Looking for some perspective

Heya all, I'm kind of new to the concept of lucid dreaming (though I would not fully describe the dreams I am to talk about as lucid), but I have been having some close to lucid, or semi-lucid experiences that I wanted to put out there to people who ARE knowledgeable of LD to see if there were any comments, advice, ect, that might help me get some perspective.

The first experience is one that is fairly mundane, but one that I used to experience rather often before I had even heard of lucid dreaming..

My family gets a great number of calls from people we don't want to talk to (bill collectors, telemarketers, ect), so it just becomes second nature for us to pick up the phone and hit the 'end call' button to shut off the ringer while we wait for the caller I.D. to say who it is.. Sometimes, however, the calls will start coming in while I am still semi-awake in bed. Awake enough (or at least seemingly awake enough) to be disturbed by a phone ringing (normally I could sleep through a carpet bombing) but not quite feeling lucid in the real world again. When this happens, I sit up in bed, reach over, grab the phone and hit the end button so I can go back to sleep. The phone, however, continues to ring. I get back up, pick up the phone again, being able to feel it in my hand, hear the beep of the end call button being pressed.. but when I press it, the ringer still doesn't shut off. It is about at this moment I wake up for real, the phone really is ringing, and it was its real ring that I was hearing, but the phone I was picking up and trying to quiet down was a figment of a dream like state.


The second occurance is one I cannot quite remember details on, but I remember happening very clearly. In this case, on two seperate occasions, I had very strong false awakenings. My first time I had two, maybe three, spaced very close together with no significant details that I could remember.

The second time however, which was within the last week or two, was significantly more prominant.. this time, I had at least 6 false awakenings, each occuring shortly after some stimuli in the dream helped me realize I was dreaming. The only one which I can remember was a lap top in the second to last full FA of the cycle: My laptop was sitting on the edge of my bed, I attempted to type into a word program on it, and the characters that came up on screen were not the buttons I was pressing, and pressing the same button again did not produce the same character a second time, just resulting in a load of gibberish. It was after this that I became fully aware I was dreaming, and made a concious effort to wake myself. At first I believed I had succeded, but it was not long before I became aware I was still dreaming and had experienced another FA. Becoming slightly frustrated, I just resolved to try and wake up as many times as possible until the distinct "dream haze" feeling was gone and I could be sure I was awake. As I tried this, I felt as though I experienced a rapid succession of split second awakenings before I was finally able to really wake up.

There was another significant experience that has been rather 'reality changing' for me. Making me really question if I am really awake or if I am still dreaming in my every day life.. but I cannot remember if it was an event that took place during one of my false awakenings, or if it was simply a very vivid, but unrelated dream.