Recent DJ Posts

Some elderly relative of my husband's had died in our vicinity (in reality my husband does not have any local relatives). I knew to expect one elderly woman to come as a house guest for the funeral and had prepared for that.

However, on the day before the funeral it was not that one relative who arrived at my home expecting to be put up for the night, but it was several: all of them elderly female unknown to me and judgemental and unfriendly. Furthermore my husband and sons were not there to help me prepare, and the house I lived in was unfamiliar to me both in reality and in the dream. So I had to find new sheets for every bed in the house, and I did not know where clean sheets were. The bedding I found was really old fashioned looking, the kind one would find in an old person's home. But I could not find enough of it. I was fumbling around under the stern judgemental glares of my guests.

One of the guests at least was friendly: a former church member, Caroline. I do not know why she had come, but at least she was being encouraging.

Then I asked the guests what they would like for breakfast the next day. They replied "Nothing!" glaring at me even more. "One does not eat before a funeral! But after the funeral we expect a proper wake. You did remember to arrange the wake?"

That's when I lost my temper. "Why would I arrange the wake? She was not my close relative. There are closer relatives of hers locally. I hope they arranged the wake. But if they did not, that's not my problem!"

I woke up soon after that, disappointed to discover that it was already waking time.

Old-Time Riddles

I'm reading a set of six or seven old Garfield comic strips. But it turns out they're actually riddles. An old man comes up to me and explains them, one by one. The last one is about balloons: A man buys a balloon in the early 1900s. Then he sets it down and picks it up again, or something. Anyway, the trick to the riddle is to realize that back in those days, people didn't know how to use helium, so balloons didn't float. They weren't held with ribbons; they were held using a sturdy plastic stick. I think this is rather clever, and the old man and I part on good terms.

Rude Receptionist

I'm talking to a clerk at the front desk of the hotel at which we're staying. Somebody mentions cherries. I'm excited at the chance to practice my Spanish.

"Oh, oh, I know this one. . . . Cer--, uh . . . cerezas!" I grin around the room. "That's 'cherries' in Spanish. I learned that earlier today." [IRL, that's true. And during the dream, I used the memory trick that I invented yesterday for that word: "cereza" is sort of a combination of "cereal" and "cabeza."]

The clerk exhales, shaking her head. She says something about never being very good at Spanish, herself. I think she sounds too defeatist. Then someone comes into the hotel, and she calls him over. "Mr. Branagh!"

Surprised, I look closely at the newcomer. Indeed, it's Kenneth Branagh. I'm impressed at how calm the receptionist remains in the face of a movie star. I guess she's prepared for that, since actors probably stay in hotels a lot. Then she starts talking to him about all of these hotel policies about publicity posters. (He's carrying a bunch of posters, presumably with the intent to advertise his newest project by putting them up around the hotel.) It really seems to me that she's splitting hairs, and I realize she's not only being calm--she's being downright rude. Oh, dear.

Old-Fashioned Bathroom

I enter the bathroom in an old-fashioned wooden building. I'm not sure if I saw the sign correctly when I chose this door, so I might have gone into the women's bathroom by mistake. I look around to check, and indeed, most of the dozens of people in here are middle-aged women. I spot two other males, though, both my own age. Also, I'm using a urinal right now, which has no business being in a women's bathroom. As I'm looking around, one of the other boys says loudly that he thinks he chose the wrong bathroom. The other two of us assure him that there must be something unusual going on, because we made the same mistake. I wonder if maybe this bathroom was designed to be non-segregated. As in, there are two doors, one labeled "men" and one "women," but they both lead to the same room.

Runaway Grandmother

I hand my grandma a walking stick and turn around for a second, surveying the multi-story shopping complex that we're exploring. I hear gasps from behind me, and whirl around to see Grandma falling down the wide staircase behind us. It has a few dozen steps, and she bounces about three times on the way down. Then she gets up and starts hobbling away. She must have tried to put her weight on the stick and accidentally lifted herself off the ground, putting the stick off-balance and causing the whole assembly to fall over backwards, down the stairs. I probably should have given her a shoulder to lean on, or something. In any case, it's my job to go bring her back. As I head down the stairs, someone reminds me to be prepared for her to be stubborn about coming back: she gets recalcitrant if she's just been injured.

I run after her down a hallway and see that she's taken an escalator upwards. I get on behind her, but without missing a beat she climbs over the railing and onto a different escalator headed the same way. Wow, she really is being stubborn. I decide not to climb over--I'll just meet her at the top. But when I look ahead, I see that my escalator bends around and goes back down, while hers just continues straight up. Dammit, what an absurd design! It will be a disaster if she gets away. Even if I can't bring her back, I at least have to keep an eye on her. Now, there's another escalator following the same line as mine that goes halfway down before bending around to go back up. The semicircular railings of the two escalators come close enough that I should be able to climb over both of them. I'm reluctant, because the railing will be trying to pull me sideways as I climb over, so I could easily get injured. But I don't have much choice. I do it.

At the top, I realize that in all the confusion, I've lost track of Grandma. Did I get ahead of her? Is she ahead of me? Where might she have gone from here? Her distinctive gray hair is nowhere to be seen. Someone else from our original party comes walking up to me and asks me how it's going. I'm forced to admit that I think I've lost Grandma.

Pranking Little Kids

An old friend of mine laughingly shows me a small, simple geometric carving (similar to a die) with the word "BOOBS" on one side. He also shows me a table he's made, documenting the reactions of youngish kids when given this carving. These kids are all about the age where they'd be receiving their first sex education, so the idea is that they should be very embarrassed by it. It's amusing to us older kids since theoretically we know better than to be embarrassed by sex. Anyway, his results aren't disappointing: only one kid of the dozen or so he's pranked has managed to get through the encounter without blushing.

Maybe half an hour later, I give the carving back to my friend, joking that I couldn't find anyone who actually wanted to take it from me.

There was an old couple in the house, it happened at night when they were both asleep. Then they discoverd their house was on fire. They both screamed with fear as their house was burning down in the fire. The lady survived from the house fire with burns to her skin which left her scarred for life, her husband died from severe burning. I also went inside another burnt house now left abandoned, which was burnt 7 years ago.

Today was interesting because I had 1: My first actually induced LD and not just random, and 2: My first DEILD!

Note: I had been constantly waking up in the middle of this night.

Dream 1:

I've just fallen back asleep and am in a really large hotel that is grey and full of elderly people. It must have arount 200 floors and is set up similarly to the Marriott Marquee in Times Square, New York. The only problem is there are random staircases leading up and down floors and the sides to the central area arent guarded with railing to keep people from falling to their deaths (I remember thinking of this as unsafe). I enter a room after jumping over a span from one side to another when I wake up. I decide to try to reenter the dream and within three seconds I am back in the dream, except Lucid. I immediately get extremely excited, and try to stay calm but my excitement builds enormously beyond control (and I mean ridiculously excited and I couldn't stop it) until I wake up.

This was my second lucid dream to end from the sheer excitement of becoming lucid.