happened to be running Ubuntu at the time) and OpenOffice was there, with full descriptions of both dreams. I read back through them, and found them to be completely accurate. I finished reading none too soon, since right after I was done I woke up.

Pretty handy dream, I think. If only I could do that every night as my last dream...it would make recall SO much easier

Whelp, those were my dreams from last night! I'll keep working on dream recall and reality checking as I have recently learned from Naiya's excellent tutorials!

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Well, I figure it's time for me to have a consistent LD schedule. Ever since I started lucid dreaming, it's been really inconsistent. Everything was still an experiment, so I suppose it was appropriate for the time. But now, I know how the different methods work, and it's high time for me to go for one and stick with it for a while.

So hit reboot on the operation...I'm starting over from the beginning with the hopes of enabling myself to LD more frequently and consistently.

The first thing to work on is dream recall, so I focused on that last night. Rather than start thinking about something as soon as I woke up, I remained still and thought back through my dream. When at first I felt I couldn't remember anything, I turned to questioning. "Ok, who was in my dream?" That one worked the best, considering my dreams last night had several people from real life in them. By the time morning came around and dreaming was done, I had successfully recalled 3 dreams!

Dream 1: There was a storm coming. A big, bad one. Even during the day, the sky was darkened with clouds to the point of looking like night. No one knew exactly when the storm would come, but the one thing that was for certain was that when it did, no one would be able to get out and shop for necessities. So I found myself riding from place to place, helping my mom stock up for the storm (I don't remember ever stocking up for myself, though ). The weird thing was, as we drove, it wasn't on normal roads. All of the roads were stacked up vertically, one on top of the other, and each country had its roads located at different heights. We were, of course, in the USA section of roads, but we nearly fell through a hole in the road one time, on our way to a library. "Why are we stopping at the library to stock up for a storm?" I asked. "Because if the power goes out," my mom replied, "we'll need something to do." "Great." So we went inside, and parted ways to look for books that interested us. As I rounded one corner, I saw Brad (a friend IRL) standing there. "Hey!" I said. "Are you stocking up for the storm here, too?" "No, I'm just checking out some books for a chemistry test. Doesn't matter if the whole world closes down; school's going to keep going." "Yeah, that stinks. So did you get a chance to try out the mod yet?" (I made a game mod for Brad IRL) "Yeah, that was awesome! It worked perfectly! Totally changed the way I played the game. Thanks for that!" I don't remember what we said after that, but it wasn't long before I left the library and told my mom that I would drive her back home...she hadn't driven too well on the way there, which is why we nearly fell through the hole. Didn't do much good, though, because not long after we got going, a lightning bolt struck the road next to the car and knocked it clear off the edge of the road! It fell, down, down, down, until we landed on the roads of Russia. There was no elevator that would simply take us back up to USA roads...and the Russian authorities were not too happy with us getting there without Visa's/passports/anything like that. Off the side of the road, I saw a staircase that looked like it went up to the USA roads...so I began to fight off the Russian police and make my way there, but I woke up too soon. What fight there was was pretty epic, though. It was dark, raining in torrents, and I knew Jujitsu.

Dream 2: This dream was just plain dumb, but for some reason I dreamed it, and I have to recall it, so here it is. Somehow I met up with the replicator man (from recent episodes of Heroes.) Somehow I also found out that he wasn't evil, and had an attraction to Claire Bennet (also from Heroes). He also was afraid that Claire would never like him in return, "Because," he said, "I've been weird around her in the past...and my room is all messy." "What?" "Yeah, I live in a loft...and there's no way a girl would like coming over there with it like I've got it right now." "Well, how about this:" I suggested. "I'll organize your room for you, and then you'll be able to convince Claire to come over and give you a chance. When she sees what's been done, she'll know that you're making honest efforts." "Except you'd be making the effort, not me." He pointed out. "Umm...yeah." "Go ahead and do it." So I did. He wasn't kidding that it was a mess. But magically, I achieved great organization skills and got the place looking really nice. When I had him come look, he pointed to his coin collection. "I had those stacked by value, and you just put them all in a jar! You call that organization?" "Whatever..." So I took the coins out and put them in a coin sorter (I guess I pulled it out of thin air). "There. Happy now?" "Yep." But then, rather than invite Claire over, he got some punk buddy of his to come and play cards and listen to junky music. I mean, seriously, it sounded awful. There was nothing musical about it. "So...when are you going to invite Claire over?" I asked. At first I had no response, because the 'music' was too loud. So I literally killed the stereo with a smash of my fist, then repeated the question. "I did this so you could have Claire over, now when is she coming?" "Alright, alright, I'll call her already...sheesh." He sent his buddy away and pretty soon Claire was there. The stereo was suddenly fixed and he had his crap music playing again. (I cannot believe how dumb this dream is...) He and Claire were sitting on the couch. "So, do you like what I did to the room?" He asked. Claire looked disgusted. "You know...yeah, I like what you did to the room, but...I just don't feel the same way about you as you feel about me. Sorry." So she left. "Ok, whatever, man." He said, totally unhurt. "Hey, turn up the music, will ya?" He said to me as he turned on the TV.

Dream 3: This was kind of dumb, but it was at least entertaining because it was funny. A bunch of extended family members were dropping by one day, pretty unexpectedly. Well, dropping by at my parent's place. I, along with a couple of my brothers and sisters, were already at my parent's house, and that's also where the extended family was dropping by. Everyone seemed pretty worried about the food situation. "All we have is meatloaf!" My mom said. "Well, why not just make more of it?" I suggested. "You just can't do that with meatloaf!" "Why not?" "Because meatloaf just doesn't work that way." "Wow, ok..." and I backed off. Everyone else started to join in on fretting about the food, and it was bugging me, so I went upstairs and checked my email on the computer. I don't remember what was there, but it was enough to keep me busy until everyone was at the table and ready to eat. When I came down, every seat was filled, so I was going to head off to grab another chair, when I heard someone comment about the lack of food again. "Just try making more!" "No! But you just can't do that with meatloaf! It won't work!" everyone shouted at me. So I just went to grab the chair. When I got back to the dining room with it, I was told there was no room left. "I'll just go to the corner...I can hold the plate in my lap or something." "No! No!" They shouted. "There's just no room!" "Oh, so it's like the meatloaf?" I asked, frustrated. "GAAH! You just can't do that with meatloaf!" my sister shouted angrily. The thing was, I found out they were right about the chair situation. I really couldn't get my chair around to the corner because I kept on bumping everyone with it trying, and that made them all the more upset (and with each bump, the dream got weaker and weaker). "FINE! I'll take my plate upstairs." "No! No! You can't do that." But I did. I walked right into the room with the TV and turned it on. "Can't do that with meatloaf....ha! That's just nonsense." When the TV came on, it was a commercial. "Figures." But I watched the commercial anyway. It was some weird thing about a medicine to fight depression in teen girls. For some reason, its jingle was "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee". Finally, the dream ended and I woke up.

The dreams were obviously nothing special, but hey, I remembered 3 dreams very well in one night of trying when lately I've been doing good to remember even 1! If I keep this up, as well as other aspects of setting a LD schedule, I'm sure I'll start LDing again in no time!

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

I think trying a different method of induction every night is messing me up. I haven't done the exact same thing even twice in a row for a while, and actually, the last time I did the same thing twice in a row was the last time I had a lucid dream

So if you haven't guessed...no lucids. Again. I remembered one dream pretty well, though.

I was in some building with great architecture...it looked to be a couple hundred years old, at least. And this was a huge building I'm talking about. I went in there because of impression and because it was rigged to look like some store. But as soon as I got inside, I realized it was far different than what the outside made it out to be. I was denied exit; guards and hovering robot cameras all watched me, and if I tried to leave, they would see to it that I didn't make it out. I tried every traditional exit, and when that failed, I tried windows and rooftops as well. Still I was caught every time and forced to stay. Eventually admitting defeat, I sagged against the wall and slid to the floor. But then I felt something...the wall was giving way. After waiting for the hovering robot to pass by on its patrol, I pushed in on the brick wall, and found several of them to be loose. Pretty soon there was a hole just big enough for me to go through, so I did, and then I ran. I was in some sort of sewer system, but I just ignored the flow of...water, on the ground. Of course the robots found the whole and started to chase after me, so I hid every place I could as I went along. It took me hours, but finally I found a manhole cover that got me out of there. My first reaction to being free was to warn others not to go inside, but they either ignored me or told me I was crazy. Once, I noticed someone walking up the steps to the building's entrance, and I ran up to stop her, but she just looked angry and told me, "I come in and out of here all the time! What makes you think you have any business telling me what not to do, beggar?" "Beggar?" I thought. Then I looked at myself. Running all over the place, (and through the sewers) had left me dirty, smelly, and with holes in my clothes in several places. I cautiously followed her inside, and I noticed my dad sitting on a bench next to the door. "Dad, come on, we've got to get out of here now!" "Where have you been?" My dad asked. "I was waiting for you; I thought you were in here." "I was, but they wouldn't let me leave!" "What?" Just then, that woman walked by and straight out the door, and the security guard tipped his hat to her. I grabbed the guard by the neck, feeling as dirty as I looked. I wanted to strangle him for having stopped me, but now acting like it never happened so as to make me seem like the madman. There was a short scuffle, but eventually I was thrown out the door, and everyone thought I was crazy. I ran off, and woke up.

Very frustrating dream.

If only I had realized it was a dream, then I could have changed it! I really want to lucid dream about Pandora...a five-second non-lucid dream about it just isn't good enough for me.

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Last night I went to bed with the intention of doing a TotM; namely, to complete the basic challenge of drinking a glass of champagne. (As a side note, in real life I wouldn't drink that stuff, but it's a dream for crying out loud! ) I fell asleep too quickly to do a good MILD, and had a nightmare that I don't remember anymore. When I woke up from that, I tried to MILD, but again fell asleep before I could finish up with the visualization stage, so no good came of that. I did have a long and memorable dream after that, though! I wasn't far from succeeding at the TotM, seeing as it took place on New Years, and multiple times I saw glasses of champagne in the background, but I never went lucid, so in the end, I never actually made use of them, and failed at the TotM this time. I'll keep trying, though!

Here's the dream. It was more like a movie than a dream, though. Most of it was in third-person, and what I was seeing changed like a camera in a movie, moving from shot to shot, angle to angle. I wasn't even physically present the entire time, even though I knew I (or my character in the 'movie') was elsewhere and active.

We were having a new years party at my house and all was going well when police burst in and started taking everyone out. I ran all over the place, trying to get other people out of the house and to safety, but the police had surrounded the building and so no one escaped. Eventually it was just me, standing in the middle of the place, with the front door to my left and the back door to my right, knowing that police were on both sides. I was considering which would be the best possible escape when two clones of Agent Smith (from the Matrix films) walked in the front door. I chose right then to escape through the back. Police were there, as expected, but I was scared enough of Smith that I was able to take down both of the officers in my way and make a break for it after climbing over the fence. Smith watched the whole thing from inside, and said not a word. His two clones simply turned and looked at each other, then at the unconscious police on the ground.

Next thing I knew, I was at a dream friend's house....which was more like a mansion. I told him my situation, and he took me inside and promised that I'd be safe there. I turned around and saw a bunch of girls who were sitting around a counter. I thought about joining them, but just then I saw something through a window. It was Smith, circling the house with his many clones, looking for me. My friend saw it as well. "Quick!" he said. "Come with me!" He pulled my arm and led me down a few stairs in a staircase. "Why are we stopping?" I asked. "9...10...11." He said, counting the stairs we had descended. "Yep, this is the right one!" Then he pressed his hand against the wall, and it slid inward, then moved aside. It wasn't a big gap, but turned sideways we easily fit through. Once inside, my dream friend closed the wall and then led me down a few more stairs into a small, unlit basketball court with a very low ceiling (about seven feet was all). The wall on the right was a solid tinted window overlooking a full-size court with goals and a scoreboard and everything. "Wait here." He said. "I'll take care of Smith." I nodded to him and watched him leave. Having nothing else to do, I proceeded to examine the secret room. Machines were lined up against all the walls, standing about three feet tall and two feet wide. I couldn't tell what exactly they were for. My puzzlement increased when I made it to the end of the small court and found a passage on the left wall that led to at least 5 other courts just like this one. I took a couple steps backwards after peering in at the other courts, and bumped into something. Turning around, I saw the biggest of all the machines. It was around 5 feet tall and 6 feet wide. At the top of it was a tall screw with wires wrapped around it. A nut sat on the very top, barely screwed on at all. "That won't make a very good connection..." I thought as I began to screw the nut down closer to the wires. When I was just about to screw it all the way down on the wires, my friend returned. "Wait! No!" He shouted. But it was too late; the nut was down hard enough on the wires to make them connect. Lights came on in the small courts and in the large court. A buzzer sounded, and I knew Smith would hear. "Oh, no..." I said. Then I noticed something out the window. "Hey! That's me down there...on the big court!" "It's a hologram." My friend explained. "This room projects holograms from the small courts onto the big ones!" Just then, a few Smith clones burst into the large court. They saw my hologram standing there. "Going somewhere, Mr. Anderson?" one of them said in Smith's usual, devious way. They all ran at my hologram and tried to take it down, which obviously didn't go very well. While they were distracted, the real me ran for the exit. Unfortunately, that caused the holographic me to do the same thing, so Smith knew which direction I was headed.

As soon as I reached the stairway outside, I could hear another Smith talking to the girls at the counter, asking them if they knew anything about me. "Good thing I didn't talk to them!" I thought as I crouched low on the stairs, waiting to see what Smith's next move would be. When he concluded that the girls honestly knew nothing, he pulled out a radio device and told the other clones. It was then that I noticed he had a couple suitcases next to him, one on each side. Somehow they just couldn't be good. Bombs, perhaps? I took one look at those innocent girls and knew that I could not let anyone be hurt or killed because of my presence there. While Smith was on his radio, I ran up and swiped the case on his left and made a mad dash for the door. Smith and his clones all started to pursue me, of course, but somehow I managed to escape into a forest before they could catch me. Being night, I was totally hidden, and eventually they gave up the search and left. It was then that I had the chance to open the suitcase and find out what was inside. "Robots?!" Yep; the suitcase was filled with a bunch of little robot toys. "This must not have been Smith's...it was leaning up against the counter's base...I just assumed it was his, too, since he was right next to it!"

Meanwhile, Smith brought the other suitcase back to his boss. I never saw the boss's face, but his hands and voice sounded like that of an old man who was still incredibly strong and powerful. "A bomb?" He said. "You kept the bomb in my box? This was supposed to be used, not returned!" "I know, sir," Smith explained, "but he got away too soon." "How could he get away? You will go back and try again!" "Yes, sir."

It was then like someone hit rewind on the dream, and I was back in the small basketball court. The dream played itself out exactly as before, same 'camera' angles, same lines, same everything. I took the wrong case again and fled again, all exactly as before. Smith's boss even said the same things and told him to try again. The dream rewound again, and played out just the same. Smith's boss rewound it after that, too, setting the dream to play from the courts up to the part with Smith and his boss. The dream rewound one more time, but this time, something was different.

When I saw the big machine with the screw on the top, I decided not to screw the nut down. So my friend came back, and not in a panic. "Ok, I've done all I can." He said. "Smith doesn't believe me when I say you're not here. There's another passage similar to this one, on stair 23. Only it will lead you outside, and to a car. Here are the keys; get out of here, go wherever is safe!" "Thanks. I've just got one thing I need to take care of first." I went outside and waited for the Smith who talked to the girls to get on his radio. Then I ran up, grabbed the proper suitcase, swung it around and smacked him in the face, and then ran down to stair 23. I was inside and closed the wall behind me by the time Smith was up and chasing me again. He ran right past the secret passage in the wall. I made it safely outside, got in the car, and used the toolbox that was in the back seat to deactivate the bomb.

The next thing I saw was Smith talking to his boss. Fortunately, things worked out a bit differently this time. "Toys?" The boss said. "You brought me back a bunch of geeky robot toys in my box?! Smith, you are FIRED!"

And then I woke up. It wasn't lucid, but hey, it was pretty nice for a regular dream, imo

Black=Awake Blue=Lucid Red=dream



Location: Some sort of supermarket

Me and a few of my friends were in a supermarket of some sort in the mood for some sundaes. We start looking around in the freezer seciton. We see some frozen meats and other foods, but no ice cream, so we decide to leave and come back later. We end up walking to the exit, then turning around right as we got there thinking that it has been long enough so they must have restocked the shelves. This time we decided to split up to try and find everything we needed faster. 2 of my friends went to go get toppings while I stayed back and tried to find the ice cream.

I walked over to the freezer section once again and this time I say some peanut butter ice cream. I decided that this would work so i grabbed it and went to the check-out counter. I get in line behind a woman buying several different things and unfortunately, she is just a few cents short of what she needs to buy it. So, the cashier gives her some coins and she continues to buy the things she needed and left. While they were ringing everything out, i noticed a peanut butter cup egg, something you would get for Easter. I decie, "Hey, this will go good on top of the ice cream. Let's buy it." So I did. I grabbed the egg and set it and the ice cream on the ring out counter and the cashier proceeded to ring them up. Once he was about to tell me the price, I woke up.

Turns out that later that day, my parents randomly brought home peanut butter ice cream and we made sundaes.

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Again I find myself in a situation where I recall dreaming several times; at least 3 this time. Unfortunately, because I didn't stay awake long enough to think to take down notes, all but one is lost on me. And that one is, again, so strange that I'm annoyed with myself for not realizing it was a dream in the first place!

The dream I remember clearly was one of the strangest things I've seen in a very long time. I went to Walmart, picked up a copy of "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" for Wii, and then drove back home. But then, when I walked inside, several dream characters (none of them people from real life) were there, and waiting for the game. We went to play it...by going upstairs and putting the disk in the shower! No kidding. Instantly, platforms and contraptions appeared in the shower, and a bunch of pieces (which were divided into groups like heads, torsos, feet) appeared on the sink. Each person playing the game put the pieces together to form a really odd kind of animal thing. All of the animals were remote-controlled, and we put them down into the shower, which was now a SSBB level. And so we controlled the animals and made them fight that way. As we played, the shower kind of faded away and we saw forests or waterfalls or any number of things moving past the platforms as we made our robotic animals smash each other to pieces...literally. I also noticed that the remotes we were using never seemed to stay the same...every time I'd look down at mine it would be totally different. It didn't seem to affect my skill level, though. After what seemed like hours, it was down to just me and one other DC; everyone else had been KO'd. The DC hit 'pause' and the shower came back. She said the animals needed to rest.

While they rested, we went to a different store and shopped around for I-don't-know-what...everyone split up into groups of two or three and it was a bit difficult to find them all, so it seemed to take another hour or so. Whoever had anything to purchase did so and then we left. Back at the house, the animals were still there, and interestingly, neither the animals nor the remotes had changed since I last saw them. As I had gotten there first, though, I made some last-minute modifications to my animal with the spare parts that were lying around. It ended up looking like a crayfish with a porcupine body, cow legs, and robotic arms. When everyone came in, they commented about how ugly my animal looked, but I was apparently pretty confident in how it would perform, because it didn't bother me.

We put the animals back into the shower, which resumed its state of platforms and scrolling backgrounds, and duked it out with the animals on the final round of the competition.

I woke up before I could see who won

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

I remember having at least 6 different dreams last night, however, most of them were very unclear, and upon waking up I was left with only a hazy image of what went on. I remember two pretty well, though. Neither of them were lucid, but I expect this is due to the fact that I threw off my usual WBTB schedule by trying to wake up at 4:21am instead of 5:21am and thus allow more time for lucid dreaming. I learned that that was a bad idea, as it produced no lucid dream, and also that I don't need more time for dreaming, as I was able to enter REM well into 8:00 this morning. Obviously the thing that has made my DILD's be short is the things I do in them that tend to wake me up.

Anyway, on to the dreams.

In the first dream, things began pretty normal--just going about one day with some dream characters that I seemed to know as long-time friends. When we passed by the neighborhood park, however, I saw something strange coming out of it. It was a giant hedgehog that was missing its back legs! "What in the world is THAT?" I exclaimed, pointing. "Oh," replied one of the DC's, "that's one of the flying hedgehogs. Don't get too close, or they'll..." the DC was too late. I had already gotten too close, and it leaped off the ground and flew right into me, knocking me down. I decided I wanted to get out of there, so I turned and ran, the DC's shortly behind me. Suddenly, we were all in this sandy place, like a small canyon, with some buttes scattered throughout. Wooden beams had been laid down to connect the buttes together from the top. How anyone got up there in the first place I'm not sure. But we didn't pay much attention to the scenery; we just ran around the corner of one big rock and ducked. Peaking around the corner, I saw that the single flying hedgehog had alerted his buddies, and now millions of them were flying through the air in our direction, all of them missing their back legs. "We're done for." one DC whispered. I turned around and saw a Warthog (the Halo vehicle, not the animal) across the way from us. "Maybe not..." I said. This one girl DC and I ran across to it. I climbed in the front, and she took the turret in the back. At that moment I remember thinking it was kind of funny for a girl to be taking the turret, but she had some kind of warpaint on her face, so I figured she had probably done this before. Apparently she had, because she was a pretty darn good shot! I drove that warthog out there in the midst of all the flying hedgehogs and as I ran the low-flying ones down, she picked off the rest of them with that turret. It was pretty intense...I saw the muzzle flashes like real light, felt the heat from the turret...everything! I guess we won that battle, because I never died or anything, hedgehog bodies were everywhere, and I woke up.

The second dream came soon after that...my 4:21 alarm had not gone off yet, so I didn't try to stay awake.

I was at some peaceful lake, in a valley, the only sign of inhabitance being a small lake-house nearby. I was talking to that girl DC that I had fought with, and according to her, we totally destroyed the hedgehogs, but one of them had flown into my head as a final move of desperation and knocked me out. I had been unconscious until that point.

I don't remember anything else, save for a few images from the other dreams I had that are too vague to even put into words, really. Tonight I'm definitely not going to play with the WBTB time, since I know that 5:21am works for me. I'll also be sure to think more about weird things happening in my dreams as a sign that could make me go lucid. Flying hedgehogs missing their back legs...why the heck didn't that make me think I was dreaming?

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Well, I feel stupid! But at least I had a couple dreams last night!

I went to bed with headphones and an MP3 player set to a lucid dreaming MP3 called 'Lucid Spike', which begins with a 20-minute silence to allow time for falling asleep.

I'm not exactly sure what happened, then. I had a dream, in which I was going around in this huge building that a bunch of large, square rooms. At the middle of each end of the square was a hallway that led another such room. Down each hallway was a door on either side that led to a smaller conference room with no more hallways. Everyone I know or have ever known was in that building. I was going through all those rooms, finding people that in real life I need to talk to, accomplishing business with them, and then moving on to the next person. Suddenly, I realized something. "What the heck? Where'd these headphones come from? I didn't put these on!" And I woke up.

At least, I thought I did. I was laying in bed, with the headphones still on and all, as it should have been. But I didn't reality check, and I didn't realize it was a false awakening. I just tried to be still and get SP.

Then I woke up for real, and the headphones were gone. I was like, "Ok, that's weird, I was wearing headphones, and both them and the MP3 player are nowhere. This must be a dream!" So I reality checked and was disappointed to find myself to be awake. That didn't solve the headphone situation, though. I leaned over my bed and found them to be on the floor. When I saw that, I suddenly remembered waking up and for some reason I threw it all off the side of the bed. I wish I knew why I did that!

But for whatever reason, I ditched the MP3 player, which was supossed to help me become lucid, before it could even play anything, and then had a false awakening in which the presence of the MP3 player made me think it was real and not go lucid!

Figure that one out...

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Fell asleep too quickly to even reach SP! So disappointing...dream recall was bad, too. Felt like the dream itself was long, but the instant I woke up all I remembered clearly enough to put in words was driving around in Florida with my sister in the passenger seat, no directions, no map, and trying to find my relatives' house. Eventually I saw the ocean, and was able to use it as a reference point to get to the house, only when we went inside, it was a huge, really nice building, rather than a little house. After that it's entirely unclear. I remember little images from here and there, but nothing I could logically put together or explain in this journal.

Tonight, I really can't fall asleep when I WILD!

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

I determined to WILD. Absolutely determined. I set my alarm in case of failure on the first try, set aside any care for getting any sleep, and got in bed.

First WILD attempt (midnight): Reached full SP by doing the counting method, but drifted off to sleep rather than remain conscious. My dad (who works for the government) apparently stood against everyone else in a major decision. And now they were trying to put him away for it. So he came home one day, told us to pack up whatever we could in the back of our car, and then leave as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, just when we were about done packing, I noticed a camera in our garage door code box. "Wait!" I shouted to someone who was about to walk right by it. I was too late. I ducked behind the car as I heard the camera activate an alarm and a hidden turret, which promptly destroyed whoever it was that walked by. We wasted no more time, but jumped in the car and pulled off, leaving everything else behind. It went alright at first, but eventually the police came after us, and we had to split up. I'm not sure where we got the second car from, but we suddenly had two, so we took separate ways with the hopes of spreading the cops thin and making it possible for us to escape.

Second WILD attempt (5:21am): Woke up to my alarm at 5:21am and tried to WBTB WILD. Again, soon after hitting full SP, I lost consciousness and fell asleep. This time I was in a dream similar to my first WILD experience. I jumped from place to place without trying to, first playing Halo 3 with a friend at his house, then chatting on facebook with another friend on a laptop in my kitchen, and then to my bed. False awakening...and it was all so real I never once realized I was dreaming, nor did I think to reality check. I would have noticed if something was out of order, but I had 10 normally-formed fingers that stayed that way, there were no flying turtles or anything like that. Each time I jumped through space and time, I simply accepted the new location as my present state of existence and didn't give it a thought. Eventually, though, I did figure out one abnormality...I could still hear my friend talking about our game of Halo 3, even though I'd left that far behind! I woke up for real when I realized that, and found myself still in full SP!

Third WILD attempt (time unknown): Rather than break it by opening my eyes or trying to move, I just used my consciousness to finish off a WILD, and sure enough, within moments, I felt earthquake-like tremors in my bed that then seemed to rip me out of my body and into another, as I shot towards a light in the darkness at a magnificent speed. The force of being shot towards the light was so strong my arms were pinned to my sides. "It's working! I'm doing it!" I thought. I don't know if that killed the dream or what, but when I hit the light, I wasn't put into a dream scene with my dream body, but just stuck into a bodiless darkness. I tried to form a dream scene, but none came. Probably too quickly, I gave up, and woke myself up.

Fourth WILD attempt (7:38am): Encouraged from being so close, I tried again, but this time couldn't even reach SP. I concluded that there was no more use in trying; REM was done for the night and there was just no way I was going to succeed at this point.

But I got REALLY close that time! Sooner or later I've just GOT to succeed at WILDing again!

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Had too busy of a day to write down any dreams when I woke up, and they left me before I could write them down some other time

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Had one very vivid dream recall that may actually have been two...I can't remember if I had the first part, woke up, and then went back to sleep, or had them both and then woke up. Either way, though I could name a lot of details, since the concepts are fairly basic and I'm in a hurry right now, I'll only list the basic concepts here.

There was a carnival coming to town. Everyone was talking about how amazing it was and how we all needed to go. In anticipation (and inspiration) for it, I built some contraptions of my own and ran a little 'carnival' in my basement. Some of them worked, others...not so much. But the sideshow-like machines were still fairly well received by my friends, though I considered them to be a failure.

Perhaps I woke up here, or maybe it was later. Either way, there was a short time lapse.

I was at the carnival, and enjoying it very much, when a couple really tall and heavy guys ambushed me and put a bag over my head. I got pushed and shoved and tossed and turned, and then eventually they pulled the bag off. I found myself standing naked in front of a bunch of tarps laid on the ground. Crowds had gathered and formed walls on either side of the narrow tarps and my captors stood behind me, so there was no chance of running. It wouldn't have mattered if I could, though, since they pushed me down onto the tarps and watched as I slid away, to everyone's uproarious laughter. I could feel some kind of oil on the tarps, and rubbed all over me as well. I heard one person in the crowd laugh that I was covered in 'hog oil', but what that is I don't know. What I do know is that it was very slippery, and I couldn't get up or stop myself from sliding. People in the crowd pushed me along, and whenever I got to a corner in the tarps, they'd start me sliding down the next one, laughing the whole way. I was incredibly angry, so rather than flail around and do no good, I stopped and let them do their deeds for a minute until I was able to figure out a plan; what direction was I spinning on the tarp, how much tarp was there left, how fast was I going, etc. When my mental calculations were complete, I thrust my hands back and kicked my legs in the air, performing a kip-up. It knocked oil everywhere and got some people to clear out of the way, not to mention get me off my back, but the tarp was so slick that when I tried to walk I went right back down again. I rolled over to the clearing I had created in the crowd and again tried to kip-up. I was close to getting to make a mad dash for it, but then the burly guys knocked me a good one on the head and knocked me out.

Horrible dream for a Christmas night...of course that would be the most vivid one I've had for days now! Hopefully I'll be able to get back to lucid dreaming very soon! I'm really getting tired of this dry spell...

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Wow, I really should have elaborated on my notes waaaay sooner today. Got busy and totally forgot about keeping my DJ updated. Now most of the dream is lost on me. So not only did I have terrible recall to begin with (only 1 dream this time, and not lucid) but most of that is hazy now

I was driving...from the back seat. For some reason I refused to sit up front, so I was leaning forward in my Honda Pilot and trying to steer with one hand, stretching myself about as far as I could. To get it going, I had to lean down and push the pedal with my hand until I got up to speed, and then I'd steer for a while. Any sort of sharp turn was impossible, and I was causing a ton of chaos on the roads. Several times I thought I was going to be in a head-on collision, but the other driver would swerve and slow down just in the nick of time. "I'm such a horrible driver! How did this happen? I didn't used to be a bad driver! What's going on?" I thought. Suddenly, my sister appeared in the car next to me and she said: "Why not try riding up front?" Automagically, I found myself zip through the air and into the front seat. Suddenly I could drive again. (fancy that ) But wait, there's more outrageous happenings! When I got home, I started complaining about how my sister had been so distracting and talked to me when I needed to concentrate and started pinning the fault for my horrible driving on her! Then I woke up.

What a positively stupid dream...good for laughs, I suppose, but I wasn't satisfied with that. When I woke up, it was 6:30...not 5:21, as my alarm was set for. (Seriously...5:21am is my perfect WBTB time.) Still, I decided to try a WILD, even though it was late. This was the first time I had the time to WILD long enough to actually get into a dream, so I went through all the crazy stuff from the tingles to the hallucinations to the voices. Interestingly, I found it very enjoyable this time, rather than slightly disturbing or even scary. Never did reach a dream, though, since I just woke up from my last REM for the night...

- Lucid dreaming epic fail...