side notes

I was very stressed when I went to bed last night. I had a lot of trouble falling alseep, and I don't remember my dreams. I woke up and was about to attempt a WILD but was disturbed by a friend calling my phone.

I may recall some fragments throughout today, but I think last night was a bust.

I'll start with my first problem, the other half. She's started moaning about my WBTB routine and how it's disrupting her sleeping pattern - not that she has one, between you and I - and as a result, I've lost a little focus even after experiencing my first lucid dream, although I woke immediately, as I've come to understand is usual for most everyone.
Does anyone know of an alarm app for the Galaxy S2 that only plays through the headphones as even though my phones are in, the alarm also plays out loud and that is what's waking her, I must admit, it would piss me off too, but I can't find any option to change it, thanks for any advice in advance.

Now, onto the dream fragments, I've recently bought myself a new bike, a DRZ 400sm and I've been practising wheelies - IRL - so in my dream, I found myself on the back wheel like a boss. I mean I was in a shopping centre and flying round on the back wheel, up and down the escalators, round the people and through the shops, it seemed to go on for about half an hour and not once did I drop the front wheel, it was awesome, wish I'd got lucid in that one. There was another where I came home and caught my partner snorting drugs and I kicked off with her, I smacked her round the face - I don't hit my partner - and her daughter was there, she called the cops, but when they came and I hid, they both said that I'd left, even though they both knew where I was, weird.

So, I'm going to redouble my efforts as my little taste of lucidity has got me all worked up, just need to figure out how to wake at night without waking her, Joy, I'll use her name from now on as a lot of my dreams feature her. Reality checks are quite exhaustive living with her, so I only ever do them if I've not seen her for 2 hours or more now. Does that sound good to you lot, otherwise my reality checks would just be going through the motions right..?

Cheers,
Nicho...!

I remember trying to sleep in a bed located in my former neighbor's carport. I'm covered and slightly behind something but I have a slight view of someone moving about and trying to steal something about 15 feet in front of me. I'm hidden slightly so I know they can't tell I'm awake as they lurk about.

The outlined shape of a woman resolves itself and I can tell that the blurry shape is actually the next-door neighbor. She is trying to be stealthy and get behind me so I discretely keep one eye on her movements. She picks up a book from the table behind me and I realize it's my copy of Half-Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins. I can even see the cover clearly.

**Despite this, I don't think of the author's name until I'm awake.**

The woman is about to step away from the table and I say, "It's a good book." She stops, looks at me knowing she's caught.

"Does he have any other good books?" She asks me in a quavery older-woman voice.

"Of course," I reply. "There's [U]Even Cowgirls Get The Blues[/U] and Skinny Legs And All...I think my favorite is Jitterbug Perfume. Oh, and Still Life With Woodpecker."

I'm impressed that I can recall all these titles in a dream and I realize I'm dreaming at the same moment.

After that all I really recall is being near a Laundromat and the walls opening out from the building. I had to get up too early and should have worked on recall instead of waking my daughter for school. ;)

There I was on a rooftop (a flat rooftop terrace together with a bunch of other people searching through the chimneys for God knows what, when one of the DCs (a servant girl) asked me,

"I beg your pardon, madam, but is it in London already?"
Me: "What?"
Her: "The plague? We are under lockdown here, madam, because of it."

I think she meant quarantine - which in hindsight is of course nonsense given the fact that I had just come from London and here I was, but my dreaming self actually did not noice that. I started denying it:

Me: "No, it is not. You got the plague here?!" When suddenly I remembered otherwise "Actually, yes, yes, it is." Moreover, I in that moment realized that I most likely had it.

However, out of some reason I was not too upset about that in the dream, and in fact part of me thought this could be an advantage somehow. How? Would it help in our search for bird nests? For Santa? For thiefs? Or whatever it was that we were looking for in those chimneys?!

Thos was a very vivid scene, complete with British accents and all.

I am in an old apartment, the one we lived in when I was in high school. I dream that I have 3 pet hamsters. I only meant to buy 2, and the 3rd one is very small and snuck in with the others. They're very bitey and nip at my fingers whenever I try to handle them. 2 are typical "golden" hamsters, and one is a mottled tortoise shell color. I have placed them in a cage I purchased, but the cage seems to have come without doors, so they simply keep crawling out of the cage. I finally locate the door for the cage, but it's very dented and doesn't close properly. In addition to this, the cage has little "windows" (gaps in the bars) and they just squeeze out through there. I'm worried since I don't want a hamster population explosion in the apartment complex.

I wake up. I try to WILD but the kids next door are being super loud, which is obnoxious since it's about 7:00 in the morning.

I am in a Dwarven city. I am incorporeal, simply watching the dream. The city is a network of underground tunnels, many of them lined with thousands of polished gemstones that reflect the torch light. The gemstones become more numerous and precious in the tunnels that lead to the houses of the wealthier citizens. There are also a few Hobbits who live here. Many of the tunnels converge in caverns, which have shops and restaurants and markets.

I follow a character who's a hobbit. He's supposed to be an idiot. He's running around inside of the dwarf tunnels frantically looking for someone. There are areas of the complex that are specifically off-limits to him because he caused so much trouble... specifically the home of a very wealthy hobbit whom he caused a lot of grief. He's running around and being disruptive again.

Dream shifts - either it's a new dream or there's a huge break in the narrative. 2 men are trying to canoe across a freezing cold lake. For some reason, they're naked. The canoe tips and they end up falling into the lake, which is super cold. One of the guys tips the canoe back over and the water inside instantly freezes. He climbs into the canoe and starts digging the ice out of it with a shovel. The other guy is still treading water in the lake, complaining about the cold; the guy in the canoe tells him to wait and take deep breaths, he's trying to empty the canoe out.

Mikasan, here is approximately half of an answer to "what was the treasure" for you. This dream was definitely non-lucid, but it looks like the Dwarves still had my treasure map... haha. Apparently, the treasure was a cure for a rare disease:

Scene shift... 2 Dwarves are searching for something that seems very important to them. They have a map. One of them looks like Lokmin, from a prior lucid dream. What they're searching for is apparently a huge cliff above a lake... there was supposed to be an inscription on it, but the stones have eroded and fallen into the lake. They have to fish the stones out of the lake and try to piece them back into place. The portions of the inscription that they can make out alludes to some kind of cure for a disease... something about "the king was the single one I could cure". They need to know what the cure was, which the inscription is supposed to talk about, if they can find the pieces. While Lokmin is dangling from the cliff face, one of the pieces crumbles and falls on top of him (it would have weighed several hundred pounds) and he tumbles into the lake with the slab of stone.

I never went lucid or found out what the cure was. I hope poor Lokmin's alright!

Today I woke up about 10am, thought for myself that I would have wake up earlier (and also go bed earlier, as I went bed next to 2am).
Anyway, I went up and did what I always use to do, which means getting my clothes on, visit bathroom, be at the computer.

After that done, I packed my gymbag and went off to the gym.
Once at the gym, I worked out for like an hour maybe.

When that done, I walked to a store in order to buy quark (for breakfast/lunch). I bought 5x500g (2,5 kg) quark, they got them quite cheap. The amount of proteins in them, is almost as cheap as protein powder I got.

When done at store I was going to walk home. However I was very worried about my bladder. I really felt like I'd to pee.
About half way home (20-25 mins of walking), I felt that I cannot hold it anymore, I need to get into the forest and do my needs there.
Once in the forest I hided behind a xmas-tree. The cars were driving by about 50 meters away from me.
I felt that I also needed to do the number two if I am going to pee. So to be sure not to get poop in my pants I digged down myself with the feets in the snow, further down so my ass wont be showing that much in case somebody would see through the trees etc.
Fixed up my panties and bent down, did pee and number two. Lucky I had some toilet paper in my jacket that I used. Also I had an empty sweet bag made by paper that I also used.

Then I continued to walk through the forest and made a shortcut way home. Didn't want to walk back as it would look suspect or so if somebody would've seen me.

Once at home, I went to the bathroom and had out some more pee and also used more toiletpaper, and changed pants (didn't see any poo marks or so though).


Anyway, most of rest day I sat behind my pc, listning to music, playing battlefield 2, etc.


Well, I think that's most of it.
There was no april jokes for me today. Didn't get joked and didn't make any joke.

Before bed: exhausting cooking and late staying guests

Total sleep time: 7 hrs

Dream recall method: two keywords noted

Fragment1: I was in a building in one of the rooms there was an improvised fitness center. I was considering whether to enroll but it was somewhat expensive, 11 per session. I think I agreed to give it a try and started doing some exercises. I really enjoyed moving around.

Fragment2[important feeling] Somewhere on the way between grandma's place and our old home. I am looking at the the cars passing by. Next to me is my dad, who has a strangely honest moment. He is sharing the contents of his heart, his innermost dreams. He tells me that he craves to one day get to an astonishing knowledge, this knowledge would be completely true and valid, yet so totally different from anything we know, unimaginable knowledge. I compare it then to the knowledge a more advanced civilization would give us.

woke up, decided to try some WBTB, but was asleep too fast, had two pretty vivid dreams though, one very close to lucid

Dream3 [very vivid]: I was at my parents's yard, it was dark. My mom was there, a large white rabbit came to us. We were trying to interact with it, but it was a bit stubborn, reminded me of a rabbit I had for a while when I was very young. My mom was forcefully grabbing it, surely causing it some pain, and it ran away. I felt bad for the rabbit and tried to call it back. It came back to me, and kind of like pressed itself strongly against me, seeking comfort.

Dream4[very vivid, lucid-like]: I just remember finding myself staring at some kind of a yard, where there was a workshop. It felt as if I am lucid, and I had a moment of deep realization of something, I just suddenly understood it, everything (regarding something) made perfect sense to me. As I was watching the yard, I remembered my great grandpa's wood processing workshop, remembering some past memories that belong to me with great clarity and understanding. I noticed the little pieces of saw dust on the table of the workshop. [those memories felt very real, more than usual fake dream memories, yet my great grandpa had been a tailor, never met him]

Fragment5: I was in a bus with my grandma2, she got off the bus, but left her bag and eye glasses on the seat. I rushed to gather all her things before the driver closes the door. I told him to wait for me to get off but he said he can't wait, I grabbed everything and jump rushed out of the bus door.

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Some ideas to try out:
I am still trying to find the optimal amount of awake time for WBTB. I have noticed that during meditation if I do it eyes closed, on some occasions I would drift away too much towards sleep, getting lots of the WILD sensations, HH, sometimes vibrations, and I catch myself falling asleep, feeling my dream body take off/separating. So perhaps instead of WBTB, wake up earlier than usual have a tea, meditate on couch, then lay down to lucid? At least worth a try when nobody is around.

Got to work on my dream recall.

I woke up in the middle of the night with the thought feeling: I did it! I was lucid!

But no matter how hard I tried I cannot remember any of it, which makes me think that I probably was not lucid because lucid dreams do not fade like that. Although how do I know that for sure? Perhaps there are tons of lucid dreams I have had, but do not remember?

What I suspect is that this was another non-lucid dream about dreaming. Perhaps I actually remember my dream quite well, perhaps I dreamed "I did it! I was lucid!" And that was the content of my dream?

Anyway for a split second there I was very happy.

Before sleep: noticing sleep sensations

Total sleep time: 7hrs

Dream recall method: dr1- wrote down a few sentences and went over dream 2 times in mind before falling asleep; fragments – no method, had to wake up

HH1: unconsciously talk thinking to myself about some DV post

HH2: was dream thinking how hard it is for a woman to go out with a man in some restrictive countries

Dream1: I was at grandma2, and backpack was on the floor wide open. I noticed how many strange objects were there. We were about to go to the mountains and I was happy about that. I was thinking what to bring to read there, some magazine perhaps.

Now we are in the outskirts of the mountain, near a bus stop. I have most likely forgotten to go up the mountain and am heading back home instead. There are people on the bus stop and without any notice a dog bites my back. I do not feel any pain but I am tightly grabbed by its jaws, it doesn’t let go. I start thinking out loud why it attacked me, I wasn’t mentally provoking it in any way. I try to negotiate my way out of its grab, by talking to the dog. It eventually releases me.

I am at the lower part of the mountain where there are houses around. I head down a slope, but as I look at it, I see the shore. This turns into a very beautiful scene, where I am looking at a wonderful array of sea cliffs, the waves slowly clashing against the cliffs. I look at the sky and it is clear blue, the sun is shining on the cliffs and they look fantastic. I feel the urge to go as close to the water as possible. The waves, though, wet some cliffs so I decide not to go that far because it is slippery there. There are lots of people watching the sea and cliffs, some take pictures. Just behind me is the city hall and the female mayor, short dark red-brown hair comes to tell us that pictures are forbidden. An unpleasant DC man continues taking pics even photographs me. Soon two guards come and take everybody to a bus to drive them home or just drop them off somewhere. I want to go back to the beautiful place, so when the bus doors open I escape and go back. At this point the sun is already setting and the cliffs are darker. There are no people around so I still tour around looking at the shore. The guard comes back to pick me up again. We are walking somewhere but he has a sudden surge to visit the restroom, so I say that I will be waiting outside.



Fragment2: I am with my bf in a café maybe. But then I decide to go somewhere else, on my way I decide to go back. I get really confused in this unknown to me city center. The dream was quite vivid and I had a hard time orienting and even crossing the street where there were cars but no traffic lights. I cannot find the place I was initially in, so I try calling my bf. I end up in some nice looking hotel, preparing to have lunch there. I am not a guest of the hotel, but can use its facilities including having lunch there.

Fragment3: Another confusing walk. Initially I found the restroom but go out and try to go back. I am in this building complex and go round in circles, always ending up in something like a café, but I can’t find the restroom, I begin to feel completely lost in this maze.

Fragment4: Some kind of embroidered patches with animated characters. What was peculiar about this embroidery was that it kept on moving even after you sew it on clothes.

Fragment5: This was supposed to be a friend of mine, but it was a completely another person, with short hair and bright red thin lips. She has some kind of red medallion, which looked like a soft cotton Christmas toy.

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End-of-the-month review

Days since registered at DV: 19

March LD before DV reg: 1 DILD

March LDs after DV reg: 1 semi-lucid; 2 DILDs (both snooze type), pretty long and stable

Dream recall: fluctuating between very detailed dreams to remembering fragments and noting key words.

DJ: I am content that I have kept a pretty consistent DJ in the last few weeks


Things to continue working on:

- RC: start the day with RC; RC every time I meet a person!

- DS: add toilet to DS

- Sleep sensations: to increase general awareness and prepare for WILD

- WILD: I have to organize myself and make serious attempts at least twice a week?

- Sleep schedule: go to bed on time


Challenges:

- Disruptions: Unfortunately 2 guests will come in mid April in our apartment for 3 weeks full time, so I guess at that time my dream quests will be harder to follow.

- Negativity: sometimes I would wake up and think “No LD again", feeling disappointed. This has got to stop. Think instead, “The next LD is just around the corner” “I enjoy what I am doing and am happy with any dreams I can recall”.

- Laziness: just keep on writing DJ entries and doing RCs!!!

This dream was on dreaming again. It took place in some sort of board room filled with official people. I was not there, just observing like a movie, not an actor. The officials could have been judges or moderators, or they could have been consciences of DV members, or different representations of the one God.:

The discussion seemed to be a decision making debate, where the consequences of the decision would matter / make an actual difference / change. The discussion's topic was whether dreams should be limited or unlimited. It appeared that a recent development meant that a prior decision needed to be re-examined, whether it needed to be changed.

I am in my room, except it is bigger and looks like a luxurious house or apartment with walls and rooms and kitchen and panorama windows and a sunset outside and everything, but still with hints of it being my good old room. In the room with me, there's a tall beautiful Asian girl. My head tells me she's my more-or-less forced mate. We're deep in a conversation and she tells me she was something along the lines of an African princess. As we speak, short glimpses of walking through stinky cattle carcasses lined up behind a small hill with thin trees in a grassy area appear before my eyes. The rest of the conversation is very unclear to me, but I somehow appeared on the chair in front of my computer where I was doing work, when I realized I seemed disinterested in what she had to say. I was unsure what she just said to me, so I replied:
"Oh, so how did that go?" She lit a bit up again with the excitement of me being interested and kept talking.

Side note: I believe this dream was caused from me stumbling across this odd video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiSSDFC3LgA

I'm trying to heal this abscess I have, but now I'm not in the mood for anything. Haven't even written in my dream journal :/ I hope I can get back in the swing of things when this goes away.

I had some difficulty initially falling asleep which disrupted attempts to use a mantra. Attempted DEILD last night. Wasn't successful at entering a lucid dream, but it did result in a very long non-lucid that resumed every time I went back to sleep.

These dreams are non-lucid but there is a very, very low level of semi-lucidity running through them, especially the later ones. I was not lucid but had some idea on a very basic level that it was not real, although I didn't realize it was a dream or even unconsciously influence the dreams. The fact that Bun popped up in the first dream was a clue that my dreaming mind was aware on at least a basic level, as summoning and petting Bun was one of my lucid goals. It's especially telling that in the dream, I was aware that this Bun was not the "real" Bun but she was still a perfect replica.

#1 - I have a pet rabbit again. I have named her Bun, after my last pet rabbit, and she looks exactly the same as my "old" Bun. I understand that this new rabbit is not my old rabbit (who died of old age) but she looks and behaves a lot like her. I don't feel sad in this dream. I feel happy that I have my rabbit back, in some form, again.

This is interesting to have popped up in a non-lucid dream, since one of my lucid goals is to summon Bun, pet her, and keep her in my base so I can play with her whenever I want to see her again. This was one of the goals I meditated on as I fell asleep. Alright, I know that's sad, but I miss her a lot.

On a side note: domesticated house-rabbits can be trained with very simple commands. They're devious, though, and not nearly as obedient as a dog.

I am building a cage for her. The cage came in a box, in several pieces, and is about 6' long. I've built a rabbit cage before, but this one is put together very oddly, so I'm having some difficulty.

In addition, New Bun is not trained like Old Bun is, so instead of obediently waiting in the same room as me while I prepare her cage, she keeps running off into areas of the apartment she shouldn't be in. I'm in an old bedroom of mine with light brown carpet. New Bun keeps chewing on the carpet and furniture, even when I tell her "No". I'm not angry, but I am a bit exasperated, because I spent so much time training the last rabbit not to do that and I don't want to have to do it all over again. I keep chasing after New Bun and carrying her back to my room, which is difficult because holding onto a squirming rabbit who doesn't want to be carried AND doesn't want to go where you're taking her is like trying to hold onto an angry water balloon.

She runs off AGAIN and this time I find her wriggling behind a server case, where there are a ton of wires. She's nibbling on the wires and doesn't pay attention to me scolding her. I pull the wires aside and try to grab her, but she wriggles in further. I disconnect the power so she doesn't electrocute herself. I have to move the entire case and disconnect all of the wires in order to get to her, and by now I'm pretty irritated.

I carry her (still as squirmy as before) back to the room and set her down. "Stay!" I command. She doesn't listen perfectly, but doesn't try to charge out the door again. I finally finish putting the cage together, and she bounds into her cage and settles down for a nap.

I wake up. I meditate on the dream and attempt to re-enter.

I fail at a DEILD and when the dream picks up again, I am non-lucid. My "mother", a woman with short blonde hair whom I have never met, comes into the room where I am petting Bun. She tells me that I need to get ready for my graduation ceremony. I close the door to Bun's cage and tell her goodbye.

The dream jumps locations and I am in a graduation ceremony that is being held at a place that is somehow simultaneously a yacht club and a water park. There is dance music playing and there is some sort of after-party. DJs have divided into Red and Blue teams, and over the course of the party, people are supposed to vote on which team's mix they like the most. Blue Team wins, although I don't particularly care. They put their mix CDs up for sale, but I'm not really interested; it's all super clubby "bro" techno. The party ends and it's time for me to pack my stuff up and move.

I wake up and use the bathroom. I meditate on the dream as I do so. When I lie back down the dream resumes. Throughout this section of the dream, I am almost nearly awake; I'm more aware that this is dreamlike but still not aware that I am dreaming, and do not affect the dream even subconsciously.

A friend of the family is helping me move to college. He looks like Dwight Shrute, for some reason, but he's not nearly as much of a jerk or nearly that creepy. The blonde haired woman - who was my mom before, but is now just a friend - rented a U-haul so she and her family could move their stuff, and is allowing me to pack some of my stuff in it since I'm moving somewhere that's sort of on the route to their new home. It's a long trip, and I ride in the back of the cab. "Dwight" chats with me the whole time. I want to chat with him about a movie about a group of people who make video games, but I can't remember the name of the movie and it's frustrating me.

Toward the end of the trip, the blonde woman reappears in the passenger seat - I hadn't known she was there, I think to myself, and think that it's so odd that she suddenly appeared there, but don't gain lucidity. I begin to look through my wallet; I only have a $20 and a $5. "Dwight" had paid for the gas and the blonde woman had paid for the U-haul, so I feel like I owe them something. I am debating the tackiness of handing them $25 total and telling them to split the money amongst themselves when I wake up.

Total sleep time: 7hrs

Other info: My sleep schedule went overboard again. At least we have proven again that bad schedule results in more deep sleep, less dream recall and diminishing LD chances.

Dream recall method: None. I really felt like giving it all up and skipping the DJ today, but forced myself to write those fragments before they were gone.

Dream1: I am watching a show of some kind and am in the audience. Initially this thing was supposed to start late in the evening, but it got postponed so it began at 4.00 am. Towards the end of it, it is 11.00pm the same evening, and I find it a bit strange that it finished earlier than it began. There are a lot of parents with their small kids and they complain that it is getting really late and their kids need to be in bed. So the show is just about to finish. My mom is sitting next to me. Most of the audience at this point consists of black older women. There is a moderator kind of like Oprah. Music starts to play and everybody begins to clap hands church style. I am trying to move my body in the rhythm but something in me doesn’t wanna do it. I can’t do what they expect me to. Next thing, a song from the 60ies begins to play, a song which I knew in the dream very well. Once more, everybody including my mom knows the moves of this song. It is a strange sequence of finger moves around the head and on the face. My mom encourages me to participate, but again I just can’t do it because this time for real I have no idea what the moves are, so I feel a bit stupid.

Fragment2: I am going back in some place where I see an old friend of mine. It looks like he has made a huge mess, there is lots of water and dirt on the floor and he is trying to clean it with a mop. I wonder if I should do something about it but it looks like he is finishing up. I take some cauliflower from the floor and throw it in the trash. I go back to look for my friend, wondering whether I should tell him about LD and what he will think about it.

Fragment3: Another friend of mine. I was wondering if he is really back. Don’t remember much, but I perceived him very vividly, I guess because I couldn’t believe it was him.

Fragment4: I look around and notice that I am in some German looking city. I say to someone that this looks like the same city I went to a concert a while ago. [I had a very long and vivid dream where I went to a concert in a small German city a few months ago. That dream concert was really cool!]. Then I look around and see that perhaps it’s not the same city.

Fragment5: I was reading a post on DV.

Note to self: “I am going to bed on time tonight. I will notice every feeling I have when falling asleep”.

Fragment

Something to do with my hair changing. My hair (that is normally a brown color was now black and blonde. The black and blonde hairs mixed in sort of a spiral pattern and my hair was fairly long.

Waking side notes:

I'm on vacation right now, and the internet out here is REALLY slow. I'm not sure how this vacation is going to affect my recall. But I want to try to have a couple lucids between now and then, maybe i can finally build my dream base.