lucid

Woke up super early, realized I had plenty of time and decided to try MILD, but ended up WILD'ing instead

I'm focused on staying in motion as the dream solidifies around me as I can still sort of feel my body lying in bed. I find myself on a bicycle and focus on pedaling as fast as I can, feeling my legs move, focusing on the feel of the handlebars against my palms. Eventually a cityscape forms around me as I ride along streets heading down towards the coastline. As I reach the water, I find stone walls and a tall pillar with a light on top (though I'm afraid to look at the light because it's too bright). This must be the beacon! I enter into a stone tower and start climbing a spiral staircase until I come out onto a pathway along time top of the stone wall. The sun is rising over blue waters, and it reminds me a little bit of Dubrovnik. The stone walls of the "castle" spread out far into the distance as far as I can see. This place must be huge! Somehow, I find myself in a hallway with small openings for windows. I find my coworker Carla, who tells me that this is her boyfriend's room and how she is so proud of him for getting his own place. I focus on finding the bathroom and Carla turns around and starts walking fast. I run to keep up with her. Carla leads me to a large windowless room lined floor to ceiling with dark blue mosaic tiles, with some purple tiles thrown in for contrast. There are tub-like enclosures of various sizes that rise up from the tile floor. I get in one and find that it conforms almost perfectly to my size. A tap appears and starts filling the tub with water and bubbles. I wonder if the tap is going to irritate me if I want to lean back, but then the tap disappears into the wall and the water seems to start flowing from underneath to fill the tub the rest of the way. The whole room does seem rather dark, and I look up to see a dark ceiling with a large chandelier providing the only light. I get out of the tub and try to look around the rest of the room. I find privacy screens, probably for getting dressed, but the screen also hides a door leading to the commode. Another doorway leads to a hall with a large mirror. I'm a bit surprised to find myself wrapped in a large bath towel, but it feels nice and soft. I continue past the mirror and see more doors leading to individual shower stalls with same dark blue tiles. Past the showers, there is a large trench running through the tile floor with ankle-deep water flowing through it. "But why do they need a river in the bathroom?" I wonder. I step into the water and it is cold but refreshing. I suppose it's just to wash your feet? I follow the river until I find myself back outside on the stone walls. There is a large rectangular box lined with glass panels, and inside of it there is a fire burning (just fire, no logs or coals). It gives off quite a bit of heat, so I linger and warm up as I watch the sun rise over the water.

The scene changes and I find myself on a dusty street in an Old West type of setting. I wonder how I can get back to the Dreamviews base and a man who looks like Yul Brynner appears. He leads me to a store front and into the building, but inside it looks like my bedroom with an extra door where there shouldn't be one. I go through the door to find a room with a large chalk board. I go back into my room, then out into my living room, where there is half a boat(?) in the middle of the room. In the kitchen, there's a fridge that looks a little too small (it's a side-by-side fridge/freezer while the one I have in reality has the freezer on top, fridge on the bottom). I open one side and find a small turkey on a platter. I pull off a drumstick and eat it. It's cold and covered in barbecue sauce. Then I wake up.

I am training a new employee and something seems odd about her behavior. I suspect she might be stealing, but when I call my friend in security, I say that "I don't think she's a real employee." She hears me and scuttles off in a strange manner before Security can get there. I find myself in the office as a manager berates me for causing all sorts of headaches because they had to check the new employee's social security number to verify her identity. There is construction work in the office and there's banging noises coming from pipes running overhead, which sounds rather spooky. I'm sent home but instead go to my sister's house, where it is Halloween and I can pass out candy. I try to go upstairs from the lower level of the house, but the stairs hit a dead end at the front door and there's barely an inch or two to squeeze past the door to continue up the next set of stairs. I wonder why we didn't notice that when my sister and I were looking at houses before purchasing this one.

I walk outside and find myself at the beach, and there's someone drowning! One of the guys with me jumps in and tries to save them, but instead he comes out of the water with a backpack. He says that it has an important clue and we need to keep it safe. The backpack ends up with me, but then I notice I am being circled by a group of thugs. I run into a nearby building and think I can hand off the backpack to someone else to confuse the thugs. Somehow, the backpack ends up on the floor as I leave one room, and when I return, it has vanished. A girl finds me and says, "Forget about all that! You need to listen to this EVP I recorded." She brings me to another room where Tom Holland(!) is sitting in his Spiderman costume. The girl plays the EVP for us; there's a disembodied voice calling Margot. I find it creepy and tell Tom that I'm worried about the ghost calling my name. (Note: my name is not Margot!) Tom gives me a pair of socks for "protection." I pull one over my ear, realize how ridiculous this all seems, and conclude that I'm dreaming. I become aware of my body in bed and the dream fades.

I hadn't had a lucid dream in quite a while, which was starting to worry me. But this time I was finally successful.

I'm lying in bed, remembering a previous dream from earlier in the night, when I doze off, lucid from the start. I saw a crow, perched in front of me so I could see his glossy black feathers. I gently stroked down his back, concentrating on how it felt to touch him. Crows are supposed to be very intelligent. I wonder if he would have something to day to me, but instead he hopped up onto my shoulder. Noting the feel of his talons digging lightly into my shoulder, I moved on.

I found myself in the Magic Kingdom. On my left was the facade for It's A Small World, and on my right was a bar. (A bar, in the Magic Kingdom? Walt would flip out.) I took a seat at the end of the bar, noting the Formica bar top that felt a little cheap, and the pegboard backing where the wall should be. Somehow, I found myself sitting across from my friend Dave. I want to know what he has to say to me. He starts out with, "My wife and I…" but trails off as I wait with expectation.

The scene shifts and I'm walking down a set of stairs, the crow still on my shoulder, occasionally nipping at my earlobe. I ask the crow again if he has something to tell me, and all he said was, "Caw caw m*th*rf*ck*r."

At the bottom of the stairs is a train platform, but this is Disney World, so there's a monorail instead of a train. Dave, the crow, and I step onto the monorail. Now I'm in the break room at work. A coworker hands me a gift-wrapped box. I peel off the wrapping and lift off the top, but instead of a gift, what pops out is a jack-in-the-box. Dave reappears, and I ask if he has something to tell me. He says, ""Look, you know how to do this." Good advice, I realize. And then I wake up.

I'm in the backseat of a car. There's a hot European guy that I know who is sitting in front on the right side of the car. He's driving, and I'm a little confused as to why he's driving from the right side. Maybe because he's from Europe? My mind goes over all the complications of driving a European-style car on American streets. There's a big, beefy guy sitting in front on the left side. I wonder if he's the bodyguard. When he shifts, I notice he also has a steering wheel on his side. Who's driving?

I woke up rather abruptly due to the sound of the cat throwing up. After cleaning up the mess, I checked the time and found that it was still way to early in the morning to be up. I went back to bed, trying to remember what I had been dreaming about before. I focused on the mental image of Hot European Guy as I drifted off.

I am on a ship (or maybe it a balcony on a cliff?), looking out over the railing. There is a long drop to the water below. The sea is a gorgeous shade of blue-green. There are all sorts of ships below me, and my eye is drawn to one that was half sailboat, half whale? The image starts fading and I know the false awakening is coming. I find myself in the kitchen of the house I just moved out of last week. Right away, I knew I could not really be there. I start heading for the door, though I find a bunch of rainbow-colored straws that are blocking my way. But I kept going, because I knew I'm not supposed to be there anymore. I make it out the door. At this point, I am almost awakened by the sound of a motorcycle revving outside. I focus on the dream imagery, and Hot European Guy appears on the street on a motorcycle. He tells me to hop on. I carefully climb on behind him, grabbing his hips with both hands and press my front against his back. I have a vague memory of the task of the year involving a dragon, and I will the motorcycle to turn into a dragon with Hot European Guy and I clinging to its back. He turns around and asks me what I want to do. I point to my old neighborhood and told him to burn it to the ground. I'm never coming back here.

I was walking down the stairs, peeking through the picture window to see what the weather was like outside. There was no car in the driveway. That didn't make sense; I've been keeping my dad's car in the driveway while he was unable to drive. Instantly suspicious, I look out the window again to confirm what I just saw. The car was there, but it was covered in a pile of mud and leaves so that it appeared to disappear into the landscape. Yup, I'm definitely dreaming. There's only one thing I can think of doing in a dream. I picture my crush, standing in front of me. I run to him and kind of launch myself at him, wrapping my arms and legs around his much-taller body as I plant a big smooch on him. He wasn't as sturdy as he seemed, though, and we both fall over. I think my head hits the floor. The dream changes, and I find myself back in front of my window where this all started. The scene outside can only be described as a post-apocalyptic nightmare. There are all these roaming animals fighting each other. My sister's sweet little cat comes up to me and I pick him up, making a promise that I would keep him safe from the horrors outside. He bites me.

First lucid dream I've had in nearly a year!

Two friends and I are starting a long trip, and the first step is taking a train to the airport. The train is very crowded, but we manage to find three seats together. It's late and night and both of my friends immediately doze off. I'm too worried about losing track of my bags if I fall asleep. I have my backpack, but I also have a couple of shopping bags filled with magazines and envelopes containing important documents. Why didn't I just put the important stuff in the backpack? It would have been so much easier! I rummage through the bags and find a large carabiner. I use it to clip the shopping bags to my backpack. There's a kid who comes up to me to ask what I'm doing. I try to give him a curt answer and send him away, but his mother sits next to me and won't stop talking.

I find myself in an antiques store in the city with the mother. We need some information, and I decide that the store clerk needs to look up an registry and print it out for us. There's a table with a plexiglass top and several dry-erase markers sitting nearby. I think the clerk will have an easier time looking up our information if I write down the names she needs to look up. But my attempt to write "registry" comes out as "S J" in an elaborate font. I stare at it and can't imagine that I wrote something that complex. The woman starts yelling at me, asking how stupid I am if I can't spell our names. I tell her, "I'm sorry. Sometimes when I'm dreaming, I have trouble writing." I look at her, then look at the clerk as it sinks in: this is a dream! I try to remember if I had any goals in mind, but come up empty. The only thing that comes to mind is that I want ice cream. So I march through the store entrance, which turns into a hallway in an old Victorian house. I pass several rooms looking for a kitchen, but it seems I'm out of practice at staying lucid. I get distracted by a parlor room full of people.

I park a little red sports car by the side of the road and walk back towards a Target a short distance away. I pick up a few items like a pink teddy bear and a comb, then proceed to the check out. I feel like the lines are too long, so I head to the other side of the store, where there are more registers with no one waiting. Then I realize I'm carrying the straw from a small juice box, but not the juice box itself. It doesn't make sense, so I head back through the store to find the missing juice box. Somehow, I find myself outside in the parking lot, having bought nothing. You have to pay to park in the store's parking lot, but I see signs advertising their Black Friday special with $10 all day parking. Somehow, it seems like a great bargain to me. I go back to the little red sports car to move it to the lot.

I ended up doing a long WBTB, as I had to wait for someone to come over and pick something up. Once I went back to bed, I found that it took me a long time to fall asleep again, until eventually I realized that the dream had started while I was focused on dozing off.

I'm sitting on the couch, and I can hear footsteps on the stairs. But I remember that I had just gone to bed, so I know this is a dream. I get up and walk to the front door, then pass right through the screen door since yeah, I don't need to open doors in a dream. Outside, the sky is a deep shade of blue -- nothing out of the ordinary, but I'm just blown away at how realistic this all is. I start to run down the street, feeling the stretch in my legs.

Down the street, I see a guy shooting baskets. I stop to watch him, and when he notices me, he acknowledges me and says "Hey."

"Hey," I say back, imitating him. I continue to watch him, with seems to make him a little self-conscious.

After a while, he asks, "Is there something you want?"

I have a crazy idea at this point and start unbuttoning my top as I repeat, "Is there something you want?"

His eyes almost pop out of his head as he says, "Oh."

I rub my breasts as I repeat his "Oh," except I turn it into a moan.

He races over, grabs me and we tumble into the grass as we make-out. It's pretty good, but I get distracted by something else happening. There's a police car that pulls over a guy right in front of my neighbor's house, and I'm trying to see what is going on.

Look at me, haven't successfully had a lucid dream in a week and I started to worry about my ability. Today's dream showed me that I have nothing to worry about, and what the heck I was doing wrong all week: attempting WILDs when I wasn't fully relaxed. It also must have been the accidental WBTB, as I had been awake for 2 hours but dozed off.

There's a building where lots of stolen merchandise has been found on the roof with no explanation. Even more unusual is that the building is on a university campus. Dad and I go there for a political meeting. He keeps talking about corrupt politicians and holding them accountable. I'm just tagging along because he can't drive. In the elevator, we're given a brief glimpse of the stolen goods through the ceiling of the elevator(?). Then we go to the meeting, which is being held in a classroom. They're doing standardized testing in the same room. People mistake me for a student and hand me test papers and a pencil. I'm a bit surprised to see them opening a hidden panel in the wall to get to the pencil boxes. I start assembling a plastic storage container to hold more pencils, but then I realize it will be too bulky to take it with me, so I disassemble it. Now I notice that the pencils are being kept in pink kid's shoe boxes. Someone hands me a school newsletter. It's got to me one of the strangest ones I've ever seen because it has packages of candy and food attached to it. I unwrap one of the slices of cheese that comes with with newsletter and munch on it as I try to read it. I'm actually kind of pissed that the university hasn't spoken publicly to students about the stuff on the roof or how they should deal with the media attention. I go to say this to Dad, but when I look out the window, I see a plane flying upside down.

I watch with terror as the plane keeps climbing and falling, all while flying upside down. It's going to crash, right? Why am I the only one who has noticed, and why doesn't anyone else care! It's because I'm dreaming. I take a moment to revel in how realistic the dream is. Then I consider what I should do. I briefly remember the Jack and the Beanstalk task, but then I remember that I've been doing task after task for a while and I want something more personal, something romantic. The scene changes to a ballroom, with me wearing a fancy one-shouldered formal dress. I touch the edge of the shoulder strap and I'm surprised that it's metal, not fabric. It's more like some kind of necklace holding the dress up. Then Cute Guy showed up (and I realized I've been spending too much time on Tumblr). I think he's going to dance with me, but instead, we head outside and have an intimate little chat. He asks me what I want, and I ask him to take me to Romania, which makes him laugh. But we somehow end up in a Romanian castle. He takes me to this bedroom with a four-poster bed and whispers to me, "This is where we're going to conceive our first child."

I "wake up" in a sunny bedroom in a house that is unfamiliar. I'm absolutely buzzing over the fact that I not only had a lucid dream, but that I had a lucid dream about a date with Cute Guy. I look at the clock and it seems later than I realized, and I remember that I have a meeting to get to. I'll have to write this up later for my dream journal since I'm running late. I start to look around for something to wear, remembering that the pajama top I wore last night was a bit sheer. Then I remember that I'm alone in this house and no one's going to care if I run around naked. I step out of the bedroom and head down a large spiral staircase. Light pours in from the floor to ceiling windows along the front of the house. I live here? This is awesome! I head outdoors (wait, wasn't I wearing the sheer pajama top?) and find myself rushing across a college campus with friends. My goal is the campus bookstore to pick up a tote bag to take to my meeting. My friends are grumbling about security not removing people trying to sign students up for credit cards. Almost as if on cue, several of them appear in our path, trying to push "free" beach towels on us. "You've got to admire one thing, though," says the girl next to me. "Think of how good their willpower is. This guy goes to all the college parties and he's not allowed to pick up any girls!" And then I wake up for real.

I'm walking out of a building, perhaps a large hotel, onto a sand dune. The dune slopes downwards to a beach with waves crashing. The water is a deep blue, and oddly enough, the sand where the beach meets the water's edge is also blue. I start to wake up on this point, but I dig my heels in -- literally -- and try to stay with the dream. I can feel my heels digging into the sand. The scene changes and now I'm running down the stairs of my house. I know this is a dream and that I can probably get back to the beach, and sure enough, I find it right outside my front door. I decide to try flying since I haven't done it for a while. That reminds me that the last time I flew in a dream, it was when I was trying the Hansel and Gretel task. I wonder if I should try finishing it now…

And just like that, I'm in the witch's house. This time around, she looks just like Snow White's evil stepmother (the animated version, not the Once Upon A Time one). She's complaining that it's taking forever to fatten up Hansel. I get a glimpse of him outside in his cage, except it's actually Shezza from that season 3 episode of "Sherlock." (No wonder the witch is having trouble fattening him up, with Benedict Cumberbatch being so long and lean for the role.) The witch pinches me and comments on how at least I'll be nice and plump enough for a snack, then tells me to go take care of the baby. Wait, baby? Yes, there's a nice chubby baby that the witch is saving for dessert. There's this strange interlude where I'm trying to change the baby's diaper and trying to remember how to fold and pin a cloth diaper.

There is a huge oven in the witch's house, and I complain that the oven door is too big for me to open by myself. The witch grumbles, but she does open the oven door. She's maneuvered herself so that she's between me and the oven. I don't hesitate before kicking the witch's behind and shoving her headfirst into the oven, then slamming the door shut. I grab the baby and run outside to release Shezza from his cage. While we're outside, we can hear the oven timer go off. Shezza says we should go back inside and see how the cooked witch turned out. I'm pretty reluctant to do it (this was the part of the task that I was least comfortable with) but eventually I'm persuaded to go back into the house. Inside, Shezza is pulling a large tray out of the oven with a gingerbread woman on it. We break off a few pieces and, yes, it takes just like a gingerbread cookie.

I think I'm done at this point, and I find myself back in my bedroom, packing a bag. But I know this must be some kind of false awakening because I don't remember getting out of bed to begin with. I try to remember anything else I wanted to accomplish, but I'm drawing a blank. Without a goal, I can't cling to the dream anymore and wake up.

I'm at work when I hear a call for back-up cashiers. I head up front to see where I can help, but I'm confused by what I see. There's only one line, even if it looks a little long, and there's cashiers milling around with nothing to do. I question whether they really need any back-up and I decide I might as well hop on the first open register. There's a woman with several kids who had dumped a pile of things directly on the scanner. When I ask if she needs help, she says that she's using the self check-out and doesn't need a cashier. But we don't have self check-out. I realize she's a little confused, so I ring up her items. She tries to pay by check, but she signs the top of the check instead of the bottom. Also, she's signed with two names, and one of them is Sandor Clegane? Something doesn't feel right about this. I ask her for ID, and she tells me that she doesn't have one but it's her husband's check, so we'll have to wait for him. And we wait. And wait… Her husband finally makes his way over at a snail's pace. He takes a look at the total on the screen, but refuses to hand over any sort of ID. Instead, he claims they haven't spent enough money! He then wants me to tell him all the sales this week so he can figure out what else to buy.

By now, I'm getting really angry at how this family is wasting my time. I consider voiding the transaction and walking away, but I'm really not sure I can get away with that. I try to remember what this week's promotions are, but I'm stumped. It must be the first day of the week, and I probably didn't get a chance to check the weekly ads. But we have sales circulars for reference at every register. I grab the one at my register, except instead of a circular, it's a binder covered with flowers. I see a wire rack with more circulars, so I run to grab one. But when I take a closer look, I realize that they're just magazines. At this point, I see S, the security guy, walk past me in his uniform. I call out to him since I haven't seen him for a while. He stops, but he seems to shrink about a foot in height. He turns around and I see it's actually T, another coworker from a completely different area (who is also about a foot shorter than S). I ask him why he's wearing the uniform, and he explains that he's just helping out while S is on vacation.

I still need to find that damned sales circular. I decide to try grabbing one from another register, but there's a little obstacle in my way: a pond. Yes, there's a pond in the store, apparently. It's about five feet in diameter and it's blocking my path to the closest register. Oddly enough, it looks just like the retention pond outside my old junior high school. I skirt around the pond's edge, but somehow I end up walking through the water. It's not very deep, barely coming up to my shins, but I can feel my feet sinking into the mud. There's a girl I don't recognize working on the register next to the pond. I ask her for a sales circular, and she smiles as she hands over her copy. But this isn't what I expected. For one thing, it's handwritten, and it's dated May 6th. None of this makes sense… because this is a dream. There's a moment where I'm full of indecision, not sure what I should do: tell the irritating customers to get lost or abandon this dream scene entirely by spinning.

Almost immediately, the dream starts to fade. I focus on the sensation of sinking into the mud and try to ignore my real body. It's a bit difficult, but eventually I'm back at my register with this crazy family still not finished checking out until I tell them what's on sale. I hit the void key, toss the void slip at them, and walk away. I've had enough of them.

I start walking the perimeter of the store to give myself enough time for the dream to stabilize. I'm joined by S as I walk. At one point, we come across a large crowd that's blocking our way. S barges ahead, but he transforms into yet another coworker. I watch his back as his uniform fades away and turns into a different shirt. The crowd grows thicker and keeps me from moving forward. I don't know how to get through this obstacle at first, then I have an idea. I shout, "HEY! PREGNANT LADY COMING THROUGH!" The crowd immediately parts. I look down and see that I am very, very pregnant.

The store fades away and I find myself in a hospital birthing suite, lying on a bed, preparing to give birth. There's no pain. In fact, there's no pressure or any other sensation that I would have expected. Really, I just feel happy that I'm finally about to do this. The baby comes out -- except it's not a baby I see, but a six-foot-tall man wearing swim trunks. He's very tan and has extremely light blond hair that looks like it's been bleached by the sun. He looks at me and says, "Bro, I've gotta catch some waves. See you later!" before taking off. I'm confused why he would call me "bro."

Next to me, someone says, "You know, I had hair that light when I was a kid." I look over and realize the man standing next to me is Benedict Cumberbatch, and I remember him saying something similar in an interview last year. He stands up to leave, and I see that he's wearing a tuxedo and carrying a top hat. I ask him to stay. Actually, I start pleading with him to stay, but he says he has an event to go to. Then I wake up.

My goal tonight was to try for the bonus task, but my subconscious had other ideas.

It's raining heavily. My friend Lura and I are walking down a street in my neighborhood when she spots something in the tall grass. She pulls two large tortoises out of the grass. They remind me of the giant tortoises I saw in the Galapagos Islands and I'm at a loss to explain what they're doing in the Midwest. Lura says we should call Sea World to pick them up.

The rain continues, and I duck into a car to write a letter to Sea World about the tortoises. I glance at my reflection in the window and find that I now look like Ellen Pompeo.

Somehow, I've moved on and now my sister and I are checking out an apartment building. This place is very bland-looking, and judging by the age of the residents, it looks more like a nursing home. As we pass one doorway, I point out to my sister that it's a laundry room. There are two older women in the next doorway who overhear me, and they point out that some units have their own laundry hook-ups. They invite us in to take a look. Somehow, I end up sitting down at their kitchen table as one of the women prepares breakfast. She offers me some milk, which I decline. That sends her on a rant about how young people don't drink milk anymore while I struggle to explain that it makes me sick.

After a brief awakening, I go back to sleep while mentally going over the previous dream

I'm back in the apartment building near the office. There are two residents who are arguing over the landlord over the cost of their phone bill. His response is to post some complicated chart with rates. I can't make sense of it, so I move on to find the apartment I was in earlier. But I get lost in the maze of hallways. I can't even remember the number of the apartment. I turn a corner and find myself in a department store. I see a crib for a baby and it reminds me of the bonus task, which helps me remember that I'm dreaming. I try to think of a way to start the bonus task, but instead the dream shifts. Now I find myself on stage with a band. In the audience are members of many of my favorite rock bands. I remember that the advanced task is to perform for an audience, so I decide that my band is going to cover one of my favorite songs. However, the guitar player starts off playing Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze." I panic for a second because I can't remember the lyrics, but after a few bars, I manage to go along with it. I can see the ex-drummer of my favorite band is sitting right up front, and his head is bopping in time to the music. He seems to be enjoying it.

I "wake up" to find that I was sleeping in church. I'm amazed that I managed to stay asleep long enough to accomplish the advanced task, even if that wasn't my original plan. My college roommate is sitting next to me, and she tells me that she's done packing her things. I go outside with her to her car to say good-bye. I'm amused to see that her car has front-end damage and the driver's side door has been ripped away. She never was a good driver. Meanwhile, my car is parked right next to hers and its in perfect condition. I can't remember if I've packed, so I grab a few bags from my trunk and head back inside the "church." Oddly enough, this place looks like my pantry. There's a woman there who reminds me to pack any food that I brought with me when I moved into the dorm, so I start filling my bags with the stuff I find in the pantry: two-liter bottles of soda, jars of marinara, boxes of pasta… There's one package of spaghetti that looks like it's gotten wet, leaving all the noodles limp. It dawns on me that uncooked pasta shouldn't look like this even if the packaging gets wet, and this time I wake up for real.

Successful WILD attempt, but I wasn't as successful in staying lucid the whole time.

I know I have to go in search on the witch who is holding Hansel hostage. I start out in my kitchen, trying to figure out how to get to the witch's cottage, and the easiest way seems to be to search by air. I fly up through the ceiling, crash through the roof, and flew Superman-style through the air until I spot the cottage.

Once I got inside, the witch chases me around a large table, trying to get me close enough to the oven to push me in. My clothes have changed at this point. I am wearing some kind of blue and white peasant dress that is really low-cut. This seems to get the witch to change tactics; before cooking me, she is going to pimp me out to make some extra cash. Now that's really evil. She brings in the first "customer" and I run away from them. Somehow find myself running past two coworkers. They are hiding merchandise in a locker, and I am curious about what they are doing. I find a larger group of coworkers and notice that one of them has changed her hair color. I tell her how much nicer it looks. Then I move onto the clearance tables and start folding clothes and rearranging everything to make it easier to shop. There's a woman who asks if I have a specific size, so I start reading off the size labels to emphasize that it's not here.

I went to see a movie today and got my first look at the trailer for "Maleficent" with Angelina Jolie, who seemed to be making recurring appearances in my dreams.

After driving through downtown Chicago, I'm staying in a lakefront house where one whole wall of the house is windows facing the shore. While exploring the house, I come across Angelina Jolie. She's wearing half of her Maleficent costume and seems pretty confused. She gives me a phone number to call to bring her tour bus to pick her up.

I woke up somewhere around four AM and decided to make a WILD attempt. I'm not usually as successful at these when I know I have to be up in a few hours, but apparently I'm on a roll this week.

I'm in a bar. I focus a little bit on stabilizing the dream, running my hands over the bar top and noticing details (where these rounded bullnose countertops?). I even drop a quarter in the jukebox and sit back as a Huey Lewis song comes on. I remember that one of the tasks is to do tequila shots with a DC. The first DC I come across, believe it or not, is Angelina Jolie. She seems like a cool person to have drinks with, so this won't be so back. We order a couple rounds of tequila shots with lime and salt. I haven't actually done this before, so it takes me a little while to figure out how to coordinate taking a shot before doing the salt and lime. Angelina is kind of amused at this. I start telling her about my problems at work and she listens carefully before suggesting that maybe I'm too good for my job. She talks a little bit about her kids and what baby products she found useful (since I sell baby gear). After a few shots, I suggest maybe I could come home with her and watch her and Brad have sex. This makes us both giggly and I wake up.

I'm on a cruise ship sailing into port. I'm lounging on the Lido deck and looking at the ship parked next to us, which appears to be from Royal Caribbean judging from the distinctive crown and anchor logo. Everyone else is buzzing about going ashore, and I should probably be getting ready myself, but where am I? I have no idea what port this is. I have an idea that feels brilliant: I'll check Google Maps on my iPad and see what my current location is. But it's not so simple. Google Maps takes forever to load, refuses to show my location, and seems really hung up on a landlocked plateau in South America. I give up and run to my cabin. There's a Costco reusable shopping tote on the floor, and I ponder whether it belongs to me or to one of my roommates. I'll have to see where I can get one for myself. I pop into the bathroom and use the toilet. I look out the window as I'm going -- and realize that this isn't a toilet, but actually a lounge chair on the balcony and people on the ship next to us are watching me pee. I look over and realize my stepmother is sitting on the lounge chair next to me, and she has a look of disgust on her face.

I must have started to wake up. The dream ended, but I realized I was still physically asleep while my mind was awake. I needed to take advantage of this!

I really can't remember my last dream (in fact, I didn't remember anything from the cruise ship until I got up later) but I can remember only one of the tasks of the month: use the Force. I picture an inflatable blue ball, sort of like a cross between a basketball and a soccer ball. I toss it around a bit using the Force to guide it up and down, back and forth. The ball deflates and one of my coworkers appears, a woman who is not that bright. She offers to show me where I can get an air compressor. I follow her until she finds the appropriate model. Then, using the Force, I shove her away and prevent her from saying any more useless things. Then I use the Force to insert the needle attachment into the ball, connect the hose to the needle, and telekinetically flip the on switch on the air compressor.

I feel that using telekinesis just isn't enough. I let the Force flow through me, and suddenly I feel thousands of Expanded Universe characters crying out in despair over being erased in the new movie. That's a shame. I really liked Jaina Solo.

I try to think of other things I want to do, and I see a door open. Inside are a couple of men wearing suits. I remember a dilemma I was having with my boss and I summon him out of the room. Then I use the Force to pin him against a wall and tell him, "You will approve my request to supply power to the display models in my department." He looks terrified and nods in agreement. I can hear birds chirping outside and realize I'm losing the dream. The problem with using the Force for everything is that my sense of touch helps me stabilize. I summon a light saber so I can grasp the hilt. Unfortunately, instead of a "real" light saber, I get my friend's toy light saber. I feel the plastic hilt and try to focus on summoning a more realistic light saber like one from the movies, but I wake up too quickly.

WILD attempt after waking up an hour before my alarm…

It feels like I've been asleep forever while waiting for some sort of dream imagery to appear. I decide to try something different and have my dream body climb out of bed. I see my bedroom really isn't that much different than usual (there's always something weird about it in my false awakenings). I move onto the bathroom, which also looks the same. In fact, the only weird thing I've found is that I'm wearing a very sheer white nightgown. I might as well be naked considering how see-through it is.

Somehow, I find myself in the kitchen. I see dishes piling up in the sink and I start to load them up into the dishwasher when I realize I already did this before going to bed. I concentrate on my desire to try the Beauty and the Beast task, then leave the kitchen. I find myself in a dark room where the only light is from the fireplace. There are bookshelves lining the walls and two armchairs in front of the fire. Someone comes from behind and guides me towards one of the chairs, murmuring something about how I must be cold. This must be the beast. I turn so I can see his face, except he doesn't seem to have a head. Wrong story -- this isn't supposed to be Sleepy Hollow.

The beast sits down in one of the chairs and pulls me into his lap. This time when I look, he really is a proper beast with a head and everything. To my surprise, he looks like the one from the Disney movie (I had hoped my subconscious would be a bit more original than that). But he has very soft fur and I spend a lot of time stroking it before whispering, "I love you." He's a bit too tall for me to kiss while I'm sitting, so I have to shift around so that I'm straddling his lap. But I do manage to kiss him, even managing to slip in a little bit of tongue even though there was no French kissing in the movie. I break off the kiss and pull away to see what the beast has turned into now that the curse is broken, and I find that I've just kissed Fabio.

My gut reaction is, "EW!" because I really don't find Fabio all that attractive. He's more like a caricature of the type of guy I do not like. I'm so shocked that I somehow find myself standing in front of the linen closet in the upstairs hallway. I reach for a towel, then notice that there's an odd light at the back of the closet. Something tells me that it's a portal and that I should take it, so I slide between the shelves to get to the back of the closet. I find myself face-down in mud. Someone picks me up and guides me towards a waterfall cascading into a pool of water. Fabio is waiting there with a bottle of shampoo. I immediately think, "No way." The scene shifts and I'm back into the room with the fireplace. This time, Sherlock Holmes (the Cumberbatch version) is sitting in the chair opposite me. He starts trying to psychoanalyze my unusual reaction to finding out that Fabio was my un-cursed prince and he seems amused that I'd rather talk to him than play in the waterfall with Fabio.