task of the year

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'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.

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.

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.

I was up late last night after working second shift, then had to get up early for a contractor stopping by in the morning. So I didn't get a whole lot of sleep. When I started feeling drowsy after the contractor left, I figured a nap wouldn't hurt.

I'm looking at my smartphone and for some reason, I'm trying to search for information on Jimmy Kimmel. I'm having trouble spelling his name, with my attempt to spell "Jimmy" coming out as something else. I look at my hands and realize this must be a dream. I look up from the phone and find myself at work, except I seem to be on skates while the main aisle is made of ice. I start skating down the aisle until I get to the toy department. When I head down a smaller aisle, I see a magic lamp hanging on a display. I rub the lamp, which looks like plastic but feels cold like metal. I wait for the genii to appear, except nothing happens. I take a few steps and try again, and this time the genii comes out of the lamp.

I wish for a magic carpet. The genii points to an endcap where there are plush purple toilet lid covers on display. He takes one and tosses it in the air. It seems to get larger and thinner as it spins until landing on the floor, now large enough to hold a person. I make sure to hang onto the lamp as I get on the rug. The rug flies through the air, heading for the front of the store where I magically pass through the plate-glass window. Outside, it is cool and cloudy. I do a few loops on the magic carpet before returning to the ground.

At this point, I know I want a second wish but I'm a little stumped for what to wish for. I look at the clouds and wish that I was someplace warm. Almost immediately, I find myself wearing a rain coat and sitting at a small table under a large umbrella. I can see palm trees in the distance, and when I stick my hand out, I can feel the rain. I focus on the sounds of a tropical rain storm…

And then I find myself in my garage at home. I open the garage door, reminding myself that I wished I was someplace warm. And instead of my driveway, I see a tropical forest with a dirt path winding through the trees. I follow the path, feeling squishy texture of the dirt under my feet. Eventually, I come to a large building. I realize that it's the home of my grandparents in India. I remember where to find the back door that leads to a kitchen. From there, I move to the large reception room on the main floor. I remember that it was my favorite room as a kid because it had a swing. Sure enough, I see a wicker egg-shaped chair that is suspended from the ceiling. I sit in the chair and let it swing back and forth. A drink appears in my hand, and I wonder what it is before deciding that it should be Bombay Sapphire gin, of course. I sip it and debate what to do for my third wish. For a moment, I wonder if I should ask for the perfect kiss and an image of Benedict Cumberbatch comes to mind. But I decide that I can't have him show up in every single lucid dream!

Instead, I wish that I could speak to my grandmother. I see my Nana, my mom's mother, appear on my left hand side. She reminds me that this used to be her sewing room. I look on my right and see my dad's mother, who passed away before I was born. I really want to hear what she has to say, but she remains silent at first. I realize that I have no idea what she even sounds like because I have no memories to build on. Trying to draw her out, I ask, "What should I do with my life? I could really use some guidance." She remains silent, but this time she leans forward and kisses me on the forehead, then she gives me a hug. Then she tells me, "I want you to live. I have two beautiful granddaughters that I am so proud of and I want you to live your lives."