The Lab Notebook

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

[Dream #1] I'm at the offices of a certain company. [The layout is slightly different than it is in real life.] I'm wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with some logo on it. As far as I know, I'm there to volunteer for the day, to test-drive the job I'm being considered for. [Specifically, the one I'm being considered for in real life.] From the part of the office where all the workstations are, I go out to the front reception desk for something. The person at the desk asks me to stop and let her take my picture for my ID badge. I'm surprised. If I'm getting my picture taken for my permanent ID badge, that must mean that they're actually giving me the job! I hadn't realized that today was officially my first day on the job! I had thought I was just there to volunteer and see what it was like. I'm so happy and honored that I actually got the job!

I speak to the lady at the front desk, expressing some of that excitement and those thoughts, and adding something along the lines of, “If I had known today was my first day and I was getting my picture taken, I would have dressed up more!” She tells me that since I'm not wearing any makeup or anything, I should go back to my workstation and look through my paperwork from the interview and application process, to see if there's still a good, professional-looking photo of me in there. I go back to my workstation and do so. There is, indeed, a good photo of me among many other pieces of paper in a manila folder. I bring the picture back to the front desk and give it to the lady there. “I have a nice smile in this picture,” I say when I give it to her. She accepts it, and we shake hands. I start to say something like, “You have no idea how much this means to me! This is only my second full-time job ever...” I kind of stop after that, because I've just realized that mentioning how inexperienced I am probably isn't the smartest thing to do at my new job.

I go down some stairs, which lead down and out of the building in a spiral. The outdoor part of the stairway is carved out of stone. On my way down, I pass my friends Linda N. and Janet [they're both friends of mine from real life]. I smile at them and say hello.

When I woke up and discovered that my first day on the job had just been a dream, I was genuinely surprised, then immediately became genuinely angry and disappointed. [It makes sense both that I would feel that way and that I would dream about getting that job; I've been waiting all week to hear whether I got the job, so it's been on my mind a lot and I really, really want it to happen. Also, I'd like to note that this dream was actually much longer and much more detailed, elaborate, and vivid than described above. I didn't get a chance to write about it until just before bed the following night, though, so I no longer recall all the details.]

[Dream #2] I'm out on a road trip with my family. At a store where we stop along the way, I buy a small children's book that is [somehow] about the song “Friday,” on impulse. We're on our way to stay at the home of some friends. When I get there, I sit on the floor in the living room and read the book. [I could read perfectly normally in the dream, as always, but I don't remember now what it said.] While I'm there, three teenage boys come into the room.

The house we're staying in is huge, and has lots of people living in it. I watch some younger kids get up to the second floor by climbing some stepladder steps that jut out from the wall in one corner of the living room and lead to an opening between the first and second floors. To get to the bottom step, they have to stand on the couch.

I wander into [what is most likely] the dining room, passing the woman whose house it is along the way. On the back wall of this room is a normal staircase leading to the second floor. The woman asks me if I want an entire room, or just a place to sleep. I answer, “I just need a place to sleep.” The woman tells me to go upstairs, and I do so. The staircase ends in a bedroom with a kid-sized bed; this will be my place to sleep. I'll have to sleep with my feet and probably half my lower legs hanging off the end of the bed, but I just accept this. Beyond this bedroom are other bedrooms and bathrooms, and even a third floor to the house, really just a loft bedroom situated in the highest gable of the house.