Ophelia, thanks for the help and feedback thus far. I appreciate the time you spend helping us on the forum reach our goals. You had asked about my .5 lucid dream. Basically I became aware of the dream momentarily and it was only for such a short period of time that it doesn't deserve full credit. I hardly even remembered it.

My normal sleep pattern has me waking up sometimes between 4-5am after a few REM cycles. Then I often go back to sleep for one more dream. As I understand the WILD technique or maybe WBTB, this is a prime situation for this LD strategy. I usually just do what I do before bed by focusing on dream recall, relaxation and thinking about the dream state. As easy as that sounds I do not feel I am where I need to be in that department.

This morning I recalled a few dreams, some vaguely as usual. I think I've watched too many scary movies in my life because a "bad guy" is often a theme. A funny thing happened in one of my dreams though- I found myself writing the dream journal on the side of a shower stall! I had my brain so focused on dream recall and writing it down in the morning that I started before the dream even ended!

I use my ipod touch as my dream journal where I also keep notes and links mostly from stuff I've learned here on the forum. It helps me edit them when later in the day or that night I remember something new from the dream. It is very convenient to sort dream signs and keep all my dream stuff together. I can also read in the dark during night or morning without turning on a light.

I think my brain is too good at tricky me into believing a dream is real. There was one dream a while ago where my daughter's stuffed monkey was with another little girl and I thought "that can't be right, that's Lily's monkey" and then all the sudden the dream changed and Lily was there with her monkey and gave it to the girl. I had almost caught on that it was a dream but my brain quickly corrected the error so that I would buy into the story. The dual nature of my brain is fascinating but keeping me from experiencing the LD.