non-lucid

My father, my sister and I were in our van. (Woa, since when do i have a sister? In the dream my sister and I were grown up but younger than now. I did not really see the sister in the van, but she got mentioned and I just knew she was there.)

Some bandits stopped us, and suggested that my father fight them in an alley, and if he looses the bandits get to rape my sister and me, and if he wins we may go. I thought this was a very bad idea and expressed my concern to my dad. He said "Do not worry, as long as there are only the three bandits, I will win." (?!) My father left the van and started walking toward bandits in the alley. I locked all car doors from the inside. I dialed on my phone "POLICE". A woman answered but I hung up. (?!) I heard a fourth bandit open the trunk (the van had a trunk like a car), and start looking through it. So there were four bandits at least, we had no chance.

And here is where it gets tricky: there are three endings. I think I kind of thought of all three, and saw all three versions?
Ending 1: I saw the bandit number four approach our car to break the window with a huge metal ship anchor, and there was no time for me to do anything.
Ending 2: I called 911 (this time remembered it was 911, and not POLICE).
Ending 3: I jumped into the driver's seat, started the car, and even started driving, knowing I was leaving my father behind, but no choice.

The dream was quite vivid up until ending 1. And I think at that point my mind rebelled that it was not satisfied with that ending, so it flashed the two alternative endings in front of me, as the dream was fading away. Honestly I am not sure whether I was fully asleep for endings 2 and 3 though or whether I was already on my way to waking up.

Fragment: eating the junk eel's head (that's all I recall - no clue what it means.)

Fragment: Something about summer students as interns, their tasks, changing them. Needed to get permissions, and justify it.

WBTB Attempt failed - but remembered two dreams from the two last hours of sleep after WBTB attempt

Home Search Next Door to a School

We were home searching again (doing that a lot in dreams lately). Again the house we saw was supposedly one we had viewed in a prior house search (did not really look familiar though).

The house was next door to a school. The school had a playground. We asked the home's owner about the school. It was an elementary school. She claimed it was a public school but I was doubtful, so I asked something like "So if we live here, this is the school our kids would go to?" And she answered "You have to keep in mind that your kids will soon outgrow elementary school and not go here." My older son is now in second grade and my younger is not yet old enough to start school, but in the dream I agreed "Yes, they will soon outgrow it." How big is the school? Oh, only right classes, she said. I asked her whether I remembered correctly from the previous time we had seen the house that she had a kid too. She said she did not. I felt embarrassed that I did not remember that.

Just like in previous house searching dreams, I notice upon waking up that we did not look inside the house. The focus is on what is next to it.

Golf Carts and Lost Younger Son

My husband and I were in gold carts chasing some sort of fast train going fast in golf carts.

Suddenly I noticed: where are our kids? We had been with our kids before. I confronted my husband. It turned out he let our seven and four year olds drive their own cart, but it was a slower one, so that was ok. I insisted we backtrack and find them.

We find the cart and my seven year old is driving it and doing just fine, but my four year old is missing. I continue searching for him frantically on foot.

My step father and my mother pull up in a car and want to know if I want to get in. I decline. As he is closing the door, my stepfather drops a pair of sunglasses. He asks my help in picking up those glasses, and also all other pairs of glasses - there are a lot of glasses around the car on the ground. I start picking up glasses.

My mother reminds me that I should be looking for my son. And comments on, see how willing to help my husband is (sarcastically). I feel guilty that I let myself be distracted.

I keep searching, but we do not find my son before I wake up.

My husband and I were house hunting, and there was this house which we according to the dream had seen before at a previous occasion. At first we could not see it because of a doctor's appointment of mine, but the next day we came, and there was another family there looking at the house and the hostess was the owner of the house and her family.

The house had a small bay in front of it, and in the middle of the bay was the Washington Monument sticking out of the water. There were stairs coming down into the bay. A group of dolphins performed a show for us in the bay. And there may also have been penguins or other performers.

My husband and I walked off after this show, without looking at the inside of this house. I was trying to tell my husband that for a house like this we should be willing to spend more than for our previous home, and I tried to put a dollar value on how much more in mortgage payments per month, but I could not figure it out. I also remember being worried that we had not completed a credit check yet, like before we bought our current home, but I thought that we had time after all because we could place the offer and could produce the credit check if the owner decided to sell to us.

We met the other family who had viewed the house, and they were not interested in it, and they assumed that we were not either since we had walked off without actually looking at the house.

So we walked back. We appologized to the owner for giving her mixed messages, and said we hoped it was not too late to look at the house now.

I went to this weird job interview. I got the interview because months ago a former coworker had apparently told me they were looking, and then i was not looking, but now i was (in my dream), so i contacted them again. when i arrived there was some confusion and I had to wait for someone to see me, but then a man came. The office was weird: Instead of sitting at desks people sat at tables with small groups of other people doing different stuff. I remember thinking that those chairs would not be as comfortable as desk chairs.

At one table people were verifying the consecutiveness of page numbers in a bible. My supervisor who was interviewing me noticed that the page number that one of them was on was much lower than his count. The man insisted that it was nonetheless correct. I pointed out that it could be if the preface had 37 pages that were counted with Roman numerals. I was trying to impress that I could subtract like that.

At another table I don't know what they were doing but part of it involved petting dogs. I asked whether one could pet cats instead.

I finally asked what they actually did here, and was told that they did whatever their clients requested, and that people just figured out how best to accomplish it. I remember I was very impressed out of some reason. I wanted to know whether this was the company headquarters, and was told that no, that was in Vegas, but they were thinking of relocating to San Francisco or Detroit.

It seemed they were interested in hiring me. I said that I had had a raise at my current job though since the time I told them how much money I made, would this be an issue. They said no, that they actually would pay me even more.

Then I somehow lost my supervisor / guide. I wandered the hallways trying to find him. Some company hallways were weird like there were spas and locker rooms etc there. I found someone who recognized me and knew who I was looking for, and he tried to help me. He took me downstairs and there was this fancy Middle eastern restaurant there. But we could not find the supervisor.

I finally gave up and left. Then I found out that I now would not get the job because I had not staid and waited. I wanted to know how long he had expected me to wait. Was I supposed to stay around and wait even after everyone else left for the end of the day? It was weird that I asked that, since I really had not waited long at all.

I dreamed that my father, my stepmother, and I were moving out of a house. For some reason there was a rush and my stepmother especially was hurrying us along, and we were going to leave most of our stuff behind for good.

I was worried that we were leaving my fathers guitar, many of my toys (though I was a grown up), but most of all my socks: it appeared my stepmother was actively trying to prevent me from taking any of my socks, and out of some reason I felt very deeply the need to take them.

We were almost ready to go. I managed to persuaded father that we come in one more time to get more of the stuff, and so I could get some of my socks, and he agreed, against my stepmother's wishes. The socks out of some reason were in a large chest in the basement.

As we passed the yard, a huge owl landed, and he said "They love eachother very much" (At least I think that was it - what the owl said is the part of my dream recall I am least sure about). I said to my father: Did you hear that? What this owl said? He had heard it, but he insisted that the owl must have learned to parrot the phrase without understanding the meaning. I agreed.

I did get some of my socks. Though most of my stuff did stay behind.

Fragment 1: I seemed to be reviewing a bit of Downton Abbey TV series in my sleep, specifically the bit about how the assistant cook is jealous of the new kitchen maid because of the romantic interest of the footman.

Fragment 2: this dream was third person kind of like watching TV too. There was a war veteran who used to be into college basketball, and now he wanted to go back to college to play more ball, and would he be any good again?

I recall that there was a sex scandal in this dream. Alas that is all I recall! Oh and I think I was not involved in it but rather third person.

I strongly suspect watching the TV show Downton Abbey had something to do with this dream.

In this dream some young woman was making pants out of yarn. A very tall young man was trying them on, and she was tying some loose threads into bows. She asked me whether they were done. I pointed out that if he pulled them up they were way too short, but if he pulled them down they were way too low. The young man demonstrated this. This should have been obvious to anyone without asking. The pants did not look like man's pants, though in general they did not look good even for a woman, but I did not say that.

Another fragment may have been about baby shower preparations?

I remember this was a long dream. I remember there were several rounds of it, and it was kind of repetitive but not exact repetition. It was all about me loosing my sons over and over again. It was always either entirely or at least partially my fault, and sometimes also someone else's.

I don't remember all rounds, but in the last iteration the boys were playing somewhere in a grassy area of a city street, and my car was parked nearby with the motor running and key in ignition. A woman who in my dream was the mother of some friends of my kids, but in reality is an unknown, she started chatting with me, and she then went behind the wheel of my car and I got in the passenger seat, and she suggested that we go for a short ride while we chat, and leave the kids here, but come back to them, and I agreed. After we had been driving for a while, she realized she could not easily drive back - I think it was because of one way streets that prevented us from driving back the way we came, and the streets were not in a straight grid like many streets around where I actually live, but they were more curved and complex, more like the streets of old European cities. So in my dream the woman abandoned me or just disappeared. I abandoned my car, and started walking back to find my sons. It took a long time. Eventually I found them. They looked worse for wear, a bit dirty and dischevled, like they had been living on the street for a while. They were delighted to see me, and I them. And just when I found them, my husband found all of us to. I had no idea how he found us because I had not contacted him, and he had no way of knowing that the boys had been missing nor where we were. I had the sense that my husband was reproachful about my loosing our kids, and he had every right to be, because it was my fault.

This dream is reminiscent of a few previous dreams of mine, in which I am also lost, also with a car, and my husband in at least one of them also finds me, and I don't know how. And I also have feelings of guilt in at least one of them.

Fragment: Me and someone else were standing on someone's lawn when we saw a firetruck pull up into their driveway. Meanwhile the woman who was the owner of the house hurried over there. We thought that we better move lest someone become suspicious what we were doing there and whether we started the fire. What were we doing there? Rationalized that must have had precognition of fire, but figured no one would believe that.

Fragment: My mom and I were staying at Polish friends of my mothers. While there the phone rang, and I picked up. I was asked whether I knew the owners and I said I had met the woman but not the man yet, and then I explained they were friends of my mothers, and the person on the other side of the phone figured out who I must be. Btw, I was a teenaged version of me in this dream. My father burst into the house upset that we were in town and not staying with him. He insisted we pack up our stuff and come with him. I was surprised he included my mother in that given that they were divorced.

Fragment: I was in a public bathroom - I think with my mother and I caused a flood. The thing that was flooding was much smaller than a toilet and it was in front of the sink but it was not the sink.

Fragment: In this dream I was staying at my father's house which was nothing like his real house, it was much bigger and older and in ill repair and it was a mess. There were a whole bunch of desks blocking my way to the closet. I needed to get through and my dad needed to help me with that. I then pulled an electrical plug, and we became aware that this had caused a loud crackling noise to stop whereas we had not noticed the noise before. When I briefly turned it back on, we discovered that whatever it was was also causing sparks (which we had not noticed before either) which were damaging the ceiling. My father became worried about the resale value if the home. He wanted to know whether the document about the condition of this home when he bought it was vague enough so he could claim this was a preexisting condition. We tried to examine the damage, but it was in such heavy shadow that we could not really see the ceiling. My father wondered whether this could be used to his advantage to pretend that he did not know about the damage and maybe noone would notice.

Fragment: some weird connection between life and forum, not sure but it may have been that if one did not want animal eaten should have posted to different subforum?

In my dream my mother and stepfather came to visit me at the university campus (in reality I graduated from college more than a decade and a half ago).

I was parking the car in the parking garage of the hotel on the college campus (there really is a hotel there). I did a very poor parking job.

I spoke with the parking attendant or security guy about threat to life of a professor of mine. The professor dismissed it, but I believed there had been two assassination attempt on him already. The guy I was talking to said he would look into it.

My grandmother could not come for health reasons (in reality she is no longer alive), Christmas was coming - I wondered whether I could instead make a brief visit to here (in Poland) but I was worried because I have a cold and might pass it on to her.

My mom had brought a puzzle that required one to find a clue in a library on other side of campus (the layout of campus was completely different from my university's campus, and so was the library). It was like a scavanger hunt. We walked through the cold campus (it was winter in the dream.)

The puzzle / scavanger hunt led one to constructing a paper or cardboard box with art design. I was disappointed, and I let my mother know that this kind of thing did not interest me, that we could have skipped the step of actually going on this scavanger hunt and could have just read about it. My mom was disappointed that I was disappointed.

In reality it is true that my mother and stepfather are coming to visit soon. I am no longer in college, not since over a decade and a half ago. My grandmother is dead. There are no assassination attempts of course. It is not winter / Christmas. I do however usually do a poor job parking my car.

Notice my dream signs: car, my mother, college.

This dream may have been a third person dream, or I may occasionally have identified with one of the characters or another.

There was a young woman with Down syndrome who everyone thought would never have kids or be married or anything. But then a close relative of hers dies and leaves behind either a group of kids or a bunch of eggs about to hatch - there definitely were some eggs involved. Anyway, the young woman with Down syndrome is the only one willing and available to adopt. She turns out to be an excellent mother with the help of her brother. At some point in the dream someone also asks to merry her.

Fragment: I was at a hotel, which had a reception desk and in the next room a separate information desk. I kept having questions, and getting confused and wanting to ask the woman at the reception desk, and bothering her, when I should have gone to the information desk.

In my dream I undertook the mammoth task of writing an updated edition of a Java reference book. In waking life I do not know how to program in Java, and even in the dream I was not good at it and I felt inadequate for the task. However, I felt someone had to do it because it was an important reference book.

The previous edition had been written by an organization we work with in waking life, and the employees of that organization were like in waking life. My coworkers and managers however were not ones like in waking life, and the building and organization and goal of our work were not the same.

In my dream I had to spend some time persuading a manager of why testing was necessary. Then I actually revised one chapter of the huge reference book and implemented the corresponding code for it, which resulted in two lines crossing, one representing actual data and the other some sort of extrapolated data.

A high level executive of my dream organization was very impressed with my work, and meaningfully said to my dream manager that I am "number 1". At least I thought this had some sort of important hidden meaning, but I did not know what it meant, except that I had the sense that it was like "favorite", but i felt insufficiently qualified for that. I was supposed to go to the executive's office later, and hoped to be told what being number 1 meant.

I talked with a representative of the publisher of this reference book. And she said good that I was working on this new edition, because this one was about to go out of date. I said that I would not be done in time because I had just started one chapter, and it was a huge reference book.

The first revised chapter I did was one somewhere in the middle. Now I started tackling the reference book starting from the front cover. I had the revelation that there would be no need to revise every chapter, since this was a new edition, just the ones that needed to change. This made me realize that the task was not quite as huge as the reference book made it look like.

In this fragment I and my sister in law and some others were preparing food for people. Among other things we soaked croutons in soup and sent them to some people who for health reasons could not eat other stuff, but perhaps could eat soaked croutons.

Repeatedly seeking a restroom - this should have been my cue to get lucid, dream sign! But non lucid I staid. At one point in this dream I cause an alarm to go off as I enter a private suite, but I reassure the person there that it's alright - I know the owner. Sometime in this dream I also have my pants down outside the restroom and someone sees me.