non-lucid

I had several dreams last night, the last of which was my first ever lucid dream. Finally!!!

All I remember from my first dream is standing on the front walk of what I know in the dream is my ex in-laws house. But no such house exists in the real world. Another strange thing is that the house, it's foundation and even a layer of soil, is sitting on the ground (kind of crooked) like it had been pulled up from the ground and set down somewhere else. I also notice a trail of ants running up and down the length of the front walk.

In my second dream, I found myself in a large cavern of some kind. There seems to be some kind of community living here. There is one man whom everyone calls "the bird man" because he raises all kinds of different animals as pets. I walk over to his part of the cavern and see a small pool. Then I see a small dinosaur, like a baby, about the size of a large swan or goose. It looks like a stegosaurus, except that it has light purple fur on it's body and the plates running up and down it's back are brilliant shades of yellow and red. When it first sees me, it swims away across the small pool. But then the bird man enters and the dinosaur comes running to me as if for protection. It's rubbing up against me like a cat does.

After I awoke from this dream, I laid in bed, briefly considering jotting down some notes in my dream journal. But I decided to go back to sleep and try to re-enter the dream. This is when I had my first ever lucid dream:

I'm sitting in the waiting area of a small office. The door to the office is open and I can see my oldest daughter sitting in there. I'm talking to her about dreaming and telling her how to to a reality check by holding her nose and trying to breathe. She does it, but is able to breathe. I'm thinking that she's not holding her nose tight enough, so I decide to show her how to properly do it. As we're doing this, two men walk into the waiting area where I'm at. I look at them and say something like, "We probably look pretty silly doing this, huh?". I keep trying to show my daughter how to do the holding your nose reality check, but I'm thinking I must be doing something wrong because it's not working for me either; I can breathe. Then I look at my hands. They're all blurry, not like an out-of-focus picture but like a pastel drawing that has been smudged. It finally dawns on me that this must be a dream! I get up and walk around, looking at everything. I enter another room that looks like some kind of call center, because there are desks everywhere with people sitting at them and talking on phones. The walls seem to be made up of panes of blue glass that are illuminated from behind. I pass by a middle aged woman sitting at a desk and nod in greeting to her; she smiles and nods back. I decide to continue exploring and walk back out of the room. But now I'm in what appears to be a grocery store. I walk by one of the check-out registers and decide to look at my hands again to see if I'm still dreaming. My hands are in perfect focus, but both hands are misformed. There are only small nubs where my index and pinkie fingers should be. I remember that one thing I wanted to do in a dream is find "the girl of my dreams". I look around, wondering whether to ask one of the dream figures or just ask the dream outright to show me the girl of my dreams. Just then, I notice a woman walking up one of the aisles towards me, browsing the items that are on the shelves. She is wearing a white dress, has blonde hair, pale skin and is wearing red lipstick. I walk towards her and as I approach, she looks up and smiles as if she recognizes me. I want to ask her if she is the girl of my dreams but she is talking to me. She says in an excited voice, "Oh my God, I didn't think there was anyone else here who wanted to dance!" Before I can reply, these two guys appear out of nowhere. I can tell by the look on the woman's face that she doesn't like them. She asks, "What do you want?". One of the guys pulls her to him and says, "You said you wanted to dance." But before I can intervene, I lose lucidity and wake up.

I find myself in some kind of school setting, like high school or college. There is some kind of competition going on because there are different "stations" set up throughout the halls and lobbies. Each station is a different kind of skills contest, and the one who successfully completes all of the skills in the quickest time, wins. I'm going through, completing the different stations while at the same time talking to a friend. At one point, though, I am told to go back and redo a certain station by one of the judges/referees because they said I did not do it. But I know I did. So I go back to the station. There are two large tin buckets sitting about 5 feet apart. One is empty; the other is filled with crushed aluminum cans of different colors. I draw a card from the top of a stack of cards and read it: "Throw a blue can into the empty bucket." I complete the task easily but am upset because having to go back and redo that station ruined my chances of winning.
Afterwards, we all head into an auditorium where they are about to announce the winners of the contest. I am still mad and upset, and become even more so when I see that there is no place for me to sit. But then my friends all scoot over and make room for me on the end. At this point, I see that my friends are made up of a mix of people I know in real life and characters from movies and TV shows I have seen; Dr. Dorian (Zach Braff) from Scrubs is one of them. The character 'Rubin' (Paulo Costanzo) from the movie Road Trip is also there, and bragging about how he easily won the contest because for him it was no challenge whatsoever.

For the previous two days prior to having this dream, I had tried to make my dreams more vivid by taking a B Complex supplement that contained 50mg of vitamin B6. The supplement, however, had a negative effect on my dreams because for those two days I could not remember any when I woke up. This next dream is just a fragment, which came back to me while I was in the shower this morning:

All I remember of this dream is sitting at a large table, eating dinner with friends and family. My mother is there, telling me about the house we're in and she asks me, "Isn't it nice?" I somehow know that the house we're in actually used to be two houses but that the person living here knocked out walls to make it one big house. Glancing upward, I point out to my Mom that you can still see where the walls of the old house used to be because whoever remodeled it didn't do a very good job patching up the ceiling.

I'm finding that most of my dreams seem to focus on roads and driving. The following is just a fragment from the first of three dreams I had last night:

I'm riding in a car or train that's moving pretty fast but I have an urgent need to get off, like someone is after me or following me. I throw an object out onto the ground (perhaps what the person following me is looking for?) then jump off the moving vehicle myself. Since we were moving pretty fast, it's a hard landing but I make it okay. I get up, dust myself off, then backtrack to find the object I tossed away. I find it a short distance away, something in a light blue buttoned case, like a multi-tool or something. As I look around, I seem to be in the middle of a desert setting, with scrub brush and cactus all around.

The next dream was even more fragmented. All I remember of it was that there were cars that would drive up, transform into different colored dragons or griffons, then lie down like a dog or cat resting. Strange I know....

My next dream was really vivid but I still was not able to become lucid. When I woke up, I just jotted down some quick notes and keywords, then went back to sleep:

I'm in some sort of shop with someone. I don't know who, but in the dream he's a friend. He points at someone walking through the shop and says, "Look! It's Huggy Bear!" (in reference to the character from the old 'Starsky & Hutch' TV series) because the guy looks like the actor who played Huggy Bear, only he's limping. The next thing I remember is that my friend is being chased by someone down a series of sloping steps that seem to be made out of sand and rocks. The person chasing him is angry and yelling, "I'll kill you!". I'm trying to get away as well because I fear he might come after me too. My friend makes a break for it down a flight of stairs that are off to the left of us and I follow him. We now seem to be in some kind of large shopping mall. The man is still after us but so far behind us that I can't see him. But I can hear him yelling, "You're dead!" and "You can run but I'll find you!". When I get to the bottom of the stairs, though, my friend is nowhere to be seen. So I run to my left and duck behind some partitions I find. As I'm standing there, a stranger walks up and says, "There you are."

That's all I remember. As vivid as this dream was, I still seem to get caught up in the dream and don't even think about doing a reality check.

Sept. 2, 2011

I'm driving through a small town. I'm not sure where but the roads are hilly. I'm following behind a black pickup truck with one of those big bumper guards on the front of it. I remember trying to pass it; at first I'm not able to, but then an opportunity presents itself and I pass it. When I look back in my rearview mirror, there's a grey vehicle between us. A few minutes later, as I'm going up a hill, I look in my rearview mirror again. I notice that the grey vehicle is gone and think, "It must have turned somewhere." Then I notice that the black truck is still back there and as it's moving forward it is also hopping up and down like a rabbit, which I find strange.

After waking up from this dream and jotting down a few notes about it, I tried using the WILD method while going back to sleep. But I didn't return to the same dream. Instead I had a different one:

My youngest daughter and I are at a small house or apartment on the waterfront that I seem to know belongs to a friend. I'm telling my daughter that there's a storm coming and that we need to prepare for it. I go outside, scan the sky and see dark clouds over a city in the distance. I then look at a motorhome that's parked on the street. There'a big ladder attached to the side of it and I remember thinking, "This ladder will have to come off. Otherwise we won't be able to drive the motorhome because the ladder will stick out into the next lane. So I proceed to remove two pins that attach the top of the ladder to the motorhome. As I'm doing this, I notice a line of heavy rain approaching fast from across the water. I abandon what I'm doing and run to try to get indoors before the rain reaches me. But for some reason, I can't find the door. It's like the place has disappeared.

This is a dream I had while taking a nap during the day...

I find myself driving up this impossibly steep road, following behind a large truck or SUV. There are houses on the left side of the road and a chain link fence runs along the right side - there is no shoulder. Just as we get to the top of the hill, a red truck comes from the opposite direction. The driver of the red truck pulls up right next to the chain link fence and stops, forcing the vehicle in front of me to stop and/or veer left to pass him. But the vehicle hesitates, forcing me to stop as well. But I'm still on the steep incline and worried about rolling backwards.

The vehicle in front of me finally continues on, but when I try to drive forward, my vehicle stalls. I try to proceed forward but keep having to wait because vehicles keep passing me from behind.

I'm riding in a truck (bus?) with a bunch of guys I work with. We're coming back from some trip, I think, because we're all being driven home. I'm laying on my back looking up, and see a metal frame with some lights on it. At first I think we're pulling into a gas station or convenience store. But then I realize the lights are red and green traffic lights (no yellow lights for some reason) and that we're waiting to make a left turn.

Just as I'm wondering what order they'll drop us off in, (ie, does the driver know where we live?) my crew chief from work motions to the driver that HE wants to drive because it's HIS truck. Rather than pull over, the driver simply stands up while holding the steering wheel steady so my CC can slip into the driver's seat. (The truck seems to be on cruise control or something.)

Date of dream: 11-24-2010

I find myself in a waiting room somewhere with about 7 or 8 women I don't know. There's a TV on and I'm bored and want to change the channel, but 2 or 3 of the women are watching a soap opera.One of them can't take her eyes off the screen and is explaining what's happening to a couple of the others.

The person I'm waiting for arrives (wife/daughter?) just as another woman and her children (4 or 5 of them) are about to enter the room from outside. Several of the women in the room are pointing at the woman and making bad comments about her, which I find rude. I tell the person I'm with that it's time for us to leave because, although I know the woman coming in is all right, her children are a pain in the rear because nobody watches them and they just run around doing whatever they want.

I seem to be dressed in some kind of military uniform and put a heavy coat on, but then take it off because I remember that it's not that cold outside.

(This is the first entry in my dream journal. The dream occurred on November 24, 2010.)