Verre

Ritual: It's been over a month since I've done any deliberate dream practice, due to a combination of low motivation and being really busy in WL, so this morning I woke up early to feed the cats and decided to turn it into a WBTB. To reinforce my intention, I took a very small amount (2mg) of galantamine, backed up with alpha-gpc and l-theanine. I lay on my back and tried to concentrate on my intention to get lucid, but my focus was almost completely lacking, and eventually I dozed off only to be startled awake by my own snoring. I turned on my side and fell asleep without any further efforts.

I am in a store that specializes in custom-made, artisanal candy and chocolates. There is a table covered with samples, and I am surprised to see one set labeled with the names of my dad and a cousin, apparently commissioned by them for some event. It consists of three types of chocolate meant to be dipped into three different flavored creams. I want to try all three, but there is only one sample of each flavor and I am competing for them with other customers, so I miss out on one or two.

My disappointment is eased when the lady proprietor brings out more samples, but these turn out to be biscuits and candy, rather than the chocolates on the first table. Still, they are very appealing in all their colors and textures, and I am standing over the table unapologetically sampling one thing after another when I feel a strange tremor in the floor. The motion becomes more intense, and the other customers start to panic because they think it is an earthquake, but I recognize that it is a different kind of motion. It doesn't feel like the ground is shaking under the building, but rather like the building itself is sliding over the ground, which is of course impossible, unless...

"Don't worry, everybody!" I say authoritatively. "This is a dream." I open the front door to see if I was right about the movement, and sure enough, the whole building is sliding sideways through a forest at great speed. While I wait for our journey to end, I continue munching confections: I was particularly enjoying one fennel-flavored cookie shaped like twining leaves and tinted delicately green. Recalling that I was planning to resume my diet tomorrow in waking life, I figured I should take advantage of this opportunity to stuff my face with calorie-free dream food!

The building eventually came to a halt, and I went outside to explore the new environment. I recall it was now an urban area, but some of the transitional details are vague. Somehow I met up with my husband and another guy, no one I recognized, and we drove through the city in a really nice convertible sportscar (modeled on the picture of the BMW i8 he showed me last night in WL). I think we were going to see a movie but maybe it wasn't showing (I don't remember watching one) so we went back out to get the car. It was parked some distance away, so to retrieve it faster, I concentrated on making it drive itself back to us, and to speed things up even more, I had it fly through the air.

"Thank you, robot valet," I said, as the car gently landed in front of us at the curb. My husband got in the driver's seat, and I got into the back again, but when the DC squeezed into some weird sidecar niche, I climbed over to take the passenger seat. For some reason the car had a British layout, so the driver sat on the right with the passenger seat to the left.

Since I had demonstrated that the car could fly, we took off directly into the air to avoid street traffic. However, our flight path didn't feel stable: we were getting buffeted in strange ways. I pointed out that while this car was incredibly aerodynamic on the ground, it was not designed for flying: a sturdy little pod would be better for this purpose. We dropped back down to the pavement and now the car performed beautifully, hugging the ground with impressive traction even though the streets were wet, and roaring forward at incredible speed.

"Where are we going?" I asked. Even though I wasn't in the driver's seat, as the dreamer I felt like I was actually the one steering. My husband said he wanted to pick up some things from the Hall of Records, and helped me locate the building. Inside, it turned out he was retrieving some parcels that had been mailed to him. He mentioned that one package was three days late, because the sender had needed to mail out a movie script first. "Why didn't he just bring them both to the post office at the same time?" I asked, to which there was no satisfactory answer. The parcels contained research materials, and now that my husband had them in hand, he wanted to do some work. "Okay, you work," I said. "I need to go do something."

I had remained partly lucid the whole time, but I had been enjoying the dream enough to let the narrative play out. Now that things were wrapping up, I remembered that I had planned to catch a fish for the TOTMs. I went around behind the building and conveniently found a stream flowing by. The water was shallow and crystal clear, so I peered in to see if I could spot any fish. What I actually saw swimming underwater were... kittens!

"Actually this will make things easier," I reflected. Now I wouldn't need to bother with a fishing rod, hook, and bait. Kittens were much easier to catch! I dangled a length of ribbon over the water until a kitten surfaced and started batting at it, then lured it closer to me until I could scoop it right up in my arms. I concluded that the creature I had caught was a "catbird fish" (I'm not sure why it wasn't just a "catfish," but this was the term that seemed right at the time) and knew I should examine it closely so that I could write a clear description in my report.

Once I was holding the animal, it was no longer the size of a tiny kitten but had swelled into a plump armful. It was no longer quite cat-shaped, either: now looked more like a stuffed animal with the bodily proportions of a totoro: big rounded torso and very short arms and legs. Although my "catbird fish" didn't physically resemble a fish, I sensed that there was something fishlike about its bones, even if I couldn't see them.

I studied the head first, which was still cartoonishly cat-like overall, but with significant differences. The mouth was very unusual: more narrow and vertical than that of a real cat, almost beaklike the way it protruded, but with large exposed teeth. There were two large incisors on the top and bottom, but both sets of incisors were adjacent to one another in the center, more like those of a rat than a cat, but wider and flatter.

After studying the mouth closely, I looked back up and saw that the round, wideset eyes were now completely white. I recalled noticing normal pupils before and wondered if they were rolled back in the head. Just when I was thinking that the creature was starting to look a bit scary, with its weird mouth and whitened eyes, suddenly it spoke up in a very friendly voice: "Hello!" I responded in kind, smiled at it, and continued my examination.

It had the fur of a cat, brown tabby stripes with patches of white here and there: a white triangle on the throat and chest, a little white on the belly, and white gloves. I checked and determined that all four paws were white. After looking over the creature thoroughly, I returned the "catbird fish" to the stream.

The environment had shifted around me: the stream was no longer outside, but occupied a room in a building that had put together exhibits pertaining to different countries. I wondered which country had supplied my "catbird fish," and looked around until I saw the words "This is Canada," inscribed under the surface of the stream. I wondered what other countries were being exhibited—somehow I knew there were supposed to be five of them—and if I could find any rooms with bodies of water suitable for fishing. It would be cool to catch dream fish from several different countries!

I wandered around the building looking for the other exhibits, but to my disappointment, all the others were closed. I went to the front desk to ask about this, and became even more incensed when I noticed a sign informing me that the price of admission was $898.99. I complained angrily to the desk clerk: how could they justify charging so much when only one of the five exhibits was even open?! He simply pointed me to a second sign, which listed a complicated set of refunds that reduced the price of admission to only $1.25.

"Oh, alright then." I figured $1.25 was a reasonable fee for the one exhibit I had seen, and was willing to pay. I had a bunch of change in my left hand, and started trying to count out five quarters into my right palm. The first few attempts inexplicably failed due to the shifting numbers and appearances of the coins. "This is really hard to do in a dream," I commented, and wondered if it would be easier if, instead of trying to shift the correct number of coins from left hand to right, I put them directly down on the desk as I counted.

I started making a little pile of quarters, but had only counted out two before coins that had initially resembled quarters turned out to be square when I set them down, and I had to start a separate pile for them. The third round, quarter-sized coin that I managed to produce had a square hole in the center like those old Chinese coins, and the fourth one had three triangular holes, but by this point I realized that this would never get done if I was too much of a perfectionist. All I needed was one more vaguely quarter-shaped coin to complete my stack of five, but suddenly all the ones still in my hand appeared to be the wrong shape and size. I picked something arbitrarily to finish the stack. I was well aware of the irony of going to so much effort to pay for something in a dream, but since it was so unexpectedly challenging, I felt that it would be a good exercise to try to see it through!

I was looking under the bed for my two cats, and they were there, but to my surprise I found a third! It was an enormous calico, at least twice the size of any other cat I'd ever seen, and unbelievably fat. Startled by this strange discovery, I pointed it out to my husband. He gave me a suspicious look and said, "That's Crowl," as if explaining the obvious.

"He must have at least fifteen percent of the Internet!" I exclaimed, thinking that there's no way such an unusual cat could avoid becoming an Internet sensation. My husband nodded in confirmation.

"Where did he come from?" I inquired. It seemed like a reasonable question, since I had never seen this cat before but my husband appeared to be familiar with him.

Again my husband looked at me in wary confusion, as if he couldn't understand why he had to keep telling me things I should know perfectly well. "We got him from Donna Slope."

"Who's Donna Slope?" The tension was growing with every question I asked. My husband was now staring at me as if he feared that I had finally lost my mind. I gathered that this was the name of someone we knew quite well, for for the life of me I could not remember a single detail about her.

I noticed that the sliding door to the patio was open, and one of our own cats and Crowl had gone outside. I expressed alarm: ours is an elderly indoor cat, and definitely not allowed outside without close supervision. My husband seemed strangely unconcerned: "It's okay, he'll follow Crowl." I was not reassured. "We'll have to talk about this later," I said, indicating the events of the entire morning, and went out after the cats.

The two were already walking along the side of the house toward the street. To my alarm I saw that the front gate was open, and they went right through it. For some reason after I caught up with them I picked up Crowl first. As I walked back along the side of the house I noticed an assortment of little pumpkins or round gourds next to the path. One green one was rattling violently as if something were trying to get out. This piqued my curiosity, but I could not investigate with my arms full of cat, so I resolved to take a closer look after both cats were secured back indoors. I unceremoniously dumped Crowl back inside the bedroom, making sure to close the screen door behind him, and then went back for the other cat.

I was worried at having left my cat unattended, but reminded myself that he moved very slowly in his old age and he could not have gone far. As long as he hadn't blundered out into the street, he should be okay. I soon spotted him next to the sidewalk chewing on grass... but something was amiss. There were now two cats of his appearance. I studied them closely until I thought I was sure which one was him, and carried him back inside. After he was safely secured in the house, I went back to investigate those pumpkins.

The pumpkins ranged in color from green to orange, and seams indicated that the tops could be lifted like those of jack-o-lanterns. What did I expect to find inside? What if it was a coiled up snake, and it bit me? I brushed aside the fear impatiently: the only reason to be afraid of a snake is if you think it might have deadly poison, but that is quite rare. Most snakebites are harmless. Still, why did I want to look inside the pumpkins? I needed a good reason. "Curiosity," I concluded. "Curiosity is the desire to know more." That seemed like a good enough reason in itself.

The first few pumpkins were hollowed out as I anticipated, but they contained only vague shapes, like something was still buried in the pumpkin flesh. I peered closely at one and I thought it looked lizard-shaped. "Maybe they aren't ready to hatch yet," I concluded. I reached the green one that had been shaking violently. Surely this one was ready! I stopped and tried to imagine what I would most like to find inside, and decided on one of those little troll dolls. Wouldn't be cool to find one that had come to life? I lifted the top and... it was just another lizard. This was vaguely disappointing after I had gotten my hopes up for something more exotic.

After going back in the house I started thinking hard. I realized something very strange was going on today, and I needed to figure out what it was. My husband was acting very uncharacteristically, and I was apparently unfamiliar with major details of my own life. What could it be? Was it related to time travel? My current situation felt very similar to the life I knew, but not identical... could I have somehow "jumped the tracks" to a different timeline, a different possible present?

Later I was shelving some books in the kitchen when another possibility came to mind: I could be dreaming. At first this felt very unlikely, but I knew that apperances could be deceiving, and I would need to test thoroughly. I began by looking at a book on the shelf and trying to withdraw it through will alone. Nothing happened, but I thought it might just need a headstart, so I pulled it out about an inch with my fingers, then tried to finish using only mental strength. This time it worked! I let the book hover in the air above my palm to confirm that I was controlling it with my thoughts.

Alright, so I'm definitely dreaming. Shit. That means I have to remember everything so I can write it down when I wake up. I started going over details from the morning, listing them aloud to better fix them in memory. "Crowl... Donna Slope... lizards in pumpkins..." I'm sure several other things happened that morning that I'm now forgetting, but I lost lucidity and had another long NLD before waking up, so some of the details have faded.

Ritual: WTB 12:30am, woke 7:30 with first DILD. No techniques, hadn't really intended to get lucid, but I was wearing a Jawbone fitness tracker on my wrist to bed for the first time. It's a bit tight and I think the unfamiliar sensation served as an anchor for consciousness.

DILD (eventually), "Hong Kong Apartment": I am in Hong Kong with my husband, staying in the apartment of someone unknown to me. I'm curious who this guy is and why we're at his place, so I'm attentive to my surroundings. It is a one-bedroom apartment and the layout feels familiar; I figure it must be a common floorplan here. The first thing I remember is being in a small room of unclear function, a study maybe, and looking at a plaque on the wall. It depicts a Chinese character, the archaic version of that character, and the pinyin transliteration: sōng, corresponding to the English word "page"—not the leaf of a book but the job title. From this I suppose that the young man who lives here must be serving as a page in the Hong Kong government, in the same way that there are pages in the US Congress.

My husband is talking to me, and I'm vaguely following his words but not entirely sure what he's going on about. I'm still trying to figure out why we're here: does my husband know the guy who owns this place, or is this some kind of Airbnb arrangement? Meanwhile I'm trying to wrap an enormous porkchop—the size of a prime rib steak—that I have for some reason. It is fully grilled but no one has eaten it yet, and I'm not hungry now so I want to put it away. It had been wrapped in butcher's paper but I'm having trouble re-wrapping it, and this distracts my attention for some time as I end up having to use a piece of foil to supplement the paper where it is torn. As I finally wrap the porkchop successfully and go to put it in the fridge, I see that there is fresh lettuce in the fridge, and I've also noticed dirty plates on the counter. I had assumed the apartment's owner was letting us stay because he was away somewhere, but these details make me think he must be currently living here and could walk in at any moment.

I know my husband needs to leave for some meeting or event, and our conversation is delaying his departure, so finally I say in exasperation, "Get out of here already!" Right after he goes out the door, I worry that he might have misunderstood my tone of voice and thought I was angry, so I opened the door and called after his retreating form, "I didn't mean to speak harshly." Meanwhile a girl with short, curly blonde hair is walking from right to left in front of the apartment, and I think she might be someone he had just been referring to—at the time I even recalled her name, something with the initials "J.S."—so I gaze at her curiously. She looks back at me with the self-conscious but indifferent air of someone wondering why a stranger is staring at them. It seems like it would be awkward to start a conversation so I go back inside.

Alone in the apartment, I look around at the decor. There are a lot of hand-carved wooden animal figures, and they remind me of a set that I bought in a museum shortly before Christmas, but couldn't figure out who to give them to. They seem to match this guy's tastes... maybe I should give them to him, in thanks for the loan of his apartment. It seems like a nice gesture so I plan on it. In the center of the main room, which has an open floor plan connected with the kitchenette, is a wide square column that is hollow inside to serve as storage space. I note with interest that there are a number of oversized books here. One of them is at least four feet tall, and the title on the spine reads Disney as Orientalism, accompanied by some Disney-style graphics. I make a mental note that later I'll want to pull that one out and flip through it. It's so big it won't fit on a table—I'll have to do this on the floor! It is the largest of the books in this closet, but none of them are small. Several others are about three feet tall with matching red covers, and I see that one of them is about Shanghai. Books of this size must have cost a fortune... this guy must be doing well here. I wonder if it would be rude to read his books without asking permission first, but figure there's no harm in it.

I wonder how I'll explain my presence if this guy shows up while I'm here by myself, since I'm still not clear on who he exactly is or why I'm at his apartment. In fact, this question starts to bother me, because it seems like I should have a better explanation. Of course, it's always possible that I'm dreaming, but... I want to discount this at first, since it seems to contradict what I'm experiencing from this environment. It is so detailed, lifelike, and stable, it really doesn't feel like a dream. But I make myself take the time to think this over more carefully: if I am actually dreaming, that would explain a lot, like why I had a porkchop, something I almost never eat, and the difficulty I had wrapping it. It would explain why I am in Hong Kong with no idea why I am here, and why I find myself in the apartment of a guy I don't even know. I don't use any techniques to RC, I just think it over and gradually recognize the illusory nature of my surroundings: indeed I am dreaming!

So now what? Normally I would apply myself to some task or other, but I had specifically made a point not to do so this time, if I got lucid, because I'm facing too much work today to spend hours writing up my report. So my plan was not to do anything specific, but simply to contemplate and enjoy the dream environment. (For some reason I had the idea that this would save me time writing things up later, although that is proving not to be the case!) I walk toward the back wall of the apartment, which is completely transparent, and look outside. It is still night, but there is a well-lit open-air bar just below, with a stream running behind it. There are a surprising number of people down there, and all seem to be relaxed and enjoying themselves, like guests at a resort. I sit down to watch the scene, while thinking back over what I've just experienced. I'm still impressed by how detailed and stable this dream was. For instance, that Chinese character on the wall—it was so clearly articulated, even though I don't think it was one I've ever seen before, and I strongly doubt it's even a real one. I wished I had looked at it more carefully, and focus on reviving the mental image. I think can remember the top elements of the modern version of the character, but I'm vague about what composed the bottom, which was complex, and I had not studied it closely at the time. The archaic version was simpler, and I can remember it much more distinctly. Concentrating on this inadvertently wakes me up.

Interlude: After writing the above account and going back to bed at 8:45am, I certainly didn't intend to get lucid again, given that I've already spent a lot of time writing when I should be working, but I never want to rule it out. I ended up having several FAs, the later ones bringing on a very long bout of lucidity, in which I just wandered around exploring rather than working on specific tasks. There would still be a lot to write up but given time constraints I'll have to keep it brief. Woke for the day at 10:15.

FA: I was in the bathroom thinking that I should make a more consistent effort to recognize those little discrepancies that might make me notice I'm dreaming, like I did in the last dream, without realizing that I was actually dreaming at that very moment.

FA/DILD, "Trail of Smoke": I hovered for a long time on the border between sleep and waking and enjoyed observing its ambiguities. For instance, there was a point where I was convinced I was immersed in dream visuals but hearing everything perfectly accurately from waking life (I was probably wrong about this). I caught at least one FA and was pleased after my failure to catch the last one. Then a long dream followed where I was basically lucid the whole time, but also knew I wouldn't have time to write it up in much detail, so only certain episodes that were especially interesting stand out clearly in my memory. I really can't take the time to include them all here, but the last scene was worth mentioning:

I am wandering through a dream environment typical for me, a labyrinthine enclosed public space, and having just seen someone smoking on a magazine cover, I now find myself smoking a cigarette. The smoke doesn't dissipate completely but lingers faintly in the air along the path I have walked, like that memorable scene from Donnie Darko (2001). It looks like I could potentially trace back the smoke and rediscover all the places I have visited in the course of this long dream. This makes me wonder: how big is the dream world? And the answer seems obvious: there are no boundaries, it is as big as mind itself. Standing in that world even as I recognize its boundlessness, I feel a sense of awe.

I gaze at the glimmering smoke trails and murmur, "All the places I've been are like a trail of smoke that follows me."

Ritual: WTB 3am, woke several times before and after dawn but didn't WBTB, woke around 9:30am and put vibrating alarm on wrist, set for 24 minutes. Woke up too soon, before it went off, reset it. Next cycle effective.

EILD: I feel the pulse of the alarm on my left wrist, waking me, but remember to lay very still and see if I can maintain dream state. I experimentally move my hands and arms and from the sinuous and unimpeded sense of motion I'm convinced this is working, that I'm moving the dream body and not the physical one. I know I have to be careful not to overdo it and actually engage real motor functions, so I spend some time almost "dancing" in place with my arms, writhing them bonelessly like a snake dance, until I have enough sense of engagement with the dream body that I risk rolling out of bed. I can't walk yet: I can barely crawl over the rug. I know I need to engage the environment, so I stare at the carpet, noticing the texture of the pile. I'm pleased when I spot a piece of random detritus under my dresser, because something unexpected means the dreamstate is gaining momentum. To gain traction I focus on physical sensations, running my hands over the carpet and even bending lower to rub my cheek against it. Even though I've done this many times before I'm still impressed with the vividness of the sensation, it feels so scratchy and real.

When I feel sufficiently engaged with my dream body, I manage to stand upright and walk. I easily recall my plan to work on memory—carefully though! I don't want to actually wake myself up. Trying to remember where I went to sleep seems unnecessary, as I still haven't left the bedroom. What about the date? I'm pretty sure it's February... I don't want to think harder to get the precise date lest that efffort wake me. (It's worth nothing that I usually have to think just as hard to remember the calendar date in WL. Usually I just look at my phone because it's easier.)

I start walking through the hall toward the kitchen. What other memory should I try to access? I know, what have I been reading lately? I'm pretty sure I came up with the correct general impression, but even as I write this, details of my waking life knowledge of this topic are corrupting and crowding out the dream recollections to the point where it is hard to be sure how specific my answer was. At any rate, in the dream I felt satisfied with my level of memory access and moved on.

As I entered the kitchen I noticed something peculiar: even though I was in a very accurate mental model of my house and had a strong access to waking recollection, and had even managed to access WL memory without disrupting the dream state, it had not in the least improved it either. I had a good sense of tactility (I find that the easiest sense to maintain), but as so often in early WILDs (which this effectively was though induced by EILD technique), my vision was still extremely poor. The haziness was mitigated by the fact that I was in a dream version of my house, as I almost am at the start of dreams of this type, so I "knew" what was around me and that knowledge could help make up for the lack of visual clarity. Perhaps that is partly why my mind instinctively frames such dreams in this way, in addition to the straightforward logical continuity of entering the dream from a mental model of the same place I went to sleep. It moreover suggests that from the start of WILDs I always instinctively remember where my WL body is sleeping, even if I am not paying deliberate attention to the fact.

I wondered if concentrating would clean up my vision but there was no improvement— it's too bad I didn't think of Fryingman's awesome technique, which I only read about last night, of "taking off the blurry glasses." I figured I should try to clean it up in the usual way, interacting with the dreamstate until it naturally clarified and brightened. Meanwhile, I thought about the other tasks I had been planning. Most important was the elusive forest. After many tries fruitlessly trying to reach it on foot, I decided that I need to stop chasing it, since I seem to be encountering a mental block, and instead will it to manifest around me. I also remembered another task that I've been wanting to try for ages but never managed to think of when dreaming (so maybe this memory trick is working after all?) My idea was to see if I could "play" my WoW character, a Forsaken, and explore the Undercity. I murmur her name aloud, but decide to save that for another time—right now my main goal is to work on the forest.

I stand squarely in my kitchen and start to visualize myself surrounded by trees. There is a tall houseplant to my right with feathery foliage: it must be the little potted tree I used for Christmas, a Norfolk pine. I reach out and grasp its soft needles with my right hand, thinking this will help focus my thoughts on the forest I am attempting to conjure. Intriguingly, I fail to notice the spatial discrepancy: although the real tree is only a few feet from where I dreamed it, in WL it is now outside on the patio rather than inside the house.

Unfortunately, this is as close as I get to manifesting anything like a forest before my husband comes into the room. I figure he'll just ignore me because I am dreaming—and oddly I make the assumption, as I seem so often to do in the dreamstate, that I am encountering the real-life version of him even though I know I am dreaming. Maybe it is this tendency that makes some people interpret dreams so closely modeled on RL spaces as "OBEs". But I am thrown into confusion when my husband looks right at me and starts talking. What does it mean? How can he possibly see me? Could I have been wrong in my conviction that so-called "OBEs" are a naive misinterpretation of certain kinds of LDs; might I really be "projecting" an image of myself into the waking world? This still doesn't seem plausible, but the only alternative I can think of is that I am actually awake. (Note the dream logic: despite the generally high level of memory access and mental function in this dream, I completely fail to consider the most likely— and as it turns out correct—alternative, that the encounter with my husband is nothing more than a projection of my dreaming imagination.)

So am I awake or dreaming? I'm not sure anymore. It feels like a dream, and I'm still not seeing my environment very clearly, but maybe I'm still groggy and bleary from having just gotten up. How could I be confused about this, though? Although there are plenty of times that I'm fully convinced I'm awake and turn out to have been dreaming, not once have I ever been fully convinced I was dreaming and turned to be awake. It doesn't occur to me to try any of the typical RCs, but I focus my attention inward, on my sense of bodily awareness, to try to figure this out. I've often noticed that my dream body is characterized by a peculiar kind of inward vibration radiating from the area of my solar plexus—this impression used to be very strong and distinct, especially when flying, but it has become much less noticeable as I've grown more experienced. I think I can sense it now but it is very faint.

My husband is still talking, and although I am too perplexed to follow what he is saying, he seems to be complaining about some bad habit of mine. "...twenty-one times a day," he concludes. Apparently that's how often I do the thing that has been annoying him. Does it have something to do with my dream practice?

The encounter has now totally disrupted my concentration on the forest task, so I turn around and approach the patio door, thinking I'll just go outside. The weather looks lovely, cloudy and wet. "Hey, it's raining," I comment aloud, and anticipate how nice it will be to feel the cool water on my skin. I start to take off my sweater so I'll have something dry to put on when I come back in (it doesn't occur to me how odd it is that I'm wearing a sweater if I supposedly just got out of bed) and pull open the door.

"Don't, we have to leave," warns my husband. I recall (correctly) that he wanted us to go out on an errand today, but even if I am somehow actually awake, it must still be mid-morning. I assumed we were going in the afternoon, why would he want to leave so early? With these thoughts the dream is finally disrupted and I wake up.

Note: On the way to my laptop to write things down, I remember the silent alarm still on my wrist and look at the time. It reads 20:42, and it was set for intervals of 24 minutes, which means the whole dream played out in just under three and a half minutes. Of course, then it took an hour and a half to fully record, which is maybe why it's a good thing I don't LD every night, lol.