task of the month

Legend:

non-lucid;
Lucid
Dream end
Notes

It was cold, cloudy, winter morning. I was going from the kitchen to my room. I wanted to go to bed, but somehow I stopped in front of the TV screen. I feel crawling sensation going through all my body It's a dream! I say. I immediately do the nose plug RC. It works! I ran towards the kitchen and think Wait, there was a bottle of wine on the shelf near my bed. I go back, and take the bottle. I looked around, and made some RC's to check if it's really dream. If mother would see me chugging her bottle of wine... I chug it whole confidently, but I spoiled like three drops on the floor. I couldn't feel it's taste, and I haven't felt any effect of it. Still cold. I tried to shoot flames from my hands, but it wasn't working. I decide to go out of house. When opening the door my surroundings have changed. It was warm summer now. I scream More vividness! I see much more details now, and lucid feels more stable. Golden glow fits smoothly with green color of leaves and grass. I can see smallest fraction on the old, wooden fence in the front yard. The sky was almost crystal clear. There were like two small clouds within the oceans of blue. I ran towards the street observing people doing their usuall work in this village, and run into the city. I enter a bar. The tables were covered with maroon table cloth. The room was dimly lit by light going from the windows. Glasses were made of crystal, and silverware was lying near porcelain plates. There was a group of people sitting near one table. I think they were similar to persons I know in waking life. I see stairs going to the second floor. I go there, but find nothing of interest. I go back to the group sitting there. A crystall ball is what I need! I summon my backpack, open it and take the crystall ball. I put it on the table, and sit with DC's. They haven't got any problem with me sitting with them. I looked at the blank crystall ball. Suddenly storm clouds gather within it, and letters with golden glow form. Watch Losif! I decided to go back to my home, and teleported there using doorway portal. I was standing in the front yard. Everything turned back to grim, cold winter. I think I'll learn flying now! I put my hands in front of me, and my legs a bit upwards. I fly! Albeit I still have some problems with it, but I made it! As I go higher dream fades, and I wake up full of energy and excited.

January 22, 2015 (With CZ)

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I was in a queen-sized bed with Zukin and some random guy who was apparently our roommate (and we only had the one bed?). Before going to bed, Zukin had told me that the guy was into me, but I didn't believe her. We always slept with Zukin and I on the sides and the guy in the middle, for some reason. I turned to face the wall, so that they were to my back. I felt his knee on my calf or something, and I didn't move it, wondering what he would do. He scooted closer, so I scooted closer too, and then we were full-on spooning. He hugged my stomach, and I turned to face him, and our legs were all tangled and we cuddled for a while. Just as I felt like I would fall asleep or something, he pushes me away and says something like "Unacceptable... To the VAULT!" And gets up, and goes into the bathroom to get some tools out. I was dumbfounded, and just shouted, "Oh FUCK YOU. It's OVER." He didn't seem to hear me, though.

Zukin was laughing silently, and scooted over to whisper to me, "I'll take your place. Let's fuck with the bitch." So we switched places, and when the guy came back, scissors and a few other weird beauty tools in hand, we were both cracking up on the inside. He trimmed some gray hairs from her head (not that she has any IWL), did something really weird with her nails, and then used the round contraption to clamp each of her toenails to make them healthy? He was making random comments about stuff I don't remember. Then he started asking "me" about things like how many credits I had. Zukin was like "Oh I dunno. Kestrel, how many credits do you have?" I answered, and then she relayed he information back to him, who still didn't get that we'd switched places. He was just babbling like an idiot and we both cracked up, deciding he was a bit of a creep, and left him in the bed. We opened the door to the bedroom and it opened into an airplane cabin (from one of the lavatories).

We went to our seats, which happened naturally. I looked out the window and saw stunningly blue tropical waters and many islands; an archipelago. This made me realize I was dreaming. I didn't even need to do an RC, I just knew. I turned to Zukin, shook her and shouted, "ZUKIN WE'RE IN MY LUCID DREAM!" She smiled and got all cheerful, giggled a little bit, and I looked back out the window. I controlled the plane right from my seat, just thinking it should go this way or that.

I looked out the window as the plane turned and bobbed up and down, and Zukin pointed at something off in the distance. It looked like some sort of massive temple from here, so I willed the plane to go to it. I was suddenly in the cockpit, with windows all over (above, bellow, to the sides) and we dove for the water. We dove underwater and flew through it for a while, then the nose pointed up again and we were almost at the thing we had seen. As we got closer, I saw that they were actually lines and lines and lines of large poles sticking out of the ground. They were painted to look like the furs of big cats. There was one aboriginal man standing amongst the poles, looking up at us.

I had shed the rest of the plane; I was now just flying around. I wanted to go back to the bright blue waters, but when I went over the water again, it was all murky and dark. I frowned, closed my eyes, and envisioned the bright blue waters I had seen before. I could see it in my mind's eyes, but when I opened them, the water was still all icky looking. I sighed, and turned back to the land again. I ended up in some weird building, with a layout a bit like my apartment. It was dark and the bathroom looked weird, but it slowly started turning into my apartment. I went into my room, which was just as messy as it is IWL, but in a different way. I found a piece of tissue paper, and put it down on a clear spot of floor because I wanted to find a crystal ball. I noticed an old couple sitting on my bed, but ignored them. When I looked back at the tissue paper, I was pleased to find there was now a crystal ball underneath it.

I removed the tissue paper, and started rubbing the crystal ball. I saw swirls and sparks inside it, and closed my eyes to think really hard about the question, "What with the next year bring me?"

When I opened my eyes, the crystal ball flashed 4 or 5 strings of words. The first one, which I remember, was, "Glück für dich," which was actually pretty promising (and apparently is the name of a song? Glück für dich. Interesting instrumentals but his voice bugs me a little... Not sure what to think about this song, really)

I flashed another German message I can't remember, then a string of numbers, which I also can't remember. but the last thing it flashed was "KI-HI, CCCCCCC!!!!!!!!!!"

I tilted my head, because that one didn't make any sense. I wondered if the crystal ball was broken, so I closed my eyes to try for a new crystal ball. When I opened them, there was a blue box with a crystal ball in my hands. I shrugged, took it out of the box, and tried again. I started rubbing it, and closed my eyes again, and looked up. The old man must have thought I was weird, because he was like, "Are you alright, miss....?" I shushed him and waved my hand, and my concentration was a little broken, but I looked at the ball anyways. I started to wake up because my alarm went off, and I only managed to catch, in bold, loud fount inside the crystal ball, "LOVE PROSPECTS: " and then opened my eyes in my bed. I was shouting in my head "WHAT ABOUT LOVE. IS IT GOOD?? WHAT WERE YOU GONNA SAAAYYY?!?!"

WTB 3am, woke just before 7:30am. Although I had set no alarm, it must have been intention that woke me, since I needed to take my car to the mechanic this morning, and 7:30 is when they open. So I drove in, did some grocery shopping across the street, and then walked back home since it's not too far. Returned to bed around 9am and focused intention to get lucid since I'd had such a good WBTB.

I was at a party in some guy's house. (The "party" theme must be WLR because last night I did the party scene in ME3, though none of the details were similar.) I was younger, maybe even a teenager—I think so, since the guy hosting the party was living with his parents—and wasn't really "me" in terms of identity. I was lounging on the floor with some other kids. A guy next to me joked with someone else about me taking my clothes off, and I reprimanded him sharply.

Vague scene change; it was the next day, and everyone else was gone, but I was still in the house—only now I didn't have my clothes. Obviously I needed to get them before I could leave, but this was complicated by the fact that the host's mother had come home, together with her young baby. I was sneaking around, hoping not to get caught, because I was afraid of how she would react if she found a nude girl in the house. I didn't recall doing anything inappropriate but she would naturally assume the worst.

I managed to sneak into the bathroom and thought that from there I could maybe call her from the door and make up some story about how I had taken a shower and now needed my clothes—though I worried that it might be hard to explain how my clothes had ended up in another room, and it didn't help that I wasn't exactly sure where they were. But my anxieties about this were resolved when I looked down and noticed that I was fully dressed after all. (Thanks, dream!)

Now my only challenge was sneaking out of the house. But the dream was even more obliging in that regard. The mother caught sight of me as soon as I entered the next room, and I was afraid that she would respond with horror and alarm at discovering a stranger in the house. Instead, she just called me over in a friendly way as though we were already well-acquainted and she expected me to be there. We went into her large walk-in closet, where she wanted my opinion on some clothes as she changed. She put on a lower garment that was made of two separately patterned pieces of cloth, one for each leg, that fit very loosely like Thai fisherman pants. Attached to the upper part was a horizontal band of cloth, at least six inches wide and several feet long, in a third contrasting color and pattern, that she could wrap around her waist to secure the garment. The cloth and patterns were lovely and I complemented it; she said that she had made it herself. Next, while she was putting on a top, I noticed how beautifully flat her stomach was in profile and complimented her on that as well. She laughed and said modestly that it had just looked that way because she had been holding her arms over her head.

After that she and her husband went out to an indoor mall and I tagged along. As I glanced around at the various shops, I reminded myself that since we were dreaming I should make sure to attempt one of the tasks, since it had apparently slipped my mind until that point. This made me wonder when I had first realized I was dreaming. I thought back and couldn't figure it out. In retrospect, I don't think I really was cognizant of the dream until that point, but at the time it felt much more ambiguous, like it had been a latent awareness all along. (I get this a lot—I think there is often a latent awareness of dreaming on some level, in which case lucidity requires becoming aware of the awareness!) That might explain why earlier the dream had soothed my anxieties rather than exploiting them, even though I hadn't been aware of directly controlling it.

I figured that since it was the New Year's holiday in the dream, it would be a great time to try the fireworks TOTM again, since there were bound to be fireworks tonight anyway. Again, it's hard to say if I had really "known" all along that it was the holiday, or if I had only just "realized" this when it was convenient to my goals. I was lucid enough to know that in WL it was much later in the month, but remembered it was still January at least... so close enough.

I walked back to the front doors of the mall, which were transparent glass, and looked out over the landscape. I didn't see any fireworks yet—it was dark out but it seemed like it was too early in the evening—and I hoped my intention could make some appear. I scanned the horizon but nothing manifested. I decided maybe it would be easier to spark them directly from my hand, so I turned around and started walking through the mall again, willing some kind of visual display to manifest from my palm. This should be easy, since in the past I've practiced summoning all the basic elements, and fireworks just seemed like a variation of this. But again, nothing happened.

I tried to figure out what the problem was, and wondered if maybe I was too distracted with the music. Here's another case where I can't say for sure when I started singing. Often I deliberately use music in dreams as a way to channel focus into particular tasks, a method that has worked very well in the past, but right now I felt like I was singing for sheer pleasure, and the music was of unearthly beauty. Now that I noticed it, I put aside my other goals for the moment to pay attention to what I was singing. I was using my voice, but there were no real words, just abstract vocalizations emerging spontaneously in a lovely, lilting melody. The most distinctive thing about it was that I was singing in harmony with myself, as though I had several different interweaving voices, at least three, maybe more. I've sung like this before in dreams and once again had to wonder: what does it mean? When the music manifests like this, so complex and ethereal, it feels like it has some primordial significance.

Most of my attention was now focused on the song, and nothing else seemed so important. I wanted to be in the open air, so I returned to the front doors of the mall and walked through them. I sang for a while longer, until the world around me faded in color and substance and I knew I was waking up. My first impulse was to grab my phone and try to record some of the melody as best I could before I lost it entirely. However, my phone seemed to be stuck on camera mode, and although I was insistently pressing the button and even trying to close the window manually by clicking in the upper right corner (a PC reflex, obviously this doesn't work on phones!), I couldn't get back to the main screen. Problems with tech like this are a dreamsign so I even wondered if this was an FA. However, my main concern right was to preserve any shred of the music intact, so I didn't want to distract myself with an RC, but tried to keep as much attention as possible on preserving the song.

Even though I now only had a single voice, I was surprised how easily and spontaneously the music was still flowing, and figured it was because I had just woken up and retained lingering traces of the dreamstate. More than traces, I realized, when I woke up again and knew that it been an FA after all. I once again reached for my phone and was gratified that I could now access the main screen. But I was still having difficulties: I looked through all my apps for the voice recorder and couldn't find it! I went back and forth from screen to screen, cycling through them all three or four times, and it was nowhere! I was forced to question if this was yet another FA, even though I was now sure that I recognized everything around me from waking life, and the dream memories and music were fading rapidly. In the past I've sometimes had trouble recognizing the voice app icon because it has such a bland appearance, but I had made a point of remembering that it resembled a microphone.

After taking more time and deliberately examining every icon on every screen, completely baffled by my inability to find it, the mystery was finally solved. I found it at the very end of all my apps, where I had placed it deliberately with the notion of making it easy to find, only I had misremembered its appearance: the last OS upgrade had completely changed the graphic to some wavy lines. It was too late to salvage the music. I tried to record the one line of melody that I could still vaguely recall, but it sounded completely wrong. I couldn't get my real voice to match the way the song sounded in my head, either in terms of the general register or even the specific notes.

Dec 17th - Jan 19th 2015 Super Brief Notes LD's #254 to 270 With Dry Spell

Super quick notes to catch up.

12/17/14 FA "back to sleep" vibrations, stay patient then visuals with eyes closed. Flight to Girl Friday's house and lose patience. Decide to fly up to moon but can't find it and decide I will drop down a bit and land on the moon but end up in a living room with my son about 12 years younger! Hold his hand and talk. #254

quicker...

12/18 cute DC gets me thinking about dream options turns into LD. woman in black is creepy and other weird DC's. Talk to them all searching for SC insight but dumb answers. I mostly ignore woman in black until she re-asserts herself. 255

12/19 with Wife on bench, a sexy woman approaches. Semi to full LD. Boldness initiated. Telepathically tell them to kiss and remove clothes. Sexy! 256

<vacation starts and I change everything I'm doing and pay the price with a dry streak after which I am slow to get back in the groove. Up to this point I was rolling strong 16 LD's in the first 19 days of December.>

12/30 I feel bold early in dream probably assisted by bold visualizations after WBTB. I tell all of the female DC's to follow and gather around me and I float up to a mezzanine overlooking a wide open library-like indoor space to get a good look around at the women. Sex and watching another woman undress sexily. 257

12/31 lucid at seeing deceased father-in-law. Happy to see this dream sign back! 258

Trying to DEILD. Clump of simple images in mostly empty void becomes more complete and I start air swimming towards the scene. Explore a video game-like green landscape by air. 259

1/5/15 become lucid in doctors office probably from seeing cute woman. 260

FA caught: semi to full LD. Crawl over bed. What if someone in bed? Sure enough. Must be a dream! End up in void. Another FA in bed caught due to unlikely scenario. Nudge vibrations. Void. Closed eye teleport. Eventually scene forms in bedroom. Cool courtyard between buildings do backwards TOTM while attempting to find crystal ball for other advanced task. Western shoot'em up! See TOTM thread 1/5 for more complete description. Only counting one LD in this FA series. 261

1/10 on couch with Wife I get dreamy ideas bring another woman in. Sexual then end up outdoors confusion then regain lucidity. Dance with beautiful woman and she becomes this glowing gorgeous bright eyed blonde. 262

Riding down street trucks passing I recognize the street from earlier dream and realize I'm dreaming. Billboard. 263

Praying for someone who seemed to get news of terminal illness my eyes are closed and I see the words "me too" and right below "smile." I take this as a sign that I am being given the opportunity to be lucid but wake. Not counting.

1/11 epic night...to be continued...

Date: 03 Jan

Late bed and ealy wake, no time to wbtb

I find myself in a large room, looks like a mix between a shop and a bar. My awareness gradually goes up and I know I'm dreaming. I recall the task with the crystal ball and head over to the guy behind the counter. There are a few crystal balls that look like empty snow globes, but they are in the distance so I have to walk around a labyrinth of counters. I tell the DC working there to bring me the crystal ball, so that I don't have to maneuver myself all the way there. He is very uncooperative and refuses to do so. By the time I reach the counter those particular crystal balls pop out of existence.

The dream becomes very dynamic, I almost lose all lucidity while some DCs next to me fight over which cakes they want to eat. There are a number of delicious cakes everyone wants to try. I get hold of one very tasty and start eating with my hands. I contemplate on that and my awareness goes up again, after all it's a dream, so I'm free to eat any way I want. I remember the crystall ball task again, this time the (same?) DC leaves a large crystal sphere next to me and I examine it. It's a very beautiful crystal ball with no stand, and little lines and cracks in star-like shapes can be seen inside. I make a mental note about those, then proceed to see the future. I look inside but it doesn't show anything, just becomes a little blurry. I decide to cover it with my hands, concentrate and then reveal it again.

On and beyond the blurry surface, some objects become slightly more visible. I am still unable to fully understand what exactly it is showing but now it's almost as good as becoming part of another scene, while still being here in the bar/shop. Finally, I see a number of objects neatly arranged, like they are put on sale, on a sunny bright day on the street. Pretty much what I make out of the scene is that it shows some kind of a street stand with souvenirs or so. The zooming in almost transports me to the scene, but not quite. I interrupt the action and stop to contemplate on it for a while and review the task.

Frag: Another later part of the dream/other dream where I once again think about completing the task and not doing a wbtb, and about using this techique as a teleport.

Also, looking at my image in a mirror, dream ends soon after.

I had taken a two-hour nap earlier in the day, so when I went to bed at 1:45am I did not feel particularly sleepy. It seemed like a good opportunity to get lucid, so I fixed intention on fireworks task and did a few rounds of SSILD before falling asleep.

I had an NLD that was strongly WoW-influenced (day residue) in which I had gotten stuck in the middle of a quest chain and was searching the environment for objects that had a yellow exclamation point over them. This went on for a long time but at some point I finally recognized that I was dreaming. Although this pushed me near waking and disrupted the dream, I had enough awareness to avoid moving and held on to dreamstate as well as I could. I searched for something to better anchor me there, and noticed that I could distinctly hear voices conversing, although I could not see the figures—in fact I couldn't see anything at all.

I don't recall the specific words now although I could hear them clearly at the time. I recall how spontaneous and random the conversation seemed, with no relationship I could discern to day residue, my own memories, or even the earlier dream. I listened carefully to try to figure out what was going on. A younger girl who sounded like a teenager was arguing with an older woman about something she wanted to do. At first I assumed it was her mother but then decided it must be a caretaker after she called her "Nanny" at one point. I was not involved in the scenario, I was just listening in the dark.

Even though I didn't feel integrated into my dream body and lacked visuals altogether, the audible conversation was so vivid that I figured I must be reasonably secure in the dream state, so I figured I'd try the TOTM and see if I could coax a better REM state into effect. The fireworks task was perfect for this, since it was something I could attempt without moving much or needing anything from the environment. I imagined holding out my hand, palm up, and shooting fireworks from the center of my palm. Something did happen: I could half-see a kind of ghostly outline of my hand, like when you look at it in almost total darkness, and then above the palm emerged a faint graphic that resembled a model of the solar system, with the planets hanging in space and lines indicating their orbits.

It's hard to describe what "seeing" this was like, since it was neither seeing in the usual sense, nor was it merely thinking or imagining, but something in between, or possibly different from them all. Have you ever been in a situation where it was so dark that you looked at your hand and weren't sure that you were really seeing it or your mind was just filling in the outlines where it knew they should be? It was a bit like that, but different, because in addition to my hand I could also "see" the solar system graphic, an image I would not have expected, and because ultimately I didn't feel like I was really "seeing" any of this with my eyes, even dream eyes. Part of the problem is that I still didn't feel fully embodied, so the darkness didn't just feel like an absence of light, but like a condition—inner darkness as opposed to outer darkness? Even at the time I suspected I wasn't in full REM. The visual impression was there, but it didn't register as genuinely visual.

I decided that I must not be dreaming deeply enough to see properly, and this gave rise to a more substantial physical sensation of lying in my bed, as though I had woken up, yet I knew clearly that I was still in the dream state. I had half a mind to try fireworks again right then and there, and half a mind to better integrate with the dream body, so it seemed like what happened next was an amalgamation of the two intentions. I was focusing on my hands and they began to rotate rapidly, not the normal rotation permitted by the wrist joint, but a full 360-degree rotation, as though they were propellers. They were moving so fast that I could feel the vibrations throughout my whole body.

Although this result had been spontaneous and unexpected, I wondered if I could use it to leverage myself out of the bed, since apart from my weird propeller hands, I still didn't feel well-connected to the dream body. I hesitated to try any larger movements lest I accidentally move my real body and wake up. So I let my left propeller hand slacken and lifted the right, willing it to turn into something like the blade of a helicopter that might elevate me vertically out of bed. The propeller movement became wider and faster, as though my whole forearm was now spinning around the elbow, and the vibrations intensified, but I felt no sense of lift. I remembered that helicopter blades needed to be angled a certain way in order to provide lift, and tried to will my propeller arm to work similarly, but I guess I don't know enough about aerodynamics to convince myself that I could pull it off!

Since the right arm was not doing the trick on its own, I put my left arm back in play to provide more oomph. Now both my propeller arms were rotating at incredible speed and I could feel the whole bed vibrating along with my body. I couldn't believe that all this movement wasn't waking up my husband, who was lying pressed up right next to me. This is a common failing of dream logic: even when I am perfectly aware that I am dreaming, I irrationally worry that something I am doing might disrupt his sleep. Around this time I woke up for real, and of course he was over on his side of the bed, so the feeling of close physical contact had also been a dream impression.

It was unusual that the audio and physical impressions were so clear but that the visual field remained opaque. Is this an NREM state? The closest parallel I've experienced to this in the initial stage of many WILDs, right after transition, and in those cases I have also theorized that REM hadn't fully kicked in yet.

I'm in a park or some sort of private huge garden, with a building in the middle of it, and people everywhere, mostly family. It seems we're celebrating something (like a birthday or something), but all the people are just talking or playing. Thanks to something, I don't know what, I'm lucid!

I'm doing something else, but then, seeing that I should stabilize the dream, I touch the pavement. It's an amazing feeling, it's texture is like real pavement (something that, I don't know why, surprises me), and it's warm like in a spring day. I, then, try to fly by jumping very high, but I can't so I fall down from a good height. I feel a bit weird falling down, but I manage to hold on until I land. Then I pass by a couple of children who are playing football with a purple rugby ball. The ball drops in front of me, I take it and I try to throw it back to them. I try to do it with my head, but when throwing it to the air, the ball gets too far to use my head, so I just use my hands to hit it like in a volleyball match. Wanting to stabilize a bit more the dream, I roll over the floor.

Just then, I remember one of the tasks of the month: Chug an entire full bottle of wine. I enter a house which is nearby and I arrive to a big room where, apparently, people have eaten. There are long tables and rests of food everywhere. Maybe it's just a room where food was kept before serving it. I approach one of the windows because I hear someone talking. I see a woman with a baby talking to her husband. I can't hear the whole conversation, but I can understand something like "If the police come, take the baby and leave". I step back, fearing they might see me and I go back to the task. First of all, I stabilize again by touching the ground. This floor is different, like tiles similar to the ones in my house. They are warm, like in a hot day, I like the feeling .

Then I get up and search a bottle of wine through the room, but there are none. I empty one of the sides of a table and I prepare to "create" the bottle of wine. But first, I summarize what I've done up to now, so I don't forget it. From all of the things I list, there is something I don't remember doing, but I listed as if I'd done it just after becoming lucid. The keyword was: "blowpipe".

So I turn around and I visualize a regular bottle of wine. When looking at the table.... nothing happens. I turn around again and I think I should be more specific with my visualization so I imagine one of the bottles of wine from my region: black bottle with silver letters. When looking at the table, something has been created: two bottles of Sprite (one empty laying on the table and the other one with a bit of liquid inside) and, behind that, a small black empty pot of ice-cream. But no bottle of wine.

I take everything out and I wake up.

Slept from around midnight to 2:45am then got up for several hours. Returned to bed at 6:15am, after meditating a few minutes and taking some supplements (choline, Alpha-GPC, L-theanine, vitamin B complex, piracetam). Did some casual SSILD while falling asleep. Woke at 6:45am with dream.

I was in a room with dark walls, a sort of "black box" theatre, and about two-thirds of the room was full of tangled billows of blue cloth up to knee-level. Around eight people were positioned at various points in the cloth, flailing against it as though they were swimming (or drowning) in water. I knew it was a rehearsal for a play, and I felt a strong desire to join them but was restrained by a sense of propriety since I was not related to the production. I sat in a chair and reflected on how much I've always been attracted to the idea of acting even though I apparently have no talent for it.

Slowly and naturally it dawned on me that I was dreaming. The awareness brought with it a change of scene, perhaps a half-waking: I was back in my bed, but still in dream. I began to focus on animating my dream body as though it were a WILD, thrashing around in the tangled covers (not unlike how the actors had been flailing in the water-like whorls of cloth). I noted how my visual field was very chaotic, almost back to the fluctuating hypnagogic state, but the tactile field felt more stable, so I ignored the visual clutter and got out of bed. I don't need to see well to navigate my own house, whether in WL or a dream.

I wondered what to do and quickly decided to try to knock off the wine TOTM, which seemed like an easy one. So I walked swiftly to the kitchen pantry where I keep a lot of wine and reached for one at random. It was a rosé in a clear glass bottle. The level was very low, well down the shoulder, but since the cork was intact I figured it should count as a "full bottle" as specified in the TOTM. At first the bottle was the shape and size of a typical wine bottle, the more streamlined profile you usually see with burgundies, but as I set it down on the kitchen counter to get a better look, it transformed in front of my eyes to the larger, plumper form of a two-liter plastic soda bottle.

I was still determined to open it, so I picked it up and carried it over to where the corkscrew should be. It occurred to me that I should make a more detailed observation of the bottle first, since it was covered in writing printed directly on the glass. The writing was in white script of various fonts and sizes, but the white lettering against the clear glass was hard to read, especially with the level of the wine so low. The fonts were also elaborate and hard to make out. I held it up at an angle to get the best view and looked carefully. I could make out that the biggest word was "Mersault," which would make sense since (as I suspected and google confirms) this is an actual appellation in Burgundy. The next largest set of letters spelled "Farb," which reminded me of the German word for "color." I wondered if this had to do with the color of the wine, and was startled to observe that the wine was now colorless and looked exactly like water. Moreover, the bottle was starting to remind me of a water bottle. Oh dear, had I accidentally turned my wine into water? I'd better grab a different bottle! I was walking back to the pantry when I woke up.

There was actually a lot of day residue in this LD. Last night I ate out and had an elaborate meal with wine pairings: they included a rosé and a wine from a bottle that was partly empty but whose cork remained intact because the wine had been extracted with a needle and replaced with argon. Both of these details manifested directly in the dream, although I didn't recognize them as day residue until after I woke up. I just double-checked the menu and there was no Mersault, however, nor can I recall when I last had it, so I'm not sure where that came from.

A long night, mostly jumbled recall of many scenes, proper (short) WBTB leading to first LD of 2015 + TOTM

Lots of dream activities during the day. Watched youtube videos about meditation, tried to meditate but too noisy/busy in the room. Kept meditative mindset. *I'm* a lucid dreamer. The ability is in *me*. Decided to return to multiple wakings this night, and do a proper WBTB. Was not easy getting up, and didn't go far, just quick pee and sat on the edge of the bed for about a minute. Was a bit concerned that I had woken up too much but I made it back to sleep and did get lucid.

WBTB and wakings during the night does seem to be the key. Sleep quality though does seem worse than when not frequently waking.

Lots of scenes but not extremely well remembered and the ordering is not entirely clear.

01:05 bedtime

06:40 ?

(earlier)
+ outdoors, people walking to (the bathroom?) walking by a square in the ground with a pine branch placed in it as a memorial?

+ gangster standoff: the leader turns the tables by shooting everyone with his gun which was disguised as a chocolate ice cream bar which he had been eating; escape from the house with the "girlfriend"; meeting the weird looking girl at the ATM

Sitting in a room, the situation is sense. The gangster boss leader is to my left and is sucking on a chocolate ice cream bar. Suddenly he takes the bar out of his mouth, points it at the (police inspector?) across the room from him, squeezes the ice cream bar around the middle with his hand, and it fires a bullet, hitting the police guy right in the forehead instantly killing him. People are running around, I'm hoping I don't get shot.

I'm in my room (childhood home?) thinking I need to get away, the ground is littered with stuff. Should I pack a bag or just leave everything behind? The bag is there on the ground and I stuff a few things in there.

Outdoors I jump in to the getaway vehicle, my "girlfriend" is just a few steps behind me, can she open the door because of that tree? Get in fast! She gets in / we drive away?

I'm following "girlfriend?" short young latina she's making some sort of payment at the ATM? We're meeting another girl, an even shorter and very odd looking latina, she's going to help us with something.

+ wife/phone; google glass not working until looking at a suitable background

My wife says "don't worry…I know about the picture of that girl you have on your phone", my mind races, what picture? My phone is in my hand. I'm standing at a counter wearing some sort of google-glass-like thing, I can't see any of the projections. I look around and look at some sort of white background then all of a sudden I can see the projections.

+ six-legged hexagonal "predator-style" aliens are doing a ritual dance

In some sort of a cave? 4-5 of these hexagonal beings each are stomping around and moving their legs in ritual movements. They're wearing some colorful sort of athletic outfit? 2 of the legs are used as stabilization behind them.

(later)

I actually woke from this lucid and went back to sleep without journaling, I happened to remember it on a later waking.

07:45

+ (lucid) ask green turtle/dog alien for dreaming power, enter childhood home, bizarre view out windows, chugged a bottle of wine, took of flying with biting/clawing cat coming along for the ride

(childhood home) I head up the front steps to the street and see on the street a medium-dog-sized green alien turtle/dog thing looks like it's made out of stone. I crouch down so as not to be seen, it walks a bit to the left towards the G's driveway with its head to the left. I think it's sort of stupid to stay hidden (because it's a dream?). I (call it to me?), it comes and stands right before me with its weird alien stone green face. I ask it for dreaming power, lucid all night every night. It raises a hand and touches my forehead. Satisfied, I head back down the stairs to the front door, and as I head in to the house I'm lucid, and do a solid nose pinch to confirm. Right inside the front door and turn to the right heading for the living room, I say "wow" because the visual representation of the house is really accurate (frequently the living room in dreams is empty/wrong). I walk by the armchair towards the middle of the room and reach down and touch the wooden tip of the arm (that chair hasn't been there since I was in high school) of the chair with my right hand briefly. Ahead and towards the right out the wide window I see in the distance a really large tall white skyscraper lit with bright light with strange very large letter/number/symbol combinations (about 3 symbols long) placed in several locations around the front of the building. I see a short sequence of zillions of bright flashes like thousands of camera flashes all going off around the same time. After this the view is muddled and just dark blobs. I turn towards the dining room and think of goals and TOTM: fireworks, wine. Definitely wine. I turn back towards the living room and expect to find a full open bottle of wine. The dream is starting to get a bit vague. I have a full open bottle of (white) wine (champagne?) in my hand, and up-end it and start to chug it. It takes a while, 15 or 20 seconds, I'm counting the seconds/gulps? I wonder briefly about the effects and I find there are none. I head out to the deck and feel like making a strong flying take-off. As I leap into the air something grabs my right lower leg, I look down and see it's my cat in a bitey/scratchy mood. As I fly it continues to bite/scratch, so I pick it up in my hands and bite its head trying to get it to stop I lose lucidity and am in some room where two girls are laughing about the cat.

+ hotel room, get extra key, where's the room?, puking line of girls, cover the windows

A girl arrives with the extra room key I've requested. "This is the extra key?" I ask her? She nods and leaves. It's just a single smallish key. I decide to try it out, I should have done this before she left. I put it in a lock and turn it, it moves the mechanism and a deadbolt goes in and out.

Where's the room? Is it on the ground floor of the building over there?

Sitting on a (couch?) there is a line of (junior high, high school?) girls standing there they look like they've all vomited recently, there are remnants of vomit on some of their shirts. At some point (later?) in the night I think I should have tried to kiss them but think the barf breath would have been nasty.

Outside a room and covering up the windows with (two large pieces of cardboard?), sliding these pieces around to cover up the windows, on the right I attach a very small piece of tape to the cardboard/window pane, some guy is there (critiquing?) my work.

+ last beer?, last year of high school?, what will I study? (topics for dreaming!), woman says where to find homeroom (peaches)

(childhood home back porch?) On the bottom of the barrel there is one bottle of beer left. I pick it up but drop it back down again, I don't want to take the last beer. I'm leaning out the (kitchen?) window talking to a boy scout friend: we're entering our senior year of high school. Wait, maybe I already graduated? I can't remember! I think what classes I want to take. I say "hobbit-classes", I also say "acrobatics", I'm thinking that what I want to take are classes that aid in my ability to perform things in lucid dreams, but I don't want to tell him that I'm a lucid dreamer so I'm hesitant in what I say as I try to clarify my thoughts of what I want versus what I want to tell him, I think I'm probably not making much sense to him.

Go back around inside the kitchen (even though I was already there?) from the deck the question is where to find your homeroom, the woman there says (I'm thinking?) it has to do with peaches/apricots, there's some way to always find the room (I forgot).

+ football: advise the guy to stay down so they won't late tackle you, they do anyway.

There's a guy who caught a kickoff (or made a touchdown?), I advise him to stay down or else the defenders running down the field will have an excuse to late tackle him, they do it anyway. (He later kicks a field goal?)

** I finally went back through my dream journal and actually counted the number of times that I got lucid. 12 over 3 months almost exactly, this one being the only one I actually accomplished something I set out to do. Will backlog only those and another day as this takes too long haha.

150104 1:00AM Lucid # 12 - Task of the Month

8:32AM

Myself and a roommate arrive in a parking lot in a former roommate's car. I immediately begin to question my reality (it feels like a dream).Tell him to do a reality check and do the same. Confirmed.

"What should we do?" I ask. "I dunno," he replies. Typical. (He is one of my best friends and the closest to my interest level in lucid dreaming. He's been in my dreams before and is never any help at all.)

"We can do anything, here, check it out." Remembering the task of the month I make a crate appear in front of me next to the car. I open it, remove a firework (8" classic looking rocket), stick it into a nearby patch of grass, and light it. In hindsight I never had a lighter or even considered that I might need a lighter. The daytime sky lights up even more with a massive explosion as I say "BOOM" and make an explosion gesture with my arms.

Not able to remember any other tasks I turn to him and say, "lets drive to the moon." "Yes!" He replies immediately. At least he isn't working against me. I get into the car, making sure to sit in the drivers seat (my first lucid with any amount of control, #7 when I get around to posting it, he was a getaway driver for me and was absolutely terrible).

Start the car. The former roommate's (whose car it is) girlfriend is standing in the middle of the parking lot. RC. Still dreaming. I'm excited and want to get to the moon so I just mow her over. My companion is upset about this. I tell him that since it's a dream she is completely fine. I swing the car around to prove it and she is standing right where she was before. I hit another car on the way out of the parking lot and onto the road.

At this point my companion has changed from my roommate to the former roommate whose car it is. I tell him to upgrade the car. He does nothing (this is basically exactly the same as what happened in lucid #7). I continue driving. We are driving down a hill on the side of a peninsula with an incredible view of my current city across a bay. And I mean incredible. I can see everything.

"I'm pretty sure that we aren't going to be able to drive to the moon..." I tell my companion as we drive. At this point I remember the task of the month with the crystal ball but decide that it wouldn't be safe for me to attempt that while driving. I tell him to upgrade the car again, and again nothing.

"Just push a button and say 'Upgrade'." He complies. As he does the car is thrown into the air and we are very airborne over the bay. Mid air the car switches into a helicopter and I begin to fly towards the city. After about 10 seconds, however, the helicopter disappears and we plunge into the water below.

I try to stay calm and remind myself that this is a dream but eventually succumb to panic and wake up.

I'm holding a bottle of fine wine right hand.
Amarone. And. A firework rocket in my left hand. On my other right arm I'm holding a pen. And on my other left a notebook. Franticly logging everything that happens in English (not my first language) . (I aperntly have 4 arms.)I try reading what I'm writing. But the dream starts braking apart so I stop. I look around and see that I'm in a cave the liting is pretty good though. I need to get out if I want to fire the rocket.
I started trying to chugg the bottle of wine. Nothing is coming out. I throw it away. My fokus goes to another bottle. I pick it up and tell my self that it will taste great. I chugg half the bottle first it tastes of fresh sweet orange.
Second chugg fill my mouth with a overwhelming blueberry flavor. The logging me watches the me that just drank. (I don't have 4 arms any more now I'm in two places). The me that drank it swelling and turning purple I fall over like a ball and start vomiting like a fountain, slowly deflating. Lucky I'm experienceing the world through the logging mees eyes. I wake up in the vomit felling pretty okay a lite dissy. I look to see the logging me. But there is no one there. I need to fire the rocket. I'm tired and dissy I don't have the energy to walk any longer. The cave seems endless. I look upp att the rock seeling.
I concentrate and see the seeling desolve and the night sky appearing. I put the rocket in the ground. I looks like an artichoke on a stick quite butifull. It takes of in the sky turning into to a fish swimming its way up in the sky. It's growing and glistening I blue starlight. It turns around swims down and swallows me hole. I'm in a fish mouth. I can see a cristalball att the throat of the fish on a kind of meet pedestal. I walk towards it but before I can tuch it I gett hit by a laser. It throws me backwards but I'm unhurt. I'm on my as, the ball is a couple of meters away. I use telekinesis to pull the ball in my hand. I stroke it and ask. What's going to happen 2015 (in Swedish). I can't explain what I see. Mostly pycodellic colors like mandalas. I could see the earth and my son. I cold feel shaking. I can't remember what happened next.

I took a nap after work, which was right after my boss dropped me off at home irl. In the nonlucid part of the dream, instead of dropping me off, he took me back to his house because his wife needed him to attend to the kids, and take out trash and some other random shit. FINALLY when it was time to go, he just grabbed a snack and sat down in front of the TV, and I was like "Dood, gotta get home to my kid!" He was like "OH ok" and jumped up. As we went outside (and this was really weird), I saw a red bird fly by the yard. For some weird reason, I felt like it was a dream sign lol. I've never seen this red bird before that I can recall, but in the dream I felt like I had been dupped by it before. I'll take it! So I just said "See ya Mike," and decided to fly. Then I thought of the fly backwards totm! But my vision went bye bye. So I sat down in lotus position (wtf), but ended up waking up.

I fell back to sleep and I don't remember the start of this second dream, but I DO recall seeing Angeline Jolie in my room, and another guy. The 3 of us decided to go to the shower for a 3some. As I passed the mirror in my bathroom, my reflection was the most amazing gorgeous man I have ever seen. Like holy wow gorgeous. I got lucid from that. I flexed a bit, then I looked like me again. So I left the bathroom and recalled the backwards totm again. I was in the livingroom, and we have a giant mirror there. I looked at myself in the mirror, and just started walking backwards. Easy peasy. Although, my reflection decided to be more creative. It walked backwards properly as I did, but then it backwardsly climbed up onto some furniture that was in the reflection, but not on my side, if that makes sense. Then my reflection started to have some japanese horror little-girl look to it, and it gave me goose bumps. This is cool: I could feel them on my sleeping body, the goosebumps. And so I looked at my dream arm, but no goosebumps. I remarked how I could feel them irl, but not see them in the dream. I looked up at the mirror again and could see a man's naked body behind me. I turned to look, but no one was there. I looked at the mirror again, and he was there. So I reached behind me and it was an old dude and I could feel his old weewee all hard and old lol. I kinda squealed and left the room. I don't remember anything else.

Lying in bed, trying to WILD/fall asleep. Watching FMA Brotherhood with wife. Scar is speaking; wife comments on his scarred face. He looks a little weird to me--part of his face is white (Scar's character is brown-skinned in the show). Fast-paced outro music begins:



It seems clear that Scar is going to die in this next episode. My wife talks about them playing up his sacrifice. I am now looking at a Super Mario Bros. screen. Realize it is a dream, but am not sure if this is a transition so do nothing. Currently I have no body. Playing Mario Bros. 3 world 1 map music: (sorry gang, couldn't post two videos--look the second one up!)

Mario flies off wearing his cape from Super Mario World. The game transitions to some weird game with a naked baby's butt. Dream has solidified now and I have a body. I slap the baby's butt through the screen to see if I can interact with the game. I don't feel anything except for the t.v. screen, but the character reacts. I try to pick the baby up this fails. Danie Radcliffe from Harry Potter is sitting in a hot tub. He criticizes me for not picking up the baby correctly. I knock him backwards into the water. Move around the screen a bit--maybe some kind of office in isometric third-person view, like the old Crusader games. Some zombies wandering around. I decide I don't want to play a game for my entire LD, so I get up and leave the room.

Emerge in my mom's house, then remember to observe the dream. A thought comes up: can I remember any of the January tasks? Ah yes, I remember to new ones. Shouldn't be hard. But I'm not going to try hard. Just observe, and if the necessary tools emerge, then use them. I think I see a component resting on a cabinet, but when I look it is not there. I am looking inside of a cabinet when I wake up. Lie still and begin DEILD transition. Roll off of the mat and am falling through space. Seems to be going well, but keep knocking against something as I fall. I try to ignore it but then wake up. Try once more, then RC and write this down.

December 30, 2015

---

I've Gotten Soft

I was a wolf, and was worried that I'd gotten soft, because I was hanging out with a bear and a beaver. But then some bad human was scheming something; he wanted to catch the animals where I lived by laying traps for them.

I switched to being the beaver or some other small mammal, and warned the wolf that what the bad human brought to our home was going to seem like it was a good thing, but was actually going to destroy our world... But the wolf smelled some pot pies on an island across the river from where we stood. I think we had been on a railroad track, right next to the opening of a tunnel. When we got to the small island with the pot pies on it though, we started pulling weeds because we wanted the place to be beautiful. This somehow foiled the bad human's plans, and he was moaning and grieving back on the train tracks.




I woke up from this random and short dream, but wasn't ready to get up yet, so I tried to fall back asleep. I usually have my best dreams at these moments... I wasn't disappointed. I had this dream next:

Beach Fun

I was on a beach with my family. My brothers and I were playing a sort of shooting game, where we had to see how close to shooting each other we could get without actually hitting each other. The guns suddenly turned into those nerf dart guns after a squabble where I apparently shot too fast consecutively. My little brother shot me and the dart stuck right to my chest. Then I shot my big brother three times; in the arm, the neck, and the hip.

After our battle, we all wanted to go for a walk along the shore. But we had a lot of stuff out with us, so we had to go take it to the car so it would be safe. The car was all the way at the back of the parking lot though, so we had to walk a ways. Dad said he would bring the car around after the first load of stuff, so that we wouldn't have to walk so far next time. I spotted an open parking spot much closer to the beach, and suggested we just move the car there.

On the way to the car, I looked into the woods to my left and noticed huge giraffe replicas. I'm talking like seven-story building tall giraffes. There were maybe 6 or 8 of them, all posed as if walking to the beach to our right. They looked just like real giraffes, just much bigger. To my right, there were some large pelican statues. One of them had its wings out as if beating them to scare enemies away. For some reason my big brother then hatched out of a giant egg near the pelican statues. I was a bit confused, but he seemed to think it was totally normal. We crossed a small pedestrian bridge that was more like a large log over the water, and the ground shook momentarily. I looked up and saw the neck of one of the large giraffes moving. I was scared that they were coming to life and were going to smoosh us, but they didn't. It looked at me, then moved back to its original position and everything stopped moving again...

At this point, my consciousness was slightly shifted; I was The Doctor, but I was still me. If that makes sense. I looked in the woods to the left again, and saw about five Tardises. I blinked, and they were gone. I was very excited, because another Tardis meant there might be another Time Lord than me! My family all went back to the beach area, and I snuck back out to the woods to find the other Time Lords. It was dark now, and when I saw the 5 of them again, I was so exstatic. I wasn't alone! But as I drew nearer, they started morphing from blue Police Call boxes into red Phone Boothes, and I paniced. They all started randomly phasing in and out of Tardis, and never seemed to stay as a Tardis by the time I reached them.

I finally managed to catch one of them as it was blue, but then Emma Stone walked out of it and the sound of flushing came to my mind. They were all just porta-potties, and I'd just been too excited. Emma was drunk as all get out, though. She was stumbling and looked like she was going to vomit again. I helped her get to her cabin, only about fifty feet from the potty. Her mom was inside, and they both thanked me so much and almost worshipped me for some reason. They invited me to a festival that was happening the next day, but I was already going with my family, so I declined.

Flash forward to my family and I leaving the spot on the beach again. My mom and I are in Yukatas, and we are headed for the festival. The parking lot was lined with all sorts of stalls, and my mom wanted to take pictures of me all over the place. But I couldn't see any of the giant giraffes anymore. This made me suspect I was dreaming, so I looked down to my hands, and noticed I had an extra pinky finger on my right hand. I was dreaming!

I wanted to set off a firework, which was perfect, because I was at a festival. There were usually fireworks at these things, right? I looked behind a few stalls, because that's where I thought they would have fireworks stored for later. After a few stalls, I found a stash. I grabbed some of the biggest ones, and stuffed them into the folds on my Yukata. Normally, they shouldn't have had any business fitting, but it was a dream. Yukatas are apparently like a Tardis; bigger on the inside.

I decided to wander for a bit, and noticed something fishy about the trees all around me. I shuffled behind a bush, and inspected the bases of the trees. They turned out to be made of metal. The trunks were cut into strips at the bases, and then bent outwards slightly to create a slight fanning out. It was kind of beautiful, in a way. I appreciated the artistry and patience of whoever could have created a whole forest of metal trees that looked so real.

I wanted to set off the fireworks now, but it was still light. I closed my eyes and willed it to get dark, envisioning the sun setting. When I opened my eyes, it was still light, but when I looked through the metal branches and leaves of the trees above me, I could see the sun moving fast through the sky. In about 20 seconds it was sunset. The sun slowed a bit, and the sunset lasted a few minutes, it was beautiful, but the trees blocked a lot of the colors. Soon, it was dark enough for fireworks.

I hopped on over to the beach, flying through a small path in the woods that lead to the water. I stuck the fireworks in the sand near the water (but not close enough for them to get wet), and realized I had no matches. I could have tried sticking my hand in my pocket... But I wanted to try it Roy Mustang style. I went back to the tree-line, and snapped my finger a couple times, expecting there to be fire when I did. It took a few tries. When I was confident I could summon the flames this way, I aimed and snapped a bolt of fire at the fuses for the rockets. It worked, and this made me want to try other things with fire...

(Backstory required here... When I was a kid, two of my friends and I would spend our time creating elaborate fantasy worlds in which we each controlled an element and ruled over a kingdom. I ruled over fire, and even made a whole story back this world. Anyways, I wanted to try some of the things "I" could do in this fantasy world of mine)

I wanted to try making a disc of fire that I could stand on. I'd spent so long thinking about how these things worked while writing the story, so I just did what I had imagined many times already, and it worked pretty well. It was familiar and nostalgic. I held out my hands and there it was. I moved it up, down, side to side a bit before stepping onto it.

But I remembered the fuses on the fireworks just as they went off. I also wanted to follow the firework so I could watch from the inside, so I shot off after it. I'm not sure if I was flying with the flame disc or if I'd just left it hovering there. I caught up to the firework, and then it went off, and it was so cool. It wasn't so much firework-looking as just flashes of color blinding everything else out of my vision. It lasted a lot longer than a normal firework. There was a sort of pinkish orangish background haze around me, and lots of lines of colors shooting out from where my feet were. Some shimmers and sparkles, too.

When it was over, I just hovered in the air for a bit. I was a little dazed, and felt the dream destabilizing, so I tried rubbing my hands together. I've never tried that to keep a dream, so I wasn't sure how well it would work. I just then remembered a dare I'd seen for anyone. I wanted to get into those dares. The only one I could think of, which randomly popped into my head then, was to fall from a height without slowing down, or something like that. Something about hitting the ground at full speed.

The dream was a little fuzzy, but the rubbing was helping a little bit, so I darted over a bit so I would be above the sand, and not the water like I was right then, and hovered for a bit. This took a lot of mental preparation for me; falling is maybe my biggest fear, and it's that way because of a dream I had when I was little... So even though it was a dream, I still felt scared and in danger. I had my hands balled into fists, so I decided that the signal to fall would be un-clenching my hands and spreading my fingers... but the dream destabilized again and I woke up.

I had a short dream fragment to start. I was just promoted as a new moderator of DreamViews. I was to be in charge of chat, and my title on my profile was "The Nicest Mod". *wink wink nudge nudge*

---

I was at my college, trying to get a 71 bus back to my dorm. I jumped on the first bus I could find, and an old friend T was there. We talked for a bit, until I realized that I was on a 72 bus instead. I got out at the next stop, and I was in this suburban area that kind of looked like the neighborhood I grew up in. I saw my friend M, so i asked if he saw a 71 bus. He ran around the corner of the block where there was another 72 bus parked. He looked down the street, and then said that a 71 had just left. We decided it was best to just walk.

---

I was back at my high school, in one of the old classrooms. Most of the people from my graduating class were there, as well as a few younger kids who looked to be in second grade. They were all working hard to make a rope out of beads so they could escape out the second floor window. Just then, a teacher looked in through the window in the door, saw what we were doing, and came in and yelled at us. Then the scene kind of restarted. This time, I helped them tie some of the beads together, and we finally had a long enough rope to get out. Unfortunately, the teacher came in and busted us yet again.

The scene restarted again. This time, I was counting the seconds until the teacher would show up. I tried to warn everyone that the teacher would be coming, but I had something in my mouth and throat that made me unable to say anything. I started banging on my desk and motioning towards the seat. My friend M realized what I was doing, and yelled for everyone to sit down. Everyone rushed to their seats and looked like they were behaving. We waited for about a minute, but the teacher never even walked by. Everyone got back up and went back to work. One girl asked me why I thought that the teacher was coming. I told them that I had just kind of sensed it, since I had had this dream multiple times before.

I thought of what I was saying, and then it occurred to me that this was a dream. Just then, everyone rushed to their seats again, and the teacher walked in. She lectured us for a little bit, but then yelled at one of the students who didn't address her as "ma'am". She treated us like little kids, and then she decided to give us a quiz on "10 differences between birds and humans". By this point, I had had enough. I raised my hand.

"Yeah, can I ask a question?"
There was a collective gasp from everyone in the classroom, and a slight murmur of fear.
"Well, what is it?"
I did a quick nose plug RC to make sure I was really dreaming before I dropped the bombshell. "What exactly is the point of this?"
There was another loud gasp from the class. This made me feel like more needed to be said, since it was obvious this teacher had been abusing the students into submission, so no one had the backbone to stand up to her.

"Why do you think you can drag us - students who graduated from this school almost three years ago - back here and force us to listen to your second grade lessons?"
The gasps of surprise changed to shouts of "Yeah", and "That's true!" I felt powerful, like I was about to start a revolution.
"And furthermore, how can you punish us for doing the right things wrong, and punish us for doing the wrong things right?"
Even in the dream, I knew this comment made zero sense, but it made the class go crazy. They were just about ready to burn the witch, basically. The teacher was furious and stormed out of the classroom to the applause of the class.

I figured one coup was enough for today, so I decided to actually get some stuff done. I thought of the TOTMs and remembered the coal task, although I thought it required giving the coal to a little kid. I reached in my pocket for coal, but I couldn't find any. I affirmed to myself that there was coal in my other pocket, but I couldn't find it there either. After two or three attempts, I realized that I was saying the words, but still had some doubt as to if it would happen or not. Once I did an RC and reminded myself that I was dreaming, I patted my pockets and felt a hard lump in my right pocket. I reached in and pulled out a lump of coal wrapped in wax paper. It had icing on the top, which made it look like a cupcake, but I scraped it off as best as I could. I looked for the younger kids that were in our classroom, but all of them were gone. I walked out into the hallway, but it was empty.

I walked outside into the courtyard. There were two kids on a miniature golf cart driving towards me. I stop them and tell them that I have a present for them. They seem excited, but when I pulled the coal out of my pocket, they seemed almost scared of it. They threw the cart in reverse and drove backwards until they hit a tree. I walked over and placed the coal on the dashboard of the cart and walked away. They drove forward for about 30 feet until they hit a bump. The cart rolled over and both of the kids fell out. I wasn't sure if I should go help them, but I saw a man (supposedly their dad) laughing and taking pictures with his phone. I lost lucidity at this point, and soon woke up.