The Lab Notebook

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[These are all my dreams from the past week or so that I hadn't gotten around to typing up and/or posting to this DJ, until now. Most of them are pretty fragmentary because I wrote about them from notes long after the fact. None of them were lucid. My most recent dream, from last night, will be in a separate post, because it's longer.]

Night of November 10-11

I take a lengthy tour of a camp I've been to several times, answering questions asked by people who have never been there before. We're all there for our organization's annual fall conference. There are two cabins up high on a ridge, and a big meeting/dining hall on the low ground, right near the entrance. [I knew it was that camp while I was in the dream, even though it has a completely different layout in reality. This was a pretty long dream, but I can't remember any more details now.]

I'm with Ariel from the Disney version of The Little Mermaid. We're finding our way through a Little Mermaid-themed maze. It's one of several mazes at Walt Disney World.

Night of November 11-12

Mom, P., and I are out to dinner at a restaurant with an outdoor patio. P. asks me if I got any gumbo the last time we were there. I answer that no, Dad ate it all.

I see a two-year-old girl on the street. I walk with her back to my grandparents' house. The front door of the house has two separate sections that can open and close independently of each other. We get into the house by opening the top section of the door first. When we get inside, we discover that my grandparents have a new, upright, Scrabble-like electronic board game in their house. It involves a countdown timer.

Night of November 12-13

I'm in my current house, and I listen to a voice mail from a publishing company. I return their call and talk to them. We try to organize a live interview in 30 minutes' time. They're even willing to give me directions to their office over the phone. We don't schedule the interview for 30 minutes from now, though, because that's not enough time for me to shower and get dressed. They put me on hold for a bit. When they come back, we agree on next week instead. They expect me to bring a completed, polished novel manuscript with me to the interview so we can talk about it, and I don't have one, so I think, Okay. I only have one week to finish one of my novels. My hair is long and in a French braid, and I decide to leave it that way and not wash it before the interview.

I'm with my friend Jane R. She's trying on a cute dress made out of a towel-like, terry-cloth material, and I'm helping her adjust it.

I'm watching an episode of “Rugrats” in which one of the babies helps teach another how to use the potty, and they are found by one of their moms.

When I woke up, I went, Oh. I guess I don't have to have one of my novels finished by next week. Although that would be nice. I think I had that dream about the interview because I was worrying about how I was going to balance writing, studying, and job-hunting just as I was going to sleep.

Night of November 14-15

A Christian band sings a song about their dying dog.

I'm watching the pilot episode of a superhero TV show. The show will have a superhero team consisting of 5 boys and 3 girls. I will be one of the girls on the team. I know this from watching the show's opening.

Night of November 15-16

I'm at a church camp, standing outside the little trailer where the leader of the camp is staying. His wife is sitting on a chair outside the trailer. She tells me that I can't talk to him right now because he's sleeping.

I'm getting ready to leave the camp. I'm in the process of moving my stuff out of the space in and around a twin bed in a cabin, but I'm not done yet. I come back into the cabin to continue packing, and there's another girl already lying in my bed. I tell her that I was using the space, but I'm vacating it and she can have it now, but she has my permission to play with my teddy bears. Three of my teddy bears are lying on the end of the bed [I own all of them in real life]. She answers that no, she'll take the responsibility for cleaning the place up.

A third girl who is also in the room asks me, “Can I at least do your makeup?” I look at my face in the mirror next to the bed and see that it has red blotches on it, and several large zits, including two on the left side of my jawline. I agree to let the girl do my makeup, and we go over to another wall of the room, where there is a dresser with various cosmetics on it. I see that one of the bottles of makeup is labeled inception, and I think, Oh, cool. I didn't know that was the brand name of the makeup I used. [*facepalm* Oh, dear. That really should have clued me in that I was dreaming.] I reach for this bottle, but the girl who offered to do my makeup chastises me, snapping at me to spray myself first with an alcohol-based antibacterial cleanser that comes in a pale teal bottle. I do so, wiping it over my face with a cotton ball.