All DJ Entries

I was on a planet of sorts. A different planet I think. There was fighting, and then we had to escape because the place/planet is going to explode. We took a spaceship. There were a few spaceships. Enemies? They look black with blinking lights all over. I think they're supposed to be UFOs, but we're riding them out of the place.

The civilization in the planet looks "young" but they had technology. Still, they had a lot of forests and high cliffs.

Morning of November 23, 2014. Sunday.



I am walking with my wife (we seem much younger, which is typical) in an unfamiliar area in Australia, but likely not that far from where we presently live. I am aware of the “Enchanted Forest” being nearby. This is a fictional in-dream location that has been a part of my dreams since earliest memory, though the more defined version seems based somewhat on the Enchanted Forest concept from the older Harvey comic books (from the mid to late 60s). This was also where I first learned “my animal” was the opossum at age four (which I originally incorrectly associated with “small foxes in trees”).

Usually, the forest is seemingly in the United States. I usually go in at about a twenty-two degree angle (half of the perfectly diagonal forty-five degree angle) from the west (and off from an otherwise “familiar” public road). There is another section on the south end which does not occur in dreams quite as often.

It is always a very beautiful and “deep” reflective state, somewhat like a “hiding place” but when no hiding place is needed. There are almost always other characters I enjoy taking in with me. In this case, it seems to be reflective of the “Magical Mystery Tour”. There is an idea of what others have believed (in perceived “wrongful ways”) about dreams, though this does not have any residual negative impact on my dream state. I have read that one person on one site believes that dreams are created by someone (or something) other than the dreamer. This writer does not believe in anything “paranormal” (for lack of a better term) such as precognition (or even intuition apparently) or shared dreaming, and yet believes dreams are created by some other entity or being - quite possibly the most ridiculous form of hypocrisy and doubletalk I have ever seen. I am fully aware that I am the dreamer and “creator” here (as with all dreams of this “Enchanted Forest” type), and yet this is not a lucid dream (in that the intense vivid energy of being truly lucid and “fully conscious” in the dream state is not present). In fact, this is a typical non-lucid portal dream, where I am “delivered” into one of several of my most desired dream settings upon the dream first taking cohesive form.

In fact, I have almost always been aware at one level or another that I was creating my own dream (even in non-lucid states) - at least the foundation or primary focus thereof. I have even been fully aware of being the one behind certain chase dreams where I have a memory of instigating the chase scenes for excitement and by which the dream then became “too real”. I have, however, been aware of individual personas or the presence of “something else” which usually only ever occurred with negative dreams or impressions, even when awake but in a state of meditation or stillness. That which is positive, beneficial, or life-oriented has only ever seemed to come from my innermost self in all honesty (only one of many reasons I have never believed in “guides”).

My wife and I walk through winding paths with high grasses on each side, enjoying the scenery and isolation from the public. We seem to be going southwest for the most part, though more westerly. I seem to feel that I know where we are going on one level, though the forest seemingly always has different potential. After a time, I start to see evidence of civilization. However, there has always been an impression that sections of the forest (usually the most central) were not in “this” world.

We emerge into an area that is mostly an open field, with shorter grass and signs of human habitation. There are a few buildings here and there, but quite far apart. I note three places where there is mostly only one larger building. One of the buildings has some sort of sign regarding Victoria. It may be a travel agency. It seems odd that we could have gone that far in such a short time and ended up here, apparently in Victoria. There is a cheerful mood for the most part, but we decide that we should go back rather than leaving the periphery of the trees to look around this isolated habitation or very small town, though the dream is already losing cohesion at that point.

non-dream dream lucid

I slept a LOT today. I could literally explain my entire day in detail here.

I entered the day in what seemed to be a black void. Well not really. I'd fallen asleep at my computer and when I woke up everything was black. When I uncovered myself everything was still black. Silent as well. The power was out and all the lights were off.

I went to the living room up stairs and started listening to my radio. An hour later I did the unthinkable and went back down into the black void known as the basement cause my antenna is down there! I spent half an hour down there before coming back up and laying down, still listening to the radio.

Ended up experimenting, practicing SSILD cycles with the radio on Didn't work out so well. Actually managed to get numb in some spots but it just didn't happen other wise.

Ended up listening to the radio all the way until 7 or so, when the power came back on.

Turned on my laptop and came here to just see what was up. Then came to the question of whether to WBTB or not. I ultimately decided to, so I started my clock and went to bed.

Ended up waking up an hour before the alarm, so I thought "good enough" and went back to sleep, practicing SSILD cycles as I drifted off.

And here's where the fun begins.

-------------------------------
The PILD
Lucid: yes
TGMG: potentially, but ultimately no.

I am in my living room, playing an NES game. It looks like Mario but the levels are nothing like I've ever seen before. I have a few false awakenings before I realize something is up. So of course I get up and my room is more or less the same as IWL. I then walk out the door and into the back yard. And this is where things get different.

I look at the area where the shed was and it's a rather large ruin of a shed that was painted white. I look around and there's a bunch of wood everywhere. I look down and there's a piece of wood in the ground that sounds like there could be something under it. I start to pull it up and I see a bunch of duffel bags in the hole. I climb in and I pull the duffel bags out of the hole, but the wood falls on the hole and there's a bunch of spiders on the wood.

I just look out of the hole, occasionally grabbing the dirt in the opening before I stop caring and just push the wood away. I carry the duffel bags inside and I open them up to find a bunch of old clothes. They're all completely dry and they even smell decent. Among the clothes I also find a bunch of old school stuff - binders and whatnot. I open those up to find orange text from when I was a log younger.

I put it away and I then find a bunch of gameboy games and SD cards. I look at the gameboy games. Lots of black cartridges that I have no clue what games are on them.

The SD cards are also black. I grab them all and start stacking them. "Damn that's a lot of SD cards! Look how tall this stack is!" I don't remember how tall the stack was.

I have another false awakening.

I'm back playing the Mario game again! I'm in a very dark level. Well the background is completely black. There's brown Mario styled bricks on the ground and ceiling. I'm also listening to the sound. Sounds like a Mario game except its in stereo oddly enough.

I continue running down this corridor until eventually the game starts acting weird. The audio goes mono and becomes a bit watery sounding. The graphics also change as the bricks become round stones and Mario becomes Fire peach.

Ah ha! This must be a dream! I immediately become lucid, and realize that I'm playing this on my laptop. I get off and get up. I take care not to destabilize the dream. I look around, looking at how real everything looks.

The house is more or less the same as in real life except some of the lighting is different. This is more apparent in the kitchen.

Timmy comes towards me as I'm looking around and asks me whats up. I tell him "I'm dreaming!" and open the front door. I then open the real front door with telekinesis apparently (It was just open).

Timmy asks me what I'm gonna do, and I tell him I'm going out side. I look out the door, stabilizing the dream. I then walk outside. I start to think "Well I'm dreaming! So what goals do you want to try and do?". I try and remember my lucid list but the only goal I can remember is the one where I shrink myself.

By this time I'm on the outside porch, (more or less identical to IWL) and I look around. Everything is quite icy, but I don't feel cold. I raise my hands in the air and look up. I then shrink to about a quarter my size.
Well that's one goal done. No bonus points cause all you did was run to the corner store

I run off the porch and into the road. The road is quite icy. My brother starts following me as I get to the corner. I look down ecorse rd and I see it's a lot darker than IWL. More houses, and it seems to end in a straight turn to the right. The store down the svc drive looks more or less the same as it does IWL. I continue to walk down, looking down every street that I can.

I eventually get to where the chicken place is, and I walk inside. This place is pretty much the same as IWL as well. I look around and there's a bunch of food on the back counter. I want to eat some but I think "What if I'm not dreaming?" so I run out.

All of a sudden I walk up in my bed. I had a false awakening. I get up and everything is blueish. It almost feels as if someone else is in the room but I don't know it. I get up and float across the living room. I say "Jesus christ!", and then I plug my nose. Only to find out I can still breath when it's plugged. "okay this is a dream you don't need to be saying that".

This next part is a bit of a blur. I definitely lost lucidity.

I walk into this room that looks like something out of Half Life 2 and metal gear solid put together. There's a DC in there explaining the SD cards to me. He says that someone made the SD cards work like that intentionally to put you to sleep. They don't explain why though. I do learn how it works however. Each SD card has a few DOS games on it as well as a batch file to load them. If you load the games without any batch file, it puts you to sleep, but you don't realize you've gone to sleep. Some of the SD cards, particularly the one I was playing, with Mario, had the batch file tampered with so it acts as if it's not a batch file.

I have this huge blue monitor to the left of me, and a tunnel that you could crawl through? in front.

I am then playing this Sonic game where I'm being bounced all over the place with flippers in what seems to be a futuristic setting. Then I'm in a spindash tunnel. I get stuck in it, but I want to go another way so somehow I make my way back up, and I get myself into a launcher and try to get up the top tunnel. It takes a few tries. I don't remember what's on top.

I wake up some time around here.
I recall it's now around 11 or so.

After this I'm incredibly tired, so I end up writing down a lot of things about the dream (go tired me ). I really hesitate though because of just how tired I am. I make lots of mistakes as well.

Well eventually I end up going to sleep again where I had another dream.

-----------------------
The windy forest
Lucid: no
TGMG: no

It's during the day time and I'm on a long road in the middle of the forest. No clue where this is but I do know it is quite windy, but not cold.

There's no cars on the road and I never see any. I look up and the sky is overcast but it is quite bright out. Eventually the wind is so strong that I get picked up off my feet, and into the woods. I see a bunch of trees where I'm going, with water on the bottom. Obviously a swamp.

I get close enough to a rather large tree and I grab on. It's too large for me to wrap my arms around but I am capable of holding on. As I'm holding on I get my first glimpse of the area. It's a swamp, with lots of large trees like the one I'm on.

I start climbing up the tree until I get to a large branch. I climb on and sit down. Now I look around fully and I see a swing-like thing made out of tree trunks. There's also a bear laying down on it!

I watch it for a moment. The bear is swinging back and forth on the branch.

I look up the tree and I see a yellow rope laying down. I look up to where it's coming from and I see an incomplete bridge. It's made of wood and there's a odd black thing coming off the incomplete end. I grab the rope and start climbing up it.

As I'm climbing I realize that I don't need much grip to stay on. I could get away with just holding it in my fingers and it would be fine.

I eventually climb to a branch really close to the bridge. I grab hold of the bridge and I see it swaying back and forth. I then see a DC on the bridge. A female park ranger? They take the rope and throw it to me from the bridge. I climb on and I then see a toolbox the DC has. They're here to fix a bit of the bridge.

They ask for help, and I start helping them. So they go into their toolbox and start grabbing small screws. Really really small. They then start screwing them into random bits of wood.

They ask me to do the same so I get a screw and put it into the side of one board on the wall. I can't get it in though! So I try and get it in again. This time it works.

By now its night time, so the DC thanks me and leaves. I'm alone now so I just get up and walk the path beyond the bridge. I then wake up.


Once I wake up I'm still really tired.
Over the course of writing this DJ, I fully awoke and now I feel fine.

Spoiler for Temp stuff:

long dream:
I go to sleep around 8 or so? Wake up around 12 or so.

false awakenings, metal gear solid

the first RC was to check the audio of the NES game. Normally it would sound fine enough, but once dreaming the audio would get really watery and lose its connection with the game. Also the graphics would get really wierd. The bricks would turn into little 8 bit stones and Mario would go all inverted.

wake up quite a few times (FAs) > realize they were all dreams > notice that some of them have you playing a NES game >


FAs > eventually go into the back yard > find shed loads of SD cards and binders amongst the old fort > bring them all in > open them and find a bunch of old clothes, all perfectly fine, as well as old school paper work > notice that the FAs have you playing nes games >

fort:
go into back yard (lighting is evening, but rather bright) > find a rather large wooden fort > go around and look inside the fort > eventualy find a wooden board in the ground > pull it up > find a bunch of duffel bags > find yourself trapped amongs wooden boards with large spiders > eventually come out > bring loot inside > look inside > find a bunch of old binders with school stuff, and SD cards and gameboy games > look at all the gameboy games > find a DOS emulator on each one > realize that the old SD card started the emulator without any batch file > starting without batch file causes some sort of explosion > puts you to sleep without realizing it


lucid route: find yourself playing a nes game agian > play it for a while before noticing that everything's starting going wierd > notice that it's a dream > pull back and notice it's on your laptop in your living room > find timmy > tell him that I'm dreaming > look around at how real everything looks > open up the front door > look out the door to stabilize scenery > walk out door while thinking about lucid list > shout "increase clarity" on the front porch > think of a goal "change sizes" > raise my arms and I shrink to a quarter my height > timmy walks out > I run down the path and into the road > road is all iced up > look down ecorse rd > look down the service drive > walk to the corner stores > go into the chicken place > there's loads of food in there > I don't eat it, thinking "welll what if I'm not sleeping?" > false awakening > wake up in the living room > it's dark but there's almost a surreal lighting > I get scared for a second > say "jesus christ" > I nose pinch > become lucid again > walk towards the front door > ???



------------------------------------------------


I am playing a NES game, seems to be a Mario game. Black background, brown bricks on the top and bottom. I'm just running forward. The sound is there but it's very watery. I play for a bit, before having a false awakening. I am back at the beginning of the game! This repeats a few times before you realize what's going on.

I sit there thinking "Why do I keep resetting back to the beginning?", before realizing that it could be a dream. Okay, I think "Next time I reset back to the beginning, I'll reality check!". I continue playing the game for a bit, carefully paying attention to how the game is behaving. At one point, the game audio starts getting less clear, almost watery. I also seem to recall that its in stereo normally and it became mono. Also the 8 bit graphics changed. Mario turned into "Fire peach" for no reason and the bricks changed into stones.

Ah ha! This must be a dream! I immediately become lucid, and realize that I'm playing this on my laptop. I get off and get up. I take care not to destabilize the dream. I look around, looking at how real everything looks.

The house is more or less the same as in real life except some of the lighting is different. This is more apparent in the kitchen.

Timmy comes towards me as I'm looking around and asks me whats up. I tell him "I'm dreaming!" and open the front door. I then open the real front door with telekinesis apparently (It was just open).

Timmy asks me what I'm gonna do, and I tell him I'm going out side. I look out the door, stabilizing the dream. I then walk outside. I start to think "Well I'm dreaming! So what goals do you want to try and do?". I try and remember my lucid list but the only goal I could remember was the one where I shrink myself.

By this time I'm on the outside porch, (more or less identical to IWL) and I look around. Everything is quite icy, but I don't feel cold. I raise my hands in the air and look up. I then shrink to about a quarter my size.

I run off the porch and into the road. The road is quite icy. My brother starts following me as I get to the corner. I look down ecorse rd and I see it's a lot darker than IWL. More houses, and it seems to end in a straight turn to the right. The store down the svc drive looks more or less the same as it does IWL. I continue to walk down, looking down every street that I can.

I eventually get to where the chicken place is, and I walk inside. This place is pretty much the same as IWL as well. I look around and there's a bunch of food on the back counter. I want to eat some but I think "What if I'm not dreaming?" :derp: so I run out.

All of a sudden I walke up in my bed. I had a false awakening. I get up and everything is blueish. It almost feels as if someone else is in the room but I don't know it. I get up and float across the living room. I say "Jesus christ!", and then I plug my nose. Only to find out I can still breath when it's plugged. "okay this is a dream you don't need to be saying that".

This next part is a bit of a blur. I deffinitely lost lucidity.

I walk into this room that looks like something out of Half Life 2 and metal gear solid put together. There's a DC in there explaining the SD cards to me. He says that someone made the SD cards work like that intentionally to put you to sleep. They don't explain why though. I have this huge blue monitor to the left of me, and a tunnel that you could crawl through? in front.

I am then playing this Sonic game where I'm being bounced all over the place with flippers. Then I'm in a spindash tunnel. I get stuck in it, but I want to go another way so somehow I make my way back up, and I get myself into a launcher and try to get up the top tunnel. It takes a few tries. I don't remember what's on top.

I wake up some time around here.

forest dream:
I'm running down a long curving road during the day, and there's serious wind. Forests surround me, and the wind is strong enough to pick me up and blow me towards a swamp. As I'm getting carried I try and grab hold of several branches, and I eventually succeed. There's lots of rather large trees here.

There's a large swing-like contraption here, made of several large tree trunks, with what seems to be a bear on it. It's just going back and forth. I grip the trees here, and I eventually climb up one of them until I get to a large branch sticking out to the left. Once I get on the branch I start looking around more.

There's water below me and there's what seems to be a rope here. I grab it and I look up to where it came from. There's a bridge here. Well it doesn't seem to be finished but it is here. Rather new as well. I climb up to it with the rope and the bridge is swaying quite a bit.

Once I'm on the bridge I start looking around and a DC comes up and greets me. They ask me what I'm doing here, and I don't really tell them much. Then they bring out a tool box and start getting out small screws to put in the bridge. They ask for my help. So I get a screw and try and screw it into one of the boards on the fences.

It doesn't go in, so I try and put it down. They grab the screw from me and put it where the other screws are. They give me another screw to put in, and I finally screw it in. I do this a few times until the DC thanks me and leaves. I then walk along the path that the bridge leads to, and then I wake up.

non-dream dream lucid

Once again I had food and drink before bed. I wasn't expecting anything considering that I was supposed to stay up here.

-----------
Practicing Telekinesis
Lucid: yes!
Recall level: 9
TGMG: ...no

So I'm in a forest, and everything's all dank. Some DC (my dad?) and I are walking down a dirt path. Lighting is very green, but it seems that it's autumn and there's lots of leaves, but oddly enough not too much. I look over to a table near the path, and there's a radio right out of half life 2!

I run over to the table and start tuning it, and I get loads of things. On shortwave I start in the high band, and I hear a religious station.

Father DC: "No, that's a religious station!"
I eventually tune it to Global24 radio, where there's a very odd music program.

I turn it off and continue walking down the path.
All of a sudden I'm in my basement. I look around (very similar to my basement except it was bigger, or maybe I was smaller? ) and there's a TV (same one that I've had for 12 years) next to the middle wall. My mom tells me to watch Channel 4. Was there a Hrok there? I seem to remember something of the sort.

All of a sudden, I see an EAS start up.
And get this, it's for a "Thunder warning". I see a red bar come up in the bottom of the screen, and the text starts to scroll. It said something about a "Thunder warning". I'm thinking "what the hell is that? I've never heard of that!". I grab my camera next to my computer and open it up. It's taking a long time to boot up though! And when the screen comes up it looks all glitchy! I eventually manage to press record though, but just as it starts the EAS ends! Damn!

I set down my camera but keep it close by. I keep watching the TV and eventually it comes back on! But this time it doesn't stay on channel 4, and switched by itself to some high up channel.
This time I'm able to start up the camera much faster and keep it running through the duration. But this time the battery is low and the SD card is low! But I'm still able to record it all!

Eventually I put it down and...
Jump to me being with a bunch of other DCs in yet another variant of my basement. This time there was a bunch of laundry machines on the east wall, and there was entire rooms that aren't supposed to be here. They're mostly filled with junk and old clothes. So I walk into one of those and a DC comes in and asks me what to do. I tell them I'm gonna practice my telekinesis for when I'm in a dream!

So I look at an old food box and I point my hand at it like in the movies, and I pull it towards me. It starts flying, slowly, and eventually starts hovering. I'm very capable of controlling its movement, and I'm in a good mood so I make it do dances in the air. The DC is quite mesmerized.
I then put it down and go up stairs.

The living room is quite ornate, with the china cabinet next to the big window, and it's a lot cleaner. It's day time, and there's a few people here. I go into the kitchen and it's huge as well. There's a desk in the corner with audio equipment and an imac g3 there as well! My mom is in there and I ask her where this came from. She says it was Ross's computer, but she gave it to us. I think, "weird, but okay".

I look around and the kitchen looks more or less the same as it does IWL, except for the fact its bigger and there's a huge desk where the food cabinets are IWL.

I then have a false awakening? Either way, I'm back in my basement and this is the third variant. This time it's looking a bit more run down than I'm used to. I'm in my chair, but almost immediately I stand up. There's a few washing machines where the stairs are IWL, along with a few racks of storage above. There's a peculiar tiny opened can of paint on one of the racks, and I pull it down.

I start moving it around, and eventually I start wondering. I imagine it hovering and it starts hovering. I move it around with my mind for a bit before I start wondering how I'm able to do this. Am I still dreaming?
*nose pinch* *hands slip* *nose pinch again*
And I can still breath during the nose pinch. It was actually quite weird because I could feel the air rushing down my nose like I wasn't plugging my nose at all or even touching it, even though I'd clamped hard on it.

I'm dreaming! Everything gets a lot more vivid now, even though it still had the characteristic blurriness in a few spots, especially when I was in the basement. I started walking towards the stairs, and I started walking up them. To be honest I don't know what I was thinking at this bit. My feet felt very light and almost as if they weren't there at all. I look up and it's like the back door is open and there was a bright light outside. I walk up the stairs and I look back down towards the basement, and then I wake up.

I'm laying in my couch on my right side, face inwards. I'm very excited, and I do a RC. I then try and recall everything in the long process.

Eventually I start writing this.

Dream recall history:

Attached Thumbnails

 

I dreamt that I had my glass bottle, which was drying itself after I washed it. I had a smaller glass bottle which was still filled with the water it originally came with. I smelled it and it smelled weird. I also dreamt that maintenance came into my apartment and found Nikki and left me a notice about it.
--------------------------------

I was in a forest in a video game with a girl, who was showing me how to do survival type stuff. She she showed me how to make a gummy worm to eat. I looked over a hill and saw a road with lit up fast food joints and as we moved towards one, we saw a group of people inside a building. We went across the street to get some money bags and started hurrying after we saw zombies around.

I attempt a WBTB WILD. I'm pretty sure there was a gap in consciousness, but as the dream scene forms around me, I know it's a dream.

In front of me is a box/cage formed from metal bands. I decide to phase my way into the cage and back out again. The bands of metal bend with me a bit before flopping back into place like rubber bands. I remember that one of the tasks in the dream competition was to phase through something solid with eyes open so I look around for a suitable target.

I'm in an abandoned building, bits of it feel like a multistory car park, but some bits feel like they used to be an office building. I see a wooden door and go to phase through it, I almost forget to keep my eyes open, but remember as I get to the door. The inside of the wood is a interesting combination of woody and transparent, the dark bands of the grain still visible and the light bands feel like air. As I come through the far side of the door, some of the grain bands stick to me for a bit before falling back into place like a bead curtain.

My recall is a bit vague about the next transition of scene, as I didn't bother to write anything down until the morning (bad boy!)

I'm at some kind of conference centre eager to get out and do some lucid dream tasks. I'm in an area outside the main auditorium room with hordes of people on their way in. I spot Jo McCaffery who's exited because she's going to be doing a presentation as part of the session and wants me to be there for moral support and feedback. I'm torn because I really want to do that for her but I also don't want to miss out on my lucid dream time. I'm just starting to follow the flow of delegates when I realise it's not actually her, but a DC, so it really doesn't matter! Lucid dreaming tasks it is!

I walk along a road for a bit, chatting with a couple of DCs. I see a door and the word "door" triggers my TOTM mnemonic, based as usual on the Tony Buzan rhyming numbers thing.

1 - bun. A bun opens just like a fortune cookie.
2 - shoe. Put some shoes on and don't forget to tie them
3 - tree. Laying a log in the toilet.
4 - door. I bet my Patronum is just behind that door!

I think the door is the back door of a childhood home, inside the conservatory.

I open the door and there on the quarry tiled floor, snuggled into a nest of blanket, are two crochet stuffed toy bunnies with pig-like snouts (they actually look somewhat like the clangers, but they were definitely bunnies) they look sleepy but seem to like a bit of petting. They're soft and warm and really cute!

I share my excitement with the random DCs, but it's too much excitement and I wake up with a "squee!"

I am at thie old health club that I used to go to as a child. I am swimming in the pool. For some reason, I notice that all of the drains in the bottom of the pool can be easily removed. I start picking them up, and putting them back to see how many of them are loose like this I plan on reporting this to the lifeguard or the pool maintenance crew later..
I then come across one in a very deep part of the pool. This one is the only one that is actually screwed down, but for some reason I end up unscrewing it with a dime or something. The lifegaurd came and asked me why I was unscrewing the drain cover. I told him it was because I was checking to see how many of them were broken, and I was going to tell the maintenance people later.
He told me to screw the drain back in and he would go tell the maintenance people, and that I wasn't in any trouble.

I recall some dream about my English class. The classroom is much nicer; we are all sitting at this big long table and there is this huge glass window that overlooks the college. We are discussing an essay project we are working on. (I can't remember if it was the same essay we were working on IWL.)
Many of the students are complaining that the essay project is way too hard. I am one of the few students to say that I actually thought it was easy. The funny part is while we are having this class discussion our professor is sitting at the and end of the long table, eating a pizza.
Our class discussion gets sidetracked when we notice that there is broccoli imbedded in the pizza.
"Is that a broccoli pizza?!" one of the students exclaims.
"Yes, it is. It's healthier than regular pizza!" the teacher replies.
"I've heard about those! I've always wanted to try one!" a third student says.
...
The dream about the English class somehow tied into a dream about me transferring to another college. I was sitting in the back of my parents' van. They are talking on and on about how transferring to a different college doesn't mean that I have any less responsibility or anything.
This new college that I will be attending will be across the country, in the downtown area of a big city. I recall us arriving. The entire campus is built into one huge stone building.

More dream music while waking up. This time it was this really odd drum beat with a wizzy synth sound playing overtop

Chowderland
I've had dreams about this type of thing before, but this was the most in-depth one yet.
I had just purchased and installed this game on my computer called Chowderland. It was kind of like Garry's mod and The Sims put together. The game had a very open-ended simulation aspect and users were encouraged to use mods, cheats and other such things to produce these hilarious episodes.
I start up the game on my laptop, and wonder at how my laptop can even run this vastly powerful game. It starts up and I see 'Chowderland' on my screen in bright cartoony purple letters.
The game then loads your info from social media sites and makes your characters' life just like your life in real life. So it creates my character and then drops him into the world.
I actually wind up in a rather odd setting. I am in a clearing in the woods partially filled with a large meadow, and a dirt parking lot. There are no cars or anything, and it the weather is overcast. The first thing I decide to do is customize my character.
I open up the menu, and see all of this information such as how hungry he is and how much sleep I've had. All of the bars are full when you start out. I then open the customizations menu and begin changing things.
I want to make my character look like my dream-self rather than my waking life self. I think that later on I can meet other lucid dreamers in the game. I change the hair to a darker color and add the goggles. But I can't figure out how to make the bicolored eyes. I knew it was possible as I had 'remembered' seeing a video of another player doing it, So I just settled with both eyes being blue.
I then decide it would be really cool to make the game just like a lucid dream. I think about how it could be practice for when I lucid dream, so I decide to make NPCs for my two regular dream characters. I manage to create and add them with relative ease, and set them as 'followers' so they will always follow me around wherever I go in the game world.
At this point my dad came into the room and asked me why I had been on the computer for so long. I told him that I was playing this new game called 'Chowderland'. He then said that he wanted to join me, so he sat down on his computer and signed in to my world. I then noticed that there were about a dozen people in the world. All of them were my family members. It felt a little bit awkward having them in the world, so I decided to change the environment.
I opened up a list of environments. The first one I traveled to was an alpine mountain region with a lake.
...
I stayed at this region for some time, but cannot recall what I did here. I recall at the end, the Manei and Marcus NPCs had become tutorials and were trying to show me a survival aspect to the game, where you can turn off the cheats and play the game somewhat like Minecraft where you have to hunt for resources and build a shelter.
I then recall changing the environment to a tiny island with no trees, only beaches and then the center had a bunch of wildflowers.
I recall looking through a catologe of environments you could explore. There were literally hundreds of them. Some of them had special tags.
Shortly after, I changed the environment to the surface of Mars. I opened up the menu and decided to build something. I began building the steel structure of a house.
...
I recall exploring someone elses' world. The NPCs that I had created were nowhere to be found. For some reason the graphical quality of the game had gone down considerably. Their world was built in a jungle and had all of these huge white concrete buildings. There was a big ledge running through the middle of their base with a small ramp running up it. I was trying to get up the ramp but my character wouldn't respond properly and I kept on falling off of the ramp and losing health.

Somehow, Chowderland had become a kind of like a cooperative SimCity where each of your friends would manage a different aspect of your city.
The leader of the city wanted me to build an elevated rail system and had already researched the maximum level of elevated rail technology in the game. This gave you the power to build railways in all six directions; to the train could go right up the side of a building or straight down or something. Also, the rails could float and didn't need to be supported by anything.
This was probably a good thing because the city I was working on them with was HUGE. There were these massive skyscrapers on every block, with small narrow streets in-between.
I couldn't think what to do, so I began placing stations instead and figured I would find a way to connect them later. I found that immediately after placing a station, I already had 700 passengers waiting. This jumped to 1300. Then 2000. I started building to connect this to my main station that was a small building with a lot of space around it in an empty lot. But I got kicked off of the server for being too slow at building.

I dreamed of a bird with blue feathers, three black "hairs" and white chest and belly area. It has a long, blue tail. It was on a branch.

I dreamed I was married to a woman. I didn't experience the marriage. I was just walking on a street and suddenly thought of it.

Before walking on the street, I was inside a house eating a meal or soup. An uncle told me to accompany him/them. I told them I was eating, but he gave me a look which looked... I'm not sure. Dead? He frowned and then kind of just stood there, then left. Somehow, I remembered something: I was staying in their place. I quickly slurped the soup/food and went with them. We were walking on the road when I thought that I married someone, and they forced me to marry the woman, whoever she is. A cousin, I think. She never appeared in this dream.

I thought we were going to take one of their cars, but when we walked outside and in a corner, I saw them ride a jeep. I was surprised so I wasn't able to get in with them, and the jeep sped off. I just shrugged and thought I'd walk to wherever they were going. My sister appeared by my said and we talked while walking to the venue. I think she was in the house as well, but not sure.

We arrived at a place. Not sure if it was the place we were supposed to go. It has a nice garden or mini-forest around it, with trees and flowers and herbs. We went inside. It's a theater and there was a play. And a dog. Not sure how the dog fits in.

NOTE:

This was yesterday's dream. I didn't get to write it until now.
I've been meditating before and after sleeping.
I'm still working on the Dream Yoga book.

I was a hero in counter strike and the setting was in Venezuela. I was in some sort of big indoor or underground city doing city type stuff like taking taxis, buying groceries, hitting on girls, etc. I got a gun and some monster machines started attacking an important building that had to do with money. Me and my partner defended the place but eventually got overrun so we jumped off a railing and onto the floor, doing a roll and running up an elevator away from zombies. My partner told me to get inside and as I was running, I saw a big monster inside the elevator. We fought the monster and managed to kill it as we went up hundreds of stories. My parners clothing looked like an older version of the TF2 scout and he was sad that he had to let go of his bat to kill the monster. We got out of the elevator and ran through a forest at night as he was saying how sad he was.

Ritual: Second try with the vibrating timer, successful but strange experience. This time it seemed to work not so much from going off (in fact I doubt it ever did), but because my anticipation of the trigger kept my mind alert during the process of falling asleep—to the point where I thought I was still awake long after I had evidently slipped into dream.

It's becoming apparent that anticipation can serve the same function as motivation. Actually my motivation was relatively low, for the same reason as last time: it is the busiest part of my work week and I realized that I wasn't sure I wanted to have to spend a long time writing up my dream report if successful. I went to bed a little after 12:30am, and woke up naturally around 5:40. (I checked the clock but can't recall the precise time, I think it was somewhere between 5:37 and 5:43.) I decided it was too late to do full WBTB and recognized my lack of motivation, so I just shoved the MotivAider in my pillow and went back to bed with no further technique, letting things take their own course.

Although normally I would fall back asleep in seconds or minutes at most after such a brief WBTB, I noticed that now I was oddly wakeful... it seemed like just waiting for the device to go off, even though it was set so that it wouldn't trigger initially until 45 minutes had passed, was keeping me awake. After a few minutes trying to get comfortable I grabbed the sleep mask from my bedside table because I knew the sun would come up soon. I then spent a very long time trying to get back to sleep... or so I thought. In retrospect it is apparent that for much of this period I was experiencing that obscure counterpart of a false awakening, a "false falling asleep" (FFA).

FFA: I think I must have actually fallen asleep very quickly, since a lot of the things I experienced while I thought I was trying to fall asleep turn out to be have been things I dreamed. For instance, at one point I was convinced that I was lying in bed with my body rotated in the opposite direction, my head facing the foot of the bed, but then I fixed this without really moving my limbs... a maneuver that would have been impossible to do physically.

Eventually I decided that I ought to have a back-up EILD method so I tried to program my sleeping mask. I reached up and pried apart the velcro near the top to flick the "on" switch, remembering to hold it down four seconds to enter "nap mode." I couldn't tell if I saw the indicator lights or not... I thought I did, but the impression was vague. Did I have the brightness set too low? Oh well, I don't remember how to change it. I'll just turn it off and turn it back on again to be sure. Hmm, same thing, the lights are vague... I'm not sure if I'm really seeing them or just imagining it. And then I realize... hang on... I'm not even wearing the Remee, this is just an ordinary cloth sleep mask! So I tried to correct the situation by putting my Remee on under the regular mask... and I really thought I had done this until, while writing this report, I began to have doubts and went to check. Sure enough, the Remee hasn't been touched all night! At least I can verify that I was wearing the ordinary mask, since that one has been moved and is now lying on my bedstand where I must have left it after waking up.

At another point in the FFA I even felt the MotivAider finally go off. The vibrations felt lengthened and distorted again. I ignored them since I thought I was still awake, and hoped I would be asleep by the time it went off next. In retrospect I realize I must have dreamed even this, because the MotivAider could not have gone off until 45 minutes had passed (even on random mode it initially counts down the full maximum set interval), and I got up to start writing this report at 6:14am, less than 45 minutes after going back to bed around 5:40... so it is very unlikely that it actually went off in that whole period!

I was getting annoyed with how long it was taking (or so I thought) to fall asleep, and eventually in my impatience I decided to just start "practicing" WILD separations in my imagination. I tried to envision an almost physical pull on my dream body that would tug it up from the lying position into a standing one, and after each repetition of this I imagined myself landing with both feet on the bed with the flourish of a gymnast who has just finished an acrobatic move. It felt at first like I was only visualizing this rather than experiencing it: as though I were just going through the motions, practicing for when I got closer to falling asleep... but before long the sense of immersion set in, and I realized that I was already in a light WILD state. I was surprised that I had been able to move so easily from full wakefulness to full REM, still unaware that I had evidently already been dreaming for quite some time already!

WILD: Since I was under the impression that I had only just transitioned into a dream state, my initial goal was just to improve immersion and stabilization, so without trying to do any tasks at first I simply wandered through the house. I soon half-woke and had to separate again. I used the same visualization as before "pulling myself up" from lying down to standing up, but it went more smoothly and easily this time. Once again I landed like a gymnast, but this time rather than landing on the bed I vaulted right out of it and onto the bedroom floor.

By this time I felt immersed enough to start working on tasks. One of the TOTMs is to dress in a costume, and I had decided in advance that I wanted to dress like a witch, so I went to the "costume closet" where I keep my clothes that are too dressy or impractical for everyday use. At first I was surprised to see (so I thought) nothing but the clothes that are there in waking life. I must have been a bit confused, because although in WL the closet contains plenty of gothy-looking wraps and dresses entirely suitable for a witch costume, the only thing I thought to grab at the time was a small halter top of some colorful iridescent material. I didn't put it on yet, since my priority was to find a mask.

The closet actually contains a box of masks on the upper shelf, but in the dream I "remembered" that I had a brown paper bag of them on the floor, so I went through it until I found a witch mask... or was it? Looking at it again, I thought it actually looked more like a Darth Vader mask that someone had clumsily tried to convert into a witch face with dabs of green paint. But then I "remembered" using it as a witch mask before, so I figured it would be adequate.

Next I needed the pointy hat. I must have one around here somewhere... I dug through the closet, but couldn't find one of the right shape. Nevermind, I can make one! I pulled out a fedora made of black leather, and started trying to pull the top to make it longer and more pointy. At first the material was resistant but I put some focus into the act and soon was able to mold the hat into a proper Halloween-style witch hat, and put it on my head. The fact that it was made of black leather made me feel extra stylish. I paused at the door of the room and wondered if I needed to change my clothes as well, but when I looked down I saw that I was wearing a long black dress that already looked witchy enough, so I never had to put on that stupid halter top!

After walking back out to the kitchen, I remembered to check my reflection in the mirror (in a spot where there is no mirror in WL). It wasn't bad! I looked like that classic witch from the Wizard of Oz: green face, hooked nose, tall hat. The mask was looking much less Vader-like now, and at this point I noticed that there was even an inscription on it (entirely legible in the mirror rather than inverted by the reflection) that gave the title "Witch," and was signed either "Robert" or "Richard." I assumed the name must be that of the local artist who made the mask, and was reassured by the title that it had been intended as a witch mask after all.

When people were contributing suggestions for the October TOTMs, I had really liked the one about flying on a broomstick to a witches' gathering, so this was something I had planned to do once I got in costume. But now I wasn't sure. Maybe it would be fun to work on my lucid dare instead, and go startle some elves with my witch costume! I felt indecisive. And in either case I'll have to leave the house, so which door should I use? I've let myself get into the bad habit of being paranoid that leaving the house might destabilize the dream, so I wondered if leaving by a door I don't often use would help bypass this impression. I know that this worry is a wholly self-imposed obstacle—and moreover that it is not supported by the evidence—yet I also know that even letting myself worry about destabilization can have a destabilizing effect!

While I'm standing there trying to make up my mind, I notice that the scenery outside the kitchen door has already begun to change. Replacing the back patio is now a beautiful summer forest, with green leaves, mossy trunks and a clear limpid pool of water on the ground, like a natural spring. The water is only a few inches deep and appears completely transparent and pure. The scene is so lovely that I immediately let go of my pointless worries and go outside to enjoy it, kneeling in the water and running my hands through it, lifting it in my palms and letting it splash back into the pool. I find myself wondering if these surroundings will transform my costume from that of an ugly old green witch into a young beautiful forest witch. And what do we mean by "witch," anyway? I start pondering the question: aren't those two archetypes (ugly old witch and young beautiful witch) from the same tradition? Don't they both imply a woman with an unusually strong connection to the natural world?

I still haven't decided if I want to look for a witch gathering or an elven gathering in this forest, as I think both could conceivably be taking place here. Would the elves resent my presence if I'm still a Halloween-style witch? But if this pool has transformed me into a beautiful forest witch, maybe I would blend right in. (I regret now that it never occurred to me to check my reflection again in the pool! Though I still had the impression that I was wearing the same black dress.)

Once again the dream distracted me from my thoughts, this time by the sound of a voice singing. It was an attractive male voice, a low tenor, drifting from somewhere up above. The pool where I knelt was at the foot of a rocky ledge, at least ten feet high, and it seemed like the main part of the forest was up there. I flew up (I can't recall if I used a broomstick or just levitated as usual) to see if I could locate the singer. I followed the voice and soon found myself in a green mossy glade. I could not see anyone but I could hear the voice distinctly, so I took note of the words:

On the new sensation lying within,
One can ride a stream of water, straight and thin.

There was another half line of verse after this but on waking it faded before I could record it. I think it had something to do with the feeling or awareness produced by the "new sensation" mentioned in the first line. I woke up before I could listen to any more of the song or continue to look for the singer.

Note: It was still very early after I finished writing all my notes, so I went back to bed. I had some NLDs and at one point as I was starting to wake up from one I found myself thinking about the song again. At this time I got the impression that the missing line might have been: And so a new feeling is won. Of course there's no way to confirm if that's what it was originally, but it's the best I've got to go on!

Alright, so, this morning, I had a couple dreams. I will list the 2 dreams that I remember. I don't remember much of the first one.

1. After I fell asleep, I remember dreaming about looking up and watching youtube videos. However, after I clicked one, I noticed that the video was like 20 seconds long. And it turned out to be a screamer (A sudden picture thats usually horrifying, with a scream sound). I tried clicking off the page because I knew it would be one somehow. However, it did NOT scare me at all, so I was still asleep. Usually if I am scared in a dream, I wake up immediately. However, this was not the case.

2. A few minutes later, I thought "I'm dreaming!" This is when I believe I had a semi lucid dream. It was semi lucid because I still couldn't see everything very clearly. I just got an overhead view of what looked like an RPG game. My character was walking in the forest. However, I was losing lucidity. It was getting darker and darker. I kept thinking "Rub your hands! Rub your hands! Keep lucidity!" And it apparantly worked. After a little while, I was brought into the first person perspective of the forest. This was my first lucid dream. The first thing I did was do a reality check by trying to Push 2 fingers through the palm of my other hand. However, that didnt work, and I forgot about my reality check that I did more often: Counting my fingers. I did not do this, and this was a mistake. I accidentally thought of Jeff the Killer (The Creepypasta), and my character began taking damage. However, nobody was there. I was wondering what was going on. A few minutes later, I woke up.

Walking along a sidewalk in Germany, I'm trying to find my hotel room. The whole time, I am squirting a bottle of crack sealant into the sidewalk cracks with precision accuracy as a way of keeping track of where I've been so I don't get lost. I tell myself Hansel and Grettle did it, so it must be an effective method. I miss the street I should turn down, and the road enters some magical woodlands. Vibrant green trees everywhere, and a field filled with puff balls - white and gold. I wish I had a camera, but instead, burn the image into my mind before turning back.

Distracted by the crack sealant, I miss the turn again, and as I continue, the road takes me into a deserted desert town, with dry earth cracked all around me, and sand blowing in the hot afternoon under a very strong sun. I've definitely gone too far now, so I turn back again and go back up the road, still squirting crack sealant along the sidewalk so I don't get lost...

I was in Venezuela at the old apartment and was going outside to a Walgreens that was apparently closed. I entered a mall that I recognized and started talking to a guy about parkour because I noticed footprints on the walls. I had recently joined the high school football team and was getting ready for a match. I was showing off my parkour skills and people started joining me. I saw people I recognized and I also saw family members. I parkour'd to the side of the mall and came up on some water. I swam through it and felt my pants getting wet because of the water. I held my breath as I went under some poles and eventually saw a beautiful river with a forest on both sides of it and a huge mountain covered in snow in the middle of the left forest. I commented on how beautiful the scene was and counted fingers in both my hands. They added up to 14 fingers and I said "Nah it's not a dream" I saw a cop car sailing in the distance and decided to leave before I got in trouble. My alarm started ringing and I reached for my phone then I woke up.

This dream was interrupted by a couple of DEILDs, though I suspect that one or more of then may have been a false awakening - difficult to tell with your eyes closed and a degree of lingering REM atonia!

I'm climbing/vaulting over a fence and notice that I'm playing with the physics and re-doing the manoeuvre a couple of times so I GET LUCID!

I look around at the environment and see that I'm in a sunny meadow with trees to the sides and a step wooded hillside ahead. I start exploring the woods, enjoying the vividness of the cool soil-scented air, the gentle background noises of birds and a breeze soughing through the trees, and the detailed undergrowth. The sun is filtering through the treetop canopy in cool dapples lifting the ambient light level to a pleasant clarity.

After a brief exploration of a few paths among the trees, I start heading back downhill, apparently by a different path because I come across some ramshackle buildings in the edges of the forest. I think about how it's a shame that these pretty and romantic buildings are going to waste, but then notice some evidence of restoration in progress, apparently somebody's planning to resuscitate them and make a home here, which pleases me.

I'm vaguely aware that I have lucid tasks to do that involve people, so I start looking for a more populated area, though I don't think much about the specifics of the tasks yet.

As I continue downhill, the buildings become a little denser and the path becomes a residential road. The general feel is very reminiscent of the outskirts of Shrewsbury where I grew up, or perhaps a nearby village. As I notice this similarity, I also notice that there are people around, also strolling in the same direction as me. I recognise a few of them as people I knew in Shrewsbury, though I can't remember their names. I engage one in conversation and tell them about how this place seems to be my subconscious generating a Shrewsbury-esque scene, built out of the kind of scenery typical of Shrewsbury but not layed out the same. As we have this conversation about how it's a dreamsign for me to be in Shrewsbury, especially when it's clearly not *actually* Shrewsbury, the scenery is slowly becoming more reminiscent of the suburbs rather than the outlying areas, and still clearly a random imitation. I hope that this conversation will help my subconscious to recognise dream like scenery more easily in future dreams.

I briefly DEILD (FA?) here so the next scene is a little disconnected from the previous, but I've thought a little more about my lucid dare. I also note that my bladder would like some attention but I decide that lucid dreaming takes priority for now.

I'm in a room that feels like Bluecoat school, surrounded by jubilee people and I look for a female who looks like she might object amusingly to flirtatious behaviour in order that I can be sleazy without my inner horndog bending the scenario into a predictable humpfest!

I see Jo and lean over to *flibble* her breasts. She looks surprised and a little taken aback but not properly outraged. She also doesn't look turned on, though, so one nil to will over subconscious!

I try to remember some more ways to be obnoxious. I wolf whistle and shout out "Hey, Jo! Looking sexy!" making sure everyone around notices and disapproves. She starts walking away so I run around to overtake her, jump onto a table, flip my nob out and wave it in her face. She's definitely not impressed and bites it hard. Apparently my subconscious finds this an unimaginable turn on as I start ejaculating a seemingly endless stream which I decide to direct into a nearby sink. Probably inspired by my recently acknowledged full bladder, this turns into a stream of wee.

Feeling nervous that all this fluid release might not be only in the dream world, I wake up, glad to discover that I'm not humping my pillow or wallowing in a puddle. I decide to visit the little boys' room.

After several promising WILD attempts failed for no good reason over the last couple weeks, I was afraid I was headed into another dry spell. Then last night, when I wasn't planning to lucid dream at all—having only seven hours to sleep before getting up early for a busy day—I had spontaneous lucids all night during the few short periods I managed to sleep at all, and had to sacrifice even more sleep writing up my notes promptly (as a matter of principle). I should have known better to drink that big mug of coffee before bed on a night when I was likely to be prone to anxiety anyway, but now I can report that caffeine + anxiety make a great lucid trigger!

I went to bed at 12:30am. Knew I needed to wake at 7:30 and intended to go to bed earlier, but I never find it easy to go to bed before midnight unless I'm sick or already exhausted. Woke at 2:30am and realized that the coffee was a mistake: I was now wide awake. To counter the insomnia I started doing counting and deep breathing, basically just like my WILD practice but without the intention to LD. I counted to fifty, one number for each full breath cycle, then left off counting and did the breathing only. I'm not sure how much I actually slept—it felt like I spent a long time in a transitional state—but it was 3:45am when I woke up fully again, this time after slipping spontaneously into the very briefest of WILDs.

Brief WILD: The transition was really interesting, because there must have been a point when I was already asleep, but I still thought I was awake. I know I was confused about this because I was under the impression that while lying in bed I was selecting and leafing through fantasy-game themed magazines from a low shelf that was just to my right, apparently in the bed with me. Of course in waking life there is no such shelf set up in my bed nor any magazines of this kind within arm's reach, distinct evidence that I had dreamed the whole thing. But as I was flipping through through the magazines, I was also well aware that I was in the process of trying to fall asleep, and I even noticed a curious phenomenon: when I closed my eyes, I could still make out blurry forms and colored shapes corresponding to the content printed on the pages I was reading. This made me think that reading through closed eyelids might be a great technique for encouraging REM onset, because it was stimulating pictures to form in my mind. A great technique indeed if you can do it while you're already dreaming! But I didn't realize that at the time.

Eventually I felt the onset of that bodily dislocation that suggested I was close to a WILD transition, and encouraged it. Sometimes I levitate, sometimes I rock or rotate, but this time sinking felt more natural, so I let the sinking sensation grow while thinking, "Down, down," until I felt that the transition was complete. Then I easily "got up" out of bed. However, I still didn't have much control of the dream body, so I discovered that I couldn't stand or walk yet. Instead I collapsed face down on the floor and had to crawl. This didn't alarm me, because I often lack full motor coordination right after the transition. The environment was recognizable as my bedroom but still very murky. My mind felt incredibly active and clear, by contrast—probably because I was barely asleep.

I remember thinking distinctly, "Oh good, I haven't lost it"—meaning the ability to WILD, given that my last few attempts have gone nowhere. I crawled toward the bedroom door and remembered my task, "Fairy tales." Then I paused, realizing that I would need to improve my integration before trying to leave the room, as my WILDs tend to destabilize if I try to rush things. I thought, "Time for some clean-up"—but alas, there was no time, as I woke promptly at this.

Such a disruption was not unusual, as my early WILDs are normally strung together by multiple DEILD chains (for some reason this seems to be almost the only time I can successfully and instinctively DEILD, so I've never even counted those DEILDS as distinct dreams; instead they end up seeming more like segments of the same chained WILD). Unfortunately, I could tell at once that this time I had woken up too fully to DEILD, and even though I held very still and sought a way back into the dream, I could feel that I had surfaced past the point of re-entry, so I got up to write this. A bit disappointing, but not overly so as I have to get up insanely early tomorrow for a full day of activity, so no time to write more without cutting into sleep.

5:50am: up and writing again after two more DILDs. Both times I thought at first that I was awake in the house, but instinctively realized that I was dreaming.

DILD#1: As soon as I realized I was dreaming, I remembered my task, still determined to carry out my "Hansel and Gretel" experiment. I was already deep enough in dream to feel well-coordinated, so after getting lucid I went immediately to the kitchen and grabbed some bread from the counter. It was the end of a baguette. Last time I tried this the dream destabilized shortly after I left the house and started dropping crumbs, so this time I decided to begin more cautiously by starting the trail of bread crumbs while I was still inside the house. I walked from the kitchen to the living room, tearing off pieces of bread and dropping them on the floor. Meanwhile I was thinking to myself with amusement, "Oh man, I'd better really be dreaming. If we wake up tomorrow and it turns out I've left bread all over the floor, my husband is going to say this lucid dreaming thing has to stop!"

But I was sure I was dreaming, despite the stability and lifelikeness of the environment, so I asked myself how I could tell. I thought it would be a good moment to test the differences in self-perception between dream and the waking state. No sooner did I turn my attention to my body than I felt it—yes—that subtle tingling in the limbs that I have always associated with dream. The sensation used to be extremely prominent, especially earlier in life when lucid dreams occurred only rarely and spontaneously, but now I hardly ever notice it unless I pay deliberate attention. Unfortunately, this re-orientation of focus on my physical senses meant that I began to notice something I was hearing as well: the sound of my husband's breathing in the bed next to me. This reminded me of my body asleep in the bed, which promptly woke me up.

Upon waking, I could still hear the breathing just as I had in the dream, but with one peculiar difference: in the dream, the sound was distinctly coming from my right, but when I woke up I remembered, of course, he is sleeping to my left. Perhaps the discrepancy can be explained if I was sleeping on my left side with my left ear against the pillow so only my right ear could hear clearly? I forgot to take note of my position when I awoke.

DILD#2: After going back to sleep, once again I was doing stuff around the house under the impression that I was awake when I noticed once again: am I dreaming? Yep, pretty sure I am. Okay, well, back to work then. I remembered that I had taken the bread from the counter in the last dream, briefly worried that I might not find any more, but casually "expected" to find another loaf and sure enough it was there. I started dropping crumbs while I was still inside the house again, then went out the door to the back patio. I was still anxious about destabilization (I have tried this task several times before and haven't gotten very far, and tonight's previous episodes demonstrated that waking up abruptly was indeed a hazard) I so thought, okay, I'll just walk around the pool in circles and continue dropping crumbs until the dream shows some receptivity.

So I began circling the pool counterclockwise, dropping crumbs as I walked. When I reached the area just behind the pool I noticed the place where I had encountered "Boneface" in a previous dream and wondered if anyone would be waiting there, but no DCs were visible. However, the dream was starting to respond: already I was no longer circling the pool but on a path, walking through an environment that no longer resembled any place I know in waking life. The path led me through a dense suburban neighborhood, but I saw trees in the distance and figured a forest must be out there somewhere. I needed to reach the forest to proceed with the "Hansel and Gretel" plot.

I continued dropping breadcrumbs as I walked along the path, but then I remembered—hang on, if I'm doing "Hansel and Gretel," then obviously I can be Gretel, but I'll need a Hansel! I tried to summon him, calling out "Hans! Hans!" and "Little brother!" The dream responded promptly but unexpectedly: a little dog showed up, with long wavy fur in brown and white patches, and started trotting along with me. It looked just like a toy spaniel, but smaller, about the size of a chihuahua. I shrugged and figured, "Okay, good enough." Maybe he would turn into a boy later on, or if not, whatever. (I've always been able to summon animals easily, but have less success with human DCs, so the results weren't that surprising.)

To get more into the spirit of things, as we continued to walk along the path I started singing a song about our journey—how we had left our parents' house because there wasn't enough food, and hoped to find some in the forest. (I just realized a discrepancy in the story: if food is so scarce that they have to leave home lest the family starve, why are they wasting bread by dropping it on the ground? Or is that why mom wants to kick them out, the flagrant bread wasters!)

The dream felt very stable but I knew I couldn't be in very deep because I was having trouble with the song: rhymes weren't coming easily, like they do in deeper dream, and my melody was very simple (The Hobbit was on TV last night, and my song ended up with a similar tune and rhythm to the "goblin town" song from the movie, though naturally with very different words). When I got to the end of a line and couldn't find a rhyme, or even a suitable word, I just sort of hummed over the blank spot and kept going. Improvise! So I sang a number of stanzas in this haphazard way, dropping the bread in smaller and smaller crumbs since I was getting near the end of the loaf, while little Hans the dog trotted beside me on his tiny legs.

Finally we made it to the edge of town, and there it was ahead of us! The forest! Would we go in and find a gingerbread house, a threatening witch? I was looking forward to what we might discover. But I felt sorry for Hans and wondered if he might prefer to be carried. I picked him up and put him on my right shoulder (he was so small). No sooner had I perched him there then at once I clearly and distinctly heard a voice saying my name in my right ear—it was my RL name, and it woke me up. This happened immediately after I put the dog on my shoulder so I had the impression that he had been the one speaking, but the voice was clearly a woman's and, as far as I could make out, it sounded like my own voice.

Anyway, that woke me up past DEILD recovery so I got up and wrote again. It's now after 6am. Nothing like a short night before a busy day in which I have absolutely no time to spare for dreaming to really bring on the LDs, eh?