The Lab Notebook

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

I'm on my laptop, playing one of the mini-games within Petpet Park, when the game interrupts me with a pop-up notification saying that I've set a score record and asking me to fill in the name I want to display next to the record. I type in my player character's name. As soon as I finish typing it, it changes to a completely different, longer name. I think, Computers don't usually change what you've typed after you've typed it. I must be dreaming! I reach up and pinch my nose and, just as I had expected, feel that otherworldly sensation of being able to breathe through it. I feel a strong surge of excitement and happiness.

Suddenly, I find myself lying in my bed in my current bedroom. Still knowing perfectly well that I'm dreaming, I climb out of bed and walk out of the room and down the stairs. I hop down the last few steps, enjoying the way it takes me a couple of seconds to float down and land as gently as a feather on the floor, unlike in reality. In the living room, where the stairs end and where the ceiling is high, I float into the open space like a balloon for a few moments. I'm having a great time.

Then I decide to go out the front door. I start trying to go through it intangibly, thinking, I know I can do this. I've done it before. I can see the door and its interior, which are dark brown, and then the front yard as I begin to go through the door. I don't get all the way through it, though. I end up walking out onto the front path, then realizing that I've made a hole in the door with my face, and my face is still stuck through it; I've brought it with me. “This is stupid,” I say. I peel it off and toss it aside; it feels like it's made of thin plastic.

Now that I'm outside, I start floating again. I see two dogs in somebody’s yard and start flying higher, making sure I'm out of their reach in case they try to jump up and attack me. [Darn irrational fears. I have that one in real life, too. I know I could have confronted it and perhaps reduced its hold through this dream, but it didn't occur to me to do so at the time.] However, the dogs do no such thing. I continue flying, and think, It's good that I'm in my own neighborhood, and it looks just like it does in reality. [Except that it didn't, not quite. The street turned to the right in the dream at a place where it dead-ends in reality.] Down on the street, I see two cartoony-looking kids named Sam and Sarah talking to each other. At some point during their conversation, I woke up.