non-lucid

I know from memory that these dreams were longer than I can actually remember. I'm sure all of you know this feeling as it is one of the many frustrations that accompany dream recall. At any rate, I had to distinct dreams last night and here they are:

Trip to Chicago:

My family decides to go to Chicago on a family trip. My mom, dad, sister, and friend pile into our family truck and we put all of our baggage in the bed of the truck. It is night when we leave. We were suddenly pulling up to a lavish hotel in the middle of Chicago. We go in the front door and ascend a grand staircase covered in red carpet. The interior of the hotel is extremely colorfully decorated with lots of greens and reds. We find our room and it was spacious and very nice. (I know there was some activity in Chicago we did but I just can't remember it as hard as I try) The next thing I know I'm walking up stairs outside onto the balcony of our hotel room. I get my bags and descend the staircase. Suddenly, I am back home.

Pick up Rugby Game:

For some reason my sister is taking me to school in her car. I "know" it's my school and it looks like an enlarged version of my junior high school. I enter the main gym and start playing a weird game with my classmates. We are all lined up in two parallel lines that form a tunnel. Then one person runs down the tunnel and low fives everyone. Then the "runner" ball taps a random person in line. That person is the new "runner". I thought it was a lame game and wanted to leave. I saw my sister leaving but I couldn't catch up to her. For some reason she left with my dad instead of the car she came in and she had my wallet and keys with her. So I was stuck at the school with a car but no wallet or keys. I call my dad and ask him where he is and tell him I need my wallet and keys. He tells me he is north of Nora (an area by Indianapolis) and I proceed to walk there. I trek along the highway and get off at the Nora exit. I can't find my dad but I do end up in some sort of ghetto area. It is very shady and I'm getting nervous when I see some older guys throwing around a rugby ball on an old beat up basketball court. I go over and start passing the ball with them. They tell me they want to play basketball so I grab the basketball and kick it into a forest. Then the basketball court turns into a rugby field and my whole high school rugby team is there playing rugby. We play a game against another team. (I don't remember if we win or not I really vividly remember a kickoff I caught though).

So I woke up this morning pretty sure that I didn't remember any of my dreams. I got frustrated and almost just went off to work without even trying to write here or try hard to remember. Almost. I tried extremely hard to remember and then, almost like a memory I had had a long time ago, my entire dream suddenly popped into my head. I don't know about all of you but that is an amazing feeling when you finally unlock the memory of the night before. Anyway, the dreams weren't that weird but they definitely fell into my normal dream sign themes.

The Family Reunion

I'm in an old, red Corvette from the 60s or 70s, driving around the country trying to find my grandparents' house. The only problem is the Corvette only has two speeds: fast or stopped. I drive down the road their house is on but I can't stop in time so I pass it. I end up in the grass in their neighbors yard. I then turn the car around, get a long head start through their neighbor's yard and drift into the makeshift parking lot in my grandparents yard. Although I don't park where I wanted to, I am still safely at my destination. I get out of the car and walk inside to be greeted by my whole family. They are all wearing casual clothing but I'm wearing dress pants and a nice shirt. I get frustrated because the dress pants are too hot and uncomfortable and I want to take them off but my mom doesn't allow it. I trudge off downstairs and start watching TV when a very attractive older lady walks downstairs. (I don't recognize her but I know she is not family from instinct) She begins to take my pants off and asks if I want sexual favors done to me. I don't reply so she starts to do things to me for a little while and then she leaves. I am happier that the uncomfortable pants are off than that I just received sexual favors from a hot mom. I then examine my legs because they suddenly start to itch. I see a little red dot at the same location on both legs so I take a knife and cut the skin where the dots are. I stick my fingers in the wounds and pull out too little computer chips. Without having any second thoughts about the chips, I discard them and go upstairs to get new pants on. I find a bag on the couch in the living room that is filled with t-shirts and athletic shorts. I am extremely relieved and put on the new attire as quickly as possible.

Another dream or continuation of family reunion:

My immediate family is in a large van seating around 8 people. I know my sister, mother, and 4 other people not in my family are in the back of the van but I can only see my dad driving while I sit in the passenger seat. We are trying to get to a grocery store but the weather outside is getting worse and worse. It is very dark and raining but we finally arrive at what appears to be a Kroger. When we get inside, I walk around the fresh produce aisle doing absolutely nothing but admiring the colorfulness of the produce. My dad yells at me from the checkout line and tells me it's time to go. We get back in the car and are driving home when the sky turns an odd color green. We are at an intersection and I look to the right and see a tornado coming up the street perpendicular to us. My dad puts the car in park and we all watch as the tornado passes right in front of us on its path down the road. We turn right at the intersection and see a smaller tornado following the path of the larger one we had just witnessed. We can tell the weather is getting worse and worse every second so we turn off the road, drive behind a car dealership, to a large warehouse. When we pass the car dealership I notice many of the cars have the top down so I ask my dad if I can go help them and he says no. We run into the warehouse from the van with my family and the 4 others. In the warehouse were probably 20 stations. At each of these stations there was a worker and a work table that consisted of a conveyor belt and a sewing machine. The boss asked my mom and I if we could help them and we agree to help. He hands us pieces and we assemble them as if by memory. I have a little but of trouble putting the last few things together on it but my mom quickly helps me. The final product is orange and has "United Airlines" in red and blue painted on it. I thought it was some kind book holder for plane rides but I wasn't sure. Then, I look over to the benches lining the walls of the warehouse where the rest of the van passengers were seated. My mom and I had been sitting on the floor by one of the stations when we were assembling those things. My mom asks the boss whether we can help more and he says no. She gets teary and asks to go sit by my dad. She squeezes in the bench which has barely enough room for everyone. I finally look at the people who were in the back of the van. It was another family that I assumed were friends. I look at the daughter of the other family who was slightly overweight and smile and she smiles back.

I am extremely happy that I finally remembered this dream this morning. I've been reading Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams and I already have a few thoughts about this dream. The pants being hot and uncomfortable could have been due to an external stimulus such as my legs being hot under my blankets. Also, since Freud believes many dreams stem from childhood memories, family reunions, taking a lot of advice from my parents, old family houses, and the theme of not driving or not driving well makes complete sense. Although my dreams aren't the craziest or "coolest", I really do get a lot out of them because they are pretty easily interpretable.

Day 2 of my journey and another false awakening! Here's how my first dream went.

I "wake up" in my bed at home. I go upstairs and complain to my parents that I couldn't remember any dreams from the night before. I am very frustrated because I had told myself the night before that I was going to recall my dreams. This frustration stayed with me for the majority of the dream. Then, I got in our old family truck and drove to my high school (I have already graduated). It was the first day of school and we were given a quiz. Although normally very good at school, I couldn't get one question right on the quiz. My teacher tells me she's disappointed in me and gives me a packet of practice problems to work out. Then. I start talking to a girl in my graduating class about how I couldn't remember my dreams from the other night. She tells me not to worry and that she didn't remember hers either. I was then suddenly in the weight room of the school lifting with a few of my high school friends. I was contemplating what lift I wanted to do when my friends left. I heard girls voices outside the door of the weight room and the weight coach (who I never liked) came inside so I decided to leave. Outside the weight room was a girl (who graduated a year before I did) and I said "Hi" to her and she simply said "Hi John". I then walked out of the school and it was night time. I talked to one of my sister's friends about how her indoor soccer was going and she complained about it. I then tried to walk to my car but I couldn't. For some reason I was walking like a drunk and kept falling down a running into cars as i tried to get to my car. It was as if school let out because everyone was going to their car but no one helped me get to mine. I finally get to a car with three people sitting in it, my grandma and an elderly couple. (Their lights were off so I couldn't tell who they were or if I even knew them in RL). I ask my grandma (who was sitting in the back seat) if she could help me get to my truck. She then proceeded to give me a lecture on the dangers of asking strangers in cars without lights on for help.

Second dream!

My girlfriend and I are laying in a bed in what appears to be my grandparents bedroom in their old house with my parents (very odd). We are all watching a show on a very small TV. My parents get out of bed to brush their teeth and take showers but my girlfriend and I stay in bed. We start making out when my dad informs me that we need to go upstairs. When we arrive upstairs it's no surprise that it is the upstairs of my grandparents old house. When we arrive upstairs though, there is another couple up there already. I don't know who these people were but the man was very skinny and the woman was very fat (looked like they were a joke or something). We took a long time to arrange our beds the way they "needed" to be arranged and then when we finally laid in them my dad yelled for me to come to the kitchen. I went to the kitchen and my parents are cooking some kind of casserole with tortilla chips, mac & cheese, and hamburger meat. They tell me that we are going to my great grandparents' apartment to have brunch. I ask them what time and they say 7 p.m. I ask them why eating at 7 p.m. is called brunch and not dinner and they didn't answer. I tried the casserole and it was surprisingly very good. It was crunchy and soft at the same time and had a variety of tasty flavors. I concluded that old people must just call every meal brunch and went back upstairs. When I got back upstairs though, it was no longer the upstairs of my grandparents old house. It was now the playroom of my old house. The skinny man and fat woman were still there. I saw that my iPhone was dying so I plugged it into the computer. For some reason I couldn't figure out where to plug it in so it took much longer than I wanted it to. After I finally plugged it in, a video of me popped up on the screen of the TV in the playroom. It was a video of me singing about football. I was considerably younger in the video than in the dream and I didn't like the video but I couldn't figure out how to stop it. Suddenly my mom is upstairs telling me how to turn it off. When she turns it off though, pictures of me from my phone start popping up on the TV. In frustration I just pick one picture on my phone to have on the TV so I don't have to mess with it anymore. Then my girlfriend and I walk into my old bedroom and start making out again. We are rolling around on the floor when suddenly she screams. I look at her for a second and ask her why she did that. She doesn't answer and just looks at me.

I am very pleased to have more vivid and complete dreams last night. In only the second night of consciously attempting dream recall I have made significant progress. I'm beginning to discover my dream signs. I know high school is one of them. Family, singing, old houses, and friends seem to also be my dream signs. I've been able to interpret some of my dreams just by writing them here too. For instance, the first dream I had last night came from my subconscious being nervous that I wouldn't remember my dreams. Hopefully, this subconscious worry will help me to remember more and more dreams. I am excited to sleep now every day! So far so good on my LD journey!

After reading through the website last night I decided to try some of the techniques to recall my dreams. I laid in my bed and remembered the following:

I have a false awakening and wake up in my bed at my old house. I moved out of that house 3 years ago but everything was clear and detailed as it had been when I lived there. I get up from bed, move downstairs into the basement, and find my friend and his girlfriend sitting there on the couch. They look angry at each other. Then, my friend's girlfriend comes over and sits by me instead of my friend. My friend leaves and his girlfriend says that she wants to be with me but I won't allow it. Suddenly, I am in a grocery store that is very bright. I am walking with my friend (same friend in the basement) looking for something. I don't know what we are looking for but we can't find it. Then, I am at my old high school walking with the senior class through the main gym singing a song about freshmen. I have never heard or sang a song about freshmen but this song was clear as day in the dream with clear lyrics and music in the background. As we walked out of the gym, I was suddenly in a chemistry lab looking at a circular metallic blob floating in a glass tube. I am wearing a lab coat and studying this substance for a while and then another man in a lab coat walks in and talks to me. The language is not my own but I seem to understand it. Finally, I have another false awakening in the same bed at my old house and I walk into the playroom upstairs. My friend (same friend that has been in all the other sections of the dream) is sitting at the computer playing Halo 3 and the TV is on. I ask him if he's mad about his girlfriend and he says no and that I should find her and date her. I watch him play Halo 3 for a while and when he dies in the game I go downstairs to search for her. I look all over the house and can't find her.

I felt pretty excited to remember so many fragments of my dreams last night considering I normally do not recall my dreams well. Although each dream were short snippets they all seemed to be connected somehow. I can't wait to sleep tonight to see what new dreams I can recall!