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[This is a catchup post.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

Night of August 31-September 1

[Fragment] I still have the box I shipped out via FedEx yesterday, for some reason.

I'm outside and lucid. I try to start flying, but am unable to. I move to another spot where I have an unobstructed view of the sky, and try taking off again. This time, I succeed. I think, I have to be looking up at the sky at about a 40-degree angle in order to fly - no, I don't! If I think that's true, then it will be! I can't set limits on it like that!

There is a large playground where I am. I fly toward it and, to my own slight surprise, am able to fly right through all the playground equipment intangibly, with no trouble at all. I get to see the dark-gray interior cross-sections of the upright pieces of the structure. I think, Oh, heck yeah. When I get all the way through the playground, I fly up to get an overview of the landscape.

September 4, 2011

I'm at my current house. My mom has come over to visit. She's sitting on the couch in the living room. [The living-room furniture is set up in a mirror image of how it is in real life. The couch is facing the outside wall of the house, rather than being up against that wall.] I'm upstairs, looking down into the living room. I jump down the stairs and float gently down onto the ground floor, in full view of my mom and all the other guests downstairs, not caring this time about being seen using my dream abilities by my DCs. None of them take any notice of what I've just done or comment on it as being strange. [I don't remember how this dream began, or how or when I realized I was dreaming, but I definitely knew I was.]

I sit down in an armchair to visit with my mom. We're talking about what it's like for me to be on my own, whether I'm lonely, whether I miss her. She asks me, “Do you ever dream about me?” I say, “Yes.” I decide I don't want to tell her that I'm dreaming about her right now and she's just a DC, though. She continues talking to me about dreams. While she's talking, I notice that she has one or two extra digits on each hand, but I decide not to point this out to her, either. I just find it interesting. I didn't know that that could happen to DCs, too.

[Different dream, later on.] I'm in a house somewhere, with my family. We're getting ready to go out to a movie, for which someone else is buying the tickets. I take my phone out of my purse to check it. It's my smartphone that I have in real life. I've set it to display my name as “Danny Boletino,” the name of a character in a heist movie, just for the fun of it.

I'm in another room of that same house, having a quiet conversation with my boss about fishing. He's surprised to learn that the last time I went fishing with him and his family was the first time I'd ever been fishing. I also tell him that I want to go fishing with them again, because I want to get better at it.

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Side notes:

Lots of day residue here. I saw my mom yesterday, and we had company over at our house. However, my mom did not really come over to my house; I saw her elsewhere. Also, one of the last threads I was this one, about looking at your hands to RC or stabilize the dream, so I'm not surprised that that showed up in my dream.

Neat. That's the first time my new smartphone has shown up in one of my dreams. It's been exactly two weeks since I got it, which is also exactly how long it took me to have my first false awakening in my new house after I moved into it (see this DJ entry). Evidently, two weeks is how long it takes for my my unconscious mind to accept something as normal and start incorporating it into my dreams.

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in the parking lot of the office complex where I work. I suddenly think: I distinctly remember going to Toastmasters yesterday morning, then to work, but I haven't had any time off work since then. [I go to Toastmasters on Friday mornings, and I have the weekends off.] How did I get here? I'm here out of sequence, and I don't remember coming here. Oh, s*** – I must be dreaming. I pinch my nose and can breathe. Yep, I'm dreaming.

I decide to climb the outdoor stairs to the back door of my office. It only takes me four strides to get to the top of a staircase that I know has 14 or 15 steps. [Again, this was an example of that dream phenomenon where you focus on arriving at your intended destination and quickly arrive there, having “fast-forwarded” through the act of getting there.] I figure that the door is probably locked because it's not business hours, so there shouldn't be anyone inside. I attempt to use my dream ability to become intangible and walk through things to get into the office, but it doesn't work. The door remains solid to me. However, I quickly discover that the door is, in fact, unlocked, and just open it. [Apparently, my brain likes to do things in the simplest way possible.]

The office looks exactly like it does in reality, except that there is a large, round, pink toy Jigglypuff sitting on the reception desk. This makes me laugh. [In real life, that desk is decorated only with pictures of the occupant's kids, who are now young adults, and some artificial plants. The occupant would never even own such a thing, much less display it on her desk.] I think, That's a random thing for my brain to put there!

I wander into my boss's office. There is a small, clear plastic bag of broken crayon pieces on his desk, mostly blue, orange, and green. It makes sense for them to be there, because he has young children. I pick up a crayon piece and contemplate eating it, but I think that that wouldn't be very nice, because these crayons belong to the boss's kids. Then I think, The real $Boss is never going to know, and pick up a small piece and swallow it. As in my previous lucid, I can feel it, but the sensation is weaker than it would be in real life.

I go back out to the main room, where the reception desk is, and stand just to one side of it. I hear my boss's voice as he comes up the indoor stairway. Then my boss comes into the office through the front door, followed by his entire family. I'm naked [as I have been throughout this dream, but I haven't felt the embarrassment that I usually feel in my dreams that involve nudity]. At first I stay where I am, thinking, I don't mind if he sees me. It's just a dream, after all. But the force of the social taboo overwhelms me, despite my conscious effort to resist it, and I try to hide behind the reception desk. He doesn't appear to take any notice of me at all.

I run back out the back door, down the stairs, and into the parking lot. I see that it's nighttime. I say aloud, “Well, I can bloody well make it daytime!” I attempt to change the dream scene from night to day by closing my eyes, turning in a circle while thinking about what I want to have happen, and then opening them again. It doesn't work. It's still nighttime.

Then the dream shifts. It looks like the new scene is rising up from behind the foreground of the first scene, then replacing it. [That's the best I can describe it; I don't remember the transition really well.] I say, “Cool!”

I'm now indoors, in a portable classroom filled with school desks. I'm wearing regular clothes again, too. There are students and teachers here. One of the teachers starts singing “Amazing Grace,” and I sing along. We sing the entire first verse. I think, Cool. I've been wanting to sing an entire song in a dream. I know there' s more than just that one verse, but I feel like I've accomplished that goal.

The classroom starts to fly. It flies over a cityscape that I know is in China. We're heading out toward the ocean.

[There was another dream scene after this one, but I don't remember much about it. I know it was indoors, and I think it involved me and my mom searching for and trying to identify the perpetrator of a crime.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[Last night, I had probably the longest and certainly the most highly lucid dream I've ever had. I'm writing this at the end of the day. I tried to recall this dream as best I could upon waking, and I made some handwritten notes, but by now, although I remember the highlights of the dream, I've forgotten what order they went in and how I moved from one to the other. This is my best attempt to reconstruct the whole, long sequence, but some of these are most likely not in the correct order. I do remember that I consciously chose to move from one activity to another in the dream, though.]

I’m in a large room with a really cool indoor playground in it. I observe that they’ve added more decorations and more play elements to the playroom since the last time I was there: there is now a long chain with brightly-colored wooden blocks in various shapes (cylinders, hexagons, and others) threaded onto it hanging across the ceiling, and there are more things to climb and play on. I climb up one of the climbing walls, along with another girl. We press against each other as we climb it.

Later, elsewhere in the same room, I’m looking at my reflection in a mirror. I notice that my neck looks strange, and tilt my head back to see. I see that my neck appears to have been replaced with a shiny, silver metal bar that appears to be a piston. This causes me to realize that I’m dreaming. I pinch my nose to confirm and find that I can still breathe. The familiar sensation pleases me, and I'm very happy to be in a lucid dream. I have a slightly higher degree of lucidity than I've ever had before.

I go outside the building. There is a grassy lawn outside it. I have a discussion of systems for play and discovery with MA [a real-life friend and colleague] and another dream character.

I then decide to explore a bit. I walk away from the large building and head toward another complex of buildings that appears to be an elementary-school campus. As I start walking, I say to myself, “Again, why am I walking when I can fly?” So I start flying over there. I find a party in progress on the far side of the elementary-school campus, where there are some picnic tables. People are hanging out and drinking beer. I obtain a pint glass for myself, but leave it sitting around on or near one of the walls as I wander away.

I see the entrance to a mall, and enter it.

I fly up into the air to get an overview of the area. From up here, I can see that the town I'm in is on the ocean and has a beach. I think, That makes sense. Oceans and beaches are part of my schema for what a broad overview of an area of land should look like, because of where I grew up.

I'm walking along a rolling dirt path. While walking, I eat yogurt out of a plastic cup with a metal spoon. It's raspberry-flavored and smooth and creamy, and it tastes exactly like real yogurt. Then, I find a handful of coins that someone has dropped on the side of the path, along with a bronze medallion. The medallion has some text inscribed on it that says the name of the country I'm in and what the medallion was awarded for. [I don't remember what it said now, although I could definitely read it in the dream, and the country name wasn't the name of any real country.] The coins are all common U.S. coins, but there's also a fifth coin, a brass-colored one that's shaped like a little house [a square shape with a pointy roof]. I pick all these items up.

I wake up in a car with MA, JL, and one other friend. One of them is driving, and I'm in the back seat. I remember that I had just been dreaming, and pinch my nose. Yep. Still dreaming.

While exploring the grassy, park-like area outside the building I started in, I spot a silver, metal, quarter-spherical shape rising up out of the ground. I say, “Ooh!” because I see an opportunity here. The structure is roughly the same shape as the baseball backstop I once fantasized about flying to the top of [see my DJ entry dated April 28, 2011], even though it's solid silver rather than chain-link, and it's maybe two-thirds to half the size of the real one. I take off and fly to the top of it, stopping myself by grabbing hold of the top edge of the hollow quarter-sphere with my hands and then swinging myself up onto it, so that I'm sitting at the top with my lower legs dangling over the edge. I'm facing a crowd of DCs standing on the ground, one of whom is a burly man who flashes me a thumbs-up sign. I proudly declare, “I'm the coolest kid in school!” The DCs seem to approve, but then they start flooding into the hollow space inside the quarter-sphere, filling the space and causing the structure to tip over backward. I climb off as it slowly tilts over, unhurt.

Having accomplished both the old goal of flying to the top of the backstop [well, sorta] and my other goal of trying dream food, I say aloud, “Okay, chores over. Time to have fun.” I fly up and let the wind carry me away.

The dream fades, and I find myself lying down. I try to move my arm, but judging by the feel of it, I realize, No, that's my real arm! I don't want to do that! [Whether or not this was actually true, I couldn't say for sure, but it sure felt like it was at the time.] After a brief moment of feeling stuck in that position and trying to figure out how to get back to exploring the dream world, I roll over and fall out of my bed. I think, Wow, that actually works! I quickly determine that I'm back to the lucid-dreaming state, and remind myself that all that's around me only exists inside my mind, as I read in EWOLD.

I'm looking at a different, grassy lawn. There is a little red demon thingy growing out of the grass. He has red roots that run all over the surface of the lawn. I have a magic sword, so I hold it out, wondering if it'll help and what I can do with it. The demon takes the sword and kills himself by using the sword to sever all his roots. When he and his roots have all disappeared, a small chair rises up out of the plus-sign-shaped hole in the ground where he had just been. It is a reward for my defeat of the demon. I take the chair and carry it with me as I fly back over to the party, which is still in progress.

When I get there, I use the chair to help me grab onto some structure to arrest my motion and land. Flying is easy, but stopping is hard, I think. I can't find the glass of beer I left there earlier, but I decide it's no big loss. I take my chair and sit down at the corner of one of the portable tables that are set up in the party area. I'm facing the outside wall of the elementary-school complex. Up against the wall I'm facing is another table with a clear pitcher of beer on it.

There is another handful of coins on the table near me – again, standard U.S. coins, all of them shiny and brand-new, plus the odd house-shaped coins I saw before. I decide to swallow some of them, because I know I can't do any harm to my real body by doing so. I see another girl at my table doing the same. It feels good. I can feel them going down my throat, but the sensation seems to be weaker than would be realistic, which isn't surprising, since I haven't actually done this in reality [and certainly never will]. After swallowing a few coins, I decide I want more beer to go with them, so I get up and get myself another cup. The beer is cold and rich and flavorful; it tastes exactly how I like my beer to taste.

I've run out of coins, but I still want more. I cup my hand, place it on the table palm side down, look away, and think about what I want to have happen. I feel little pops under my hand, like bursts of compressed air, as more coins pop into existence. Then I feel the coins themselves against my hand as the pile grows. I remove my hand and continue swallowing coins. I'm very pleased that I've suddenly become so good at summoning objects.

My dad is sitting right next to me, at the end of the table, so his chair is perpendicular to mine. He sees me swallowing coins and absolutely freaks out. He recoils from me in disgust, asking me, “What are you doing?” I simply respond, in an “it's not a big deal” tone, “It won't hurt my dream body.”

Then I woke up for real and waited while the last of the SP faded away, concentrating on remembering all that I'd dreamed about. I was very pleased to have accomplished so much and to have been lucid for so long. [In fact, I got to check two goals off the big list in my profile today: trying dream food and summoning an object. ]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I’m in a building that is something like a conference center. There is a conference/camp event going on here for students in the $Program program. [Name has been hidden to prevent members of the program from finding this journal.] Most of the people attending the conference are teenagers and young adults. I go from the hallway through a door into one of the conference rooms, where there is a check-in and registration table set up. It’s covered with the papers that belong to that schema: lists of registered attendees, conference schedules and other materials for the conference, and calendars of upcoming events. I check in, then take a look at the calendar and see that there’s an overnight event coming up that includes attending a local high school’s football game. I want to go, but I think it conflicts with something else that I have going on.

At this conference, each $Program group that is attending has a different nickname or theme; my group is the “villains” group. The check-in table for each group is in a different room. After I've checked in, I walk back out into the hallway and encounter a girl, my age or a little younger, looking for her check-in room. Her name tag reads “Eliza.” I encourage her to join one of the “good” groups [by which I mean, any group that isn't villains-themed], because she's new to $Program. I expect that I'll be the only one from my $Program group who participates in the larger group activities offered by the conference, because everyone else in my group is an older adult and most of the other conference attendees are teenagers or young adults. Besides, LN teaches high school for a living; she probably doesn't want to spend her off-hours with teenagers, too.

I start climbing the stairs to the second floor of the building to get to the conference meeting rooms. There are two flights of stairs that cross in an X in midair, joining together at the point where they cross to form a platform. A third, smaller flight of stairs extends down from this platform to the floor I want to get to. There are others climbing the stairs along with me.

[I don’t remember the transition, but] I’m outside the building I was just in. I’m on a beautiful college campus. It has trees, grass, and winding, paved paths between the buildings. The ground is not level, but contoured, rolling up and down. In this scene, I realize that I’m dreaming. [I don’t remember why or how; I just did.] I jump/float down one of the inclines, grabbing a handful of grass at the bottom of the incline as I land on another path, which [I think] has a low wall that stands between the path and the incline I've just jumped/floated over. I'm touching it to keep the dream stable by engaging my senses. It feels like real grass and is very soft and supple. I walk down the path I've just landed on, heading toward a small tree, covering ground much more quickly than I would in reality. [Here, I experienced that phenomenon I've read about here on DV where, in order to get somewhere in a dream, you focus on your intention to arrive there and suddenly, there you are, having skipped over the boring part where you traveled there.] When I reach the small tree, I touch it, wrapping my hand around its narrow trunk. It feels rough, like a real tree. I'm just happily enjoying being in a dream.

A little further along the path, just beyond the small tree, is a large, square, paved area, in front of the entrance to a building. A woman is standing in this area, alone. She’s older and has wispy brown hair, which she wears up in a loose bun. She has lines and wrinkles on her face, and has a patch of shiny, lavender-pink eyeshadow all over the center of her face. She’s wearing a long dress the same color as the eyeshadow.

I suddenly recall the current Task of the Month [which I had just looked up, just before going to bed]. I approach the woman. In the distance, behind me, I can hear all the teenagers and young adults who are attending the conference/camp singing together:

“Day-oh, day-oh. Da-a-ay-oh, da-a-ay-oh. Daylight come and me wanna go home.”

I sing along with the young people as they begin the next repetition of this segment of music: “Day-oh.” As I sing, I look right at the older woman, expecting her to sing along, too.

“Day-oh,” she mumbles softly, looking down shyly at the ground to my left.

“Da-a-ay-oh,” I sing to her, still looking at her and expecting her to sing along.

“Da-a-ay-oh,” she mumbles, still looking down. I figure that she simply lacks confidence in her singing voice and encourage her by saying enthusiastically to her, “Come on, you can do it!”

“Daylight come and me wanna go home,” she sings, now looking up and demonstrating self-confidence. She proves to have a beautiful singing voice.

Pleased, I continue singing along with the young people, who have been singing the song all this time. The older woman continues singing along as well. “Come, Mr. Tally-Man, tally me banana. Daylight come and me wanna go home.”

Somewhere in the midst of those two lines, the dream faded and I woke up, probably because I was so excited about having completed the Task of the Month for the first time since February.

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Side notes:
I just looked up what the current Tasks of the Month were last night. I think this knowledge helped motivate me to want to have a lucid dream. I'm thrilled that I completed the basic task the same night! The euphoria from my achievement lasted for several hours into my waking day.
I'm also excited to have used a new dream control ability for the first time. I'd read that you could control what happened in your dreams, including controlling the actions of DCs, by expecting particular things to happen, but this was the first time I'd ever actually done it.

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of July 24-25, 2011.]

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm driving my mom's red Honda Fit out past Katella Avenue to spend a weekend away. The rest of my family is already at my destination for the weekend.

I arrive at basic training camp for the Navy National Guard, into which I have just been drafted. I enter the barracks along with several of my real-life friends from college. The bunks are stacked three high and are concealed behind cupboard doors. In between the bunks are shelves with metal label-holders intended to hold labels showing the names of the occupants of the bunks. These shelves are meant to be used to hold boxes of the occupants' stuff. I start settling in. Evidently, I've packed wisely for this experience, because the boxes I brought don't take up all the space that was allotted to me. I change into my new uniform. One of the items I brought was a small pair of scissors with blue handles [that I have in real life]. I realize that it was stupid of me to bring them, because they would get me in trouble if I were caught with them. So, I just fold up the labels with my name on them and slide them into the label-holders.

Later, we're all sitting in a restaurant-style booth, choosing nicknames from a printed list. Mine is “Spider.” The nicknames for the officers are printed in a substitution cypher. I have absolutely no clue what tasks and training activities I'll be doing here, or what position I'll be assigned to. I hope I'll be able to handle it, especially swimming. [I think this may be the first time one of my dreams has accurately reflected the fact that I don't know how to swim very well in real life. I've had tons of dreams where I could swim expertly.]

Basic training is beginning. Everyone is outside, standing at attention in a block, wearing their uniforms. I ask one of my friends to let me out of the booth so that I can run to the bathroom before going outside and joining the block. There is a girl with short, blond hair directly ahead of me in the line for the bathrooms. I think to myself that I ought to be thinking of it as 'the head' rather than 'the bathroom,' because I'm in the Navy, not the Marines. [Which is stupid, because as far as I know, the Marines say that, too.] Then I woke up, because I actually did need to go to the bathroom. [This dream was much longer, more elaborate, more vivid, and more detailed than these notes reflect. What I get for putting off typing this up for so long.]

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of July 23-24, 2011.]

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in [what I believe to be] the real-life hotel lobby where the hotel scenes from Inception were filmed. I'm appreciating how special it is to be here, in one of the filming locations for my favorite movie. [But totally failing to make the associative leap to the fact that I'm actually in a dream, myself. ] I even see Leonardo DiCaprio walk past. [*LOL* I fail at recognizing dreams...] I know that this building is located on the campus of a local private university. I look through a window and see a sign above the entrance to another building. The sign reads “(Some last name) Library.”

I proceed through the interior of the building I'm in to the entrance of somebody’s dorm. The dorm is themed to resemble ancient Barcelona, Spain. In the dining area, I meet up with a group of my friends from real life, including SS and SH [who I know from completely different social groups and who don't even know each other in real life, by the way]. They're all sitting at a table, eating, and I sit down and join them. It's a Mimi's Cafe table. Several of my friends order my favorite chicken and pasta dish, the one I always order when I'm at Mimi's. Sean has to leave the meal early because he has other plans, so I get to eat his chicken. (I've just sat down, so I haven't had a chance to order my own meal.) Our conversation over dinner is being filmed for TV, and we all know it. We all get separate checks at the end of the meal.

I wake up in my current room to light coming from under my sleep mask. I'm still sleepy, and I don't want to get up, but I get up in order to check the time. I check my watch, my cell phone, and my desk phone [from work], which is on my dresser. They all show the same time: it's 10:39 AM, which means I'm late for my pre-church-service choir practice. I think, It can't be that late already!, but I reason that if all three timepieces agree, then it must actually be that late. When I checked my cell phone, I saw the numbers in the hour field counting up from 2 to 10 at a rate of about 1 number per half-second, but now I rationalize this observation: It must only update the display to the current time when you pick it up and look at it.

I go out of my house, still wearing the clothes I was wearing on Friday. [I had this dream on a Saturday night/early Sunday morning, and I was wearing the outfit I actually had been wearing on the Friday immediately before in real life.] I'm going outside to take out the trash. “Outside” turns out to be a narrow parking lot that surrounds a shopping center. A mother calls to her daughter, Johana. I think, That's a pretty name.

I find a trash can at the outer edge , and empty my trash can into it. I catch a cold container of french fries as they fall from my trash can, and eat them, because I'm still running late for choir practice and don't have time for breakfast. I walk back home through one of the stores in the shopping center, past racks of CD and DVD cases.

...And then I woke up for real, and was pretty embarrassed. I realized that, indeed, it couldn't be that late in the morning already. If it had actually been time to get up, I would have heard the alarm on my cell phone go off, and I hadn't heard it yet.

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Side notes:

This was my first false awakening in my new room, at my new house. It was totally convincing, especially given the fact that I really am usually a few minutes late for a lot of things. The way I totally failed to catch it, even though my phone from my desk at work was in my room at home and the numbers on my cell phone were changing, just goes to show how strong our tendency to rationalize things is. However, on a more positive note, I had this highly convincing false awakening in my new room only two weeks after I had moved into it. I think this bodes well for my mental and emotional state. It may well mean that my unconscious mind has accepted the new room as the place where I'm supposed to be when I wake up, which is great.

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of June 18-19, and it's one of the most fascinating lucids I've had yet.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm shopping at the old Toys 'R Us that we used to go to when I was a kid. [In real life, it's been closed for several years.] I've driven up there all the way from my current town, by myself, and I told my parents where I was going before I left. I've come there just to get the purple hippo stuffed animal that I saw advertised. I find it, go to a checkout stand, swipe my credit card through the card reader sitting on the floor near one of the checkouts, and then walk to the other side of the line of checkouts and get in line to check out. There's quite a long line, but it's moving fairly quickly because there are a lot of checkouts open, and all the checkers are calling people over from that one line. The line is in a rectangular, dark, warehouse-like space in the front of the store, separated from the store proper by high, dark gray metal shelf racks that reach all the way to the high ceiling. When it comes my turn to check out, the checker waves me through when I show her my toy and the receipt that was printed out of the credit card reader.

I exit the store and get into my car [our current, brown Honda]. I examine my purple hippo. It's smaller and narrower than the teddy bear I already have [in real life], and therefore not as good a shape for use as an arm pillow, but still, it's kinda cute. I can feel that it has a plastic cup built into its nose, so that its nose holds its conical shape. I set it down on the floor of the passenger seat, start the car up, and drive out of the parking lot via the ramp behind and to the right of the store.

This ramp forces me to turn right, putting me onto a one-way street. “This is why my parents never went out this way,” I say to myself. I end up driving through a neat, clean, inviting-looking urban downtown area, with lots of modern, glass buildings, concrete parking structures, and trees on the sidewalks.

[The dream shifts.] I'm walking the darkened halls of a big, old apartment building whose halls form a continuous square. Stuff involving Muppets, a bird named Gloria, and an alarm clock happens. [This was another elaborate and plotty dream, but I don't really remember the details anymore. I don't particularly care, though, because the next part is the really awesome part.]

[The dream shifts again.] I'm out on the town, in the same cool, modern downtown I was driving around earlier, only now I'm on foot. While walking across a plaza, I see several of my friends from [$SocialClub] [an organization I belong to in real life]. I recognize that I've been in this downtown before, and am very happy to be here. Somewhere around this point, I become lucid. [As usual, I don't remember precisely at what moment I did so. It may have been that recognition that I'd been there before that triggered lucidity, but I'm not sure.] I also pass by my friends from [$Class], who are on their way to class. I think of going with them, but choose to go off by myself and explore instead.

I end up on a particular street corner where there is a restaurant with a live band playing inside. I enter the restaurant to listen to the band. The restaurant is named “Café Debussy.” [ :gape: Whoa. That is so awesome. That's the name of the cafe where Cobb gives Ariadne her first lesson in shared dreaming in Inception. That is just so cool that I have my own version of it. I may have realized the significance of this name at that moment, or it may not have been until after I woke up, I'm not sure.]

While I'm in the restaurant, I meet and get into a conversation with a female dream character, who asks me who I am. I say the same kinds of things I would say when meeting someone for the first time in real life: that I live and work nearby, what I do, that I'm a member of [$SocialClub]. When I finish, she looks at me with an expression that shows that she's disappointed in me, and that she can see right through the baloney I'm giving her. “Who are you, really?” she asks.

I sigh and start telling her the truth.

“I'm from another world, that's not like yours,” I say. “I only come to visit here when I'm dreaming.” I stop myself short of saying that I'm dreaming all this that's around us.

As I speak, we start rising up off the ground. I'm either flying us up or causing a tower to grow up from the ground under us. [I'm not exactly sure, but I think it was more likely the latter, because] I'm making the buildings all around us grow taller or shorter, or change shape, just by thinking about it. I'm doing this because I want to show my companion the city from up high.

“Because I'm dreaming, I can control the situation, like this,” I say. “It's fun.” [I say a bit more that I don't remember now, and then] I end by sighing again, then saying, “So, here I am, your dreamer.” I extend my hand to shake hands with her.

She takes it. [Surprisingly,] The female DC reacts to what I've just told her with happiness and excitement. She leads me purposefully off in a direction across the city, apparently intending to tell others about what she has learned and introduce them to me. As we go, I realize that in all the time we've been talking, I haven't told her my name, so I say to her, “My name is [$RealFirstName].” I deliberately use the nickname by which I'm known to family and friends in real life, rather than my official, legal name, because I don't want the Fae to know my true name, because that will give them power over me. [Seriously, that's what I thought during the dream. I would never set any store by such an idea in real life.] She doesn't reply, though.

[She didn't introduce me to anyone, though. The next thing I remember,] The female DC and I have walked out to a metal, industrial-looking bridge, from which we're watching the sunset over the cityscape. I ask her, “What's your name?”

“Darla,” she says.

I shake my head and correct her: “No, that's the name of my friend who looks like you. What's your name?” Although she looks like one of my real-life friends, I'm interested in her identity as a separate individual.

From the way she hesitates for at least 15 seconds, going “Hmmmm...” several times while looking all around her at our surroundings, it's clear that she's never thought of herself as having an individual name separate from that of her real-life counterpart before. Finally, she looks over at the setting sun and says, “Umbra.” [She pronounces it “OOM-brah;” it means “shadow” in Latin. Hmmm. Very interesting.]

[Fragment.] Something involving roller coasters that look like snakes.

[False awakening.] I'm comparing notes with my mom about whether or not we just had the same dream about snakes.

[Different dream.] I'm on a ride that has foam seats with over-the-shoulder restraints. The seats are suspended high up in the air from an overhead track in a large building. I've somehow managed to board the ride so that I'm perched in between two seats, rather than fully seated in one of them. While the train of seats I'm on is moving to its destination, I manage to maneuver myself into one of the seats and get the restraints into place.

My train of seats arrives at its destination: directly above a gigantic aquarium tank. That's when I realize what the purpose of this ride is: to allow visitors a chance to be submerged in the tank for several minutes on end. I realize that I was supposed to bring a snorkel or scuba gear with me on this ride, but I didn't, and there's no way to get out of the restraints before I get dunked in the tank. I'm only mildly concerned about this, though.

I hold my breath and the seats descend, submerging me and everyone else several feet underwater. As soon as the seats have stopped descending, I start swimming upward, taking my seat and my restraints with me [I think; I'm not sure]. The moment I break the surface of the water, I found myself awake. I immediately kicked myself for not realizing that I was dreaming and subsequently recalling that I can breathe underwater in dreams.

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of June 10-11, 2011.]

I'm in the car with my mom. We're driving along dirt roads, checking our location against photos we have of landmarks along the way. We're on our way to JJ's party. [This dream was in anticipation of what I was going to do that evening – exactly the same thing, only without the photos or my mom.]

I'm in the parking lot outside the old Pomona First Federal branch in Ontario. It's a sunny day. I'm picking up many coins (quarters, dimes, and pennies) from the parking lot. I think, It's a bank, so it makes sense that there would be coins in the parking lot. Some real-life friends of mine [I think they may have been T and G, but I'm not sure] walk past me. There are many other people there.

I enter the building. The entryway is a high-ceilinged, airy room with tall windows and a grand, sweeping staircase. There is a freestanding sign at the bottom of the stairs saying that the Joy Laow [I think] room, the meeting room at the top of the stairs, is available for rent for meetings.

I go further into the building. The main part of the building is a large, long, rectangular, carpeted room with a high ceiling. It is a Marie Callender's restaurant. There is another part of the restaurant floor with a lower ceiling. This area has a small stage, where a loud rock band is playing. My family is sitting around a table near the stage, next to the sound-mixing board, which is sitting on another table. I join them at their table. P. orders another Pepsi from our server, and I order a glass of water. Shortly after I arrive at the table, the band takes a break. I'm relieved that I won't have their music blasting my ears out throughout dinner.

I wander off from the table and through the large, carpeted room. There's a lot of empty space in it for a restaurant seating area; there are only a few rectangular tables, arranged in a line. I enter a train-station-like lobby area off to one side of the room, where I see an ad [?] for the Scott Pilgrim video game, in mirror image. I know RD wants to play it. I see a group of people there discussing video games, and I join in.

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of June 9-10, 2011.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm walking around the downtown area of a city. Every block is covered with tall buildings. Most of one block is covered with a three-or-four-story building with signs that identify it as “Jews' World.” It's their community center and place of worship; it is built around a narrow, rectangular courtyard/entryway with doors to various rooms leading off of it. I look at it and think, Wow, that's pretty cool, having a community center like that.

Directly across the street from this center is a similar, five-or-six-story community center and place of worship for the LDS church. A woman walks out of that complex and walks down the street. We pass each other in the street between the two centers, walking in opposite directions. The woman recognizes me and calls me “Pie [$RealFirstName].” I know that “Pie” is a nickname for [$OfficeBoss] [yes, he is LDS in real life], and that the use of that nickname as a title before my name indicates that I am a member of the in-group associated with [$OfficeBoss]. I'm rather disturbed that the woman both knew who I was and associated me with [$OfficeBoss] in such an intimate and familiar way.

Having realized I was dreaming at some point during this sequence of events [again, I'm not sure when], I decide to start flying. I take off and get pulled in a random direction, backward and sort of sideways. I try to control my flying and start flying forward by concentrating on details of the scenery I can see in front of me and trying to examine them more closely, as I did in my previous lucid [on the night of June 5], but it doesn't work. I attempt this method of control several times. When it stubbornly refuses to work, I just give up. I think, Fine. I'm just going to let myself get pulled along to wherever.

Then that dream faded to black, yet I remained consciously self-aware. I'm not sure if I was actually awake [more likely] or still asleep and self-aware during the gap between two dreams. At any rate, I remember that I knew that I was still asleep [however that works; I really don't even know what was going on here] and that if I just waited patiently, another dream would begin. I did, and it did.

I'm in the central courtyard of a big, old church made of yellow-tan stone. On one side of the courtyard, there is a large, windowlike opening in the wall with no glass, and on the other side of it are rolling vineyards. I briefly think of going flying over the vineyards, but I decide not to. Instead, I explore the building I'm in, and find a large kitchen knife. I pick it up and look at it, reflecting upon it: What's this doing here? We don't do sacrifices of living creatures in my church. We don't have to.

I go into the building, find the kitchen, and put the knife away. To get to the kitchen, I have to go through the parish hall. There are other people in there. I continue to explore more of the building, concentrating on just what a wonderful gift it is to be here in a dream and be lucid. [That's the last I remember.]

[Later, I had another nonlucid.] A whole bunch of the important businesspeople I know in real life, including [$OfficeBoss], have come over to House #2 for an early-morning presentation that I'm supposed to be giving, and they've all crowded into my bedroom. I wake up late for the presentation. In order to get into my closet, I have to ask [$OfficeBoss] and another man to move aside. I'm embarrassed to be seen by all these people while wearing only my black nightgown. [It was the same one I was wearing in real life that night.] I take too long to get ready, and all my guests wander off.

I go out into the rest of the house and see that my mom has put up all the Christmas decorations, even though it's June. I run the vacuum cleaner in the study; P. is there. I get a second shot at doing the presentation, and this time, it works out. I'm grateful that the first attempt, where I got up late for it and everyone left, was just a dream. [LOL!]

[Fragment] I'm in a house or hotel somewhere with MLT [a real-life friend]. I demonstrate to her the fold-out bed that's built into the wall, and she declares it to be too opulent. The building is cylindrical.

[I have been writing DJ entries throughout June, both by hand in a paper journal and in a document on my hard drive. I feel like working on bringing my online DJ up to date tonight, so I'm going to.]

Night of June 5-6

I'm in a bedroom that resembles the one I had at House #2, but isn't exactly like it. I'm getting dressed, and my mom is in the room. I explain to her that I don't own any khakis or chinos, only jeans and black pants. [This is almost, but not quite, true in real life. I do have some khaki capris, but only one pair.] In a drawer, I find a couple of pairs of khaki capris, one pair of which is a light brown with a pretty, darker brown pattern of flowers and leaves on it. I think they might be too small for me, but I put them on anyway.

Night of June 6-7

A woman is being held in a dark, underground room. She's being tortured by having her hands bound together above her head in such a way that her elbows are being forced to bend the wrong way. She laughs and is good-humored about it, but this is just a facade to hide the horrible pain she's in. Other torture goes on, with torture implements, and other scary things happen [but I no longer remember the details]. All of the events of the dream unfold visually, but are accompanied by ongoing, simultaneous background narration provided by [a novelist whose audiobooks I often listen to]. The events are are all part of one of his novels, which I'm listening to. [I've been listening to his stories all these years, and they're just now giving me nightmares? Actually, I think I know why this might be: Now, I actually have a visual image in my memory to go with the concept of 'torture implements.' I got this visual image from seeing “Limitless;” that scene freaked me out, and I had to look away. That fact, plus the fact that I was really anxious about real-life stuff as I was going to sleep on this night, most likely caused the nightmare.]

Night of June 8-9

I instinctively realize that I'm pregnant, with twins, while I'm out and about, doing something. Later, I go to a hospital because I think it's my time to give birth, but it doesn't happen.

[Different scene.] I'm with a bunch of my friends, cleaning up the mess left behind after some big event in a large, indoor area. Cleaning up includes gathering together, sorting, and storing all the leftover pens and markers that were being given away at the event.

[Yet another scene.] I'm going to the hospital for a checkup.

At some point [I don't remember in which scene it was], I put my hand on my lower abdomen to feel the small bump that's starting there, and think about how I should stop drinking soda and eating unhealthy foods. [This dream felt very real while I was in it, so much so that when I woke up and recalled it, I went, “Wow, all that was just a dream? Whew, that's a relief!”]

[This is both a catch-up post and a repost. Apparently, there was a server crash recently that ate this entry after I posted it the first time.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

Some events unfold that I'm not a part of. [I don't remember what they were now, but there was definitely a plotline involved, and I was definitely just an outside observer.] When these events are over, I find myself sitting in a movie theater, watching the end credits of a movie. I realize that all of the preceding events were a movie.

I walk out into the theater lobby, which is long, narrow, and wedge-shaped, growing slightly wider as I approach the entrance. I walk out through the theater's glass front doors onto the sidewalk. There, I meet up with my parents again.

My parents and I are in a strange, [possibly?] open-air, car-like vehicle with a hired driver. I'm showing them around the quaint, seaside downtown of Lake Worth [which, as usual for me in my dreams, looks absolutely nothing like it does in real life; it looks more urban]. We marvel at the awesomely cheesy anti-drug mural painted on the wall of one building.

[Different dream.] I'm flying above M. Road, traveling north, but facing south. I'm being pulled backward by that unknown, unseen force that so often does that in my flying dreams. I realize that I'm dreaming and take control of the situation by concentrating on the details of the scenery around me, as if I were going to stop to admire them. It works as intended: my backward motion slows, then stops. Then, I start flying forward under my own willpower, heading toward home (i.e., south). As I fly, I admire the rich detail of the scene around me and how much like reality it is.

[Dreamskip.] I'm now in a quiet, peaceful, suburban residential neighborhood, on a concrete walking path separated from the backyards on either side of it by fences. I hop along the sidewalk like an astronaut on the moon, making slow jumps that carry me several feet into the air, then slowly floating back down in an arc. I'm enjoying the fun of being in a low-gravity environment, which my dream environments often are.

I get up onto one of the fences and perform several floating glide-leaps from one parallel fence to another, combining jumping with flying. Then, I decide to try to change the dream environment to a different one by closing my eyes and spinning. I think, If I'm going to do that, I'd better start from a standing start. I jump off the fence I'm on and float gently down to the sidewalk. Once I'm standing on it, I think, Neopia, and close my eyes, but forget to spin around.

When I open my eyes, I'm in a much different suburban neighborhood. I'm standing in the middle of a straight street, looking down its length. It's lined on both sides with brightly colored, two-story houses with lush, green trees in their front yards. It doesn't look much like any of the official artwork of Neopia, but nonetheless, I become aware that this is Neopia, and that I've succeeded in my goal of changing the scene and getting there. I'm so excited about this that the scene winks out of existence after about two seconds, and I wake up. [Sigh.]

[Later, different dream.] I'm attending some special event at a theme park on behalf of [the company I've been teaching with]. I'm with SH and TS [two of my fellow teachers]. We're all wearing our white lab coats, and we're walking across a plaza that has a circular concrete beam running overhead, around the perimeter. I see some friends of mine wearing full rubberhead Sesame Street character costumes, also walking across the plaza in the opposite direction. I say to the young man in the Elmo costume who is carrying the head and looking sweaty and tired, “Hi, Mark. Go get some water.”

There are many other people there, changing into or out of costumes. Many of them are hanging their hangers on the concrete ring. TS suggests that we hang our lab coats from it, but I prefer to go back to the trailer, which [only in the dream, not in real life] has sides with panels that open to reveal closets [like my band trailer did in high school]. I want to put my lab coat there because I can make sure that trailer is locked.

--------------------------------------------
Side notes:

That first scene, where I realized that everything that had preceded it had just been a movie I was watching, was a particularly cool example of day residue. I had just been to the movies the evening before I had this dream. The recent article about how dreaming and watching movies produce very similar patterns of brain activity has informed the way I watch movies now; I always mentally compare the two experiences. In the movie I watched on this evening (Limitless), the ending felt exactly like being suddenly, rudely awakened by an alarm clock when you're still right in the middle of a dream. It's not surprising that that experience gave rise to an actual dream in which a movie ended and I suddenly realized, “oh, yeah, that didn't actually happen, I'm just watching a movie.” Both within the dream and in retrospect, that realization felt very similar to the realization, “oh, yeah, that was just a dream” that I've often had just after both false and real awakenings. Therefore, that moment of realization within that dream felt very much like a false awakening.

It belatedly occurs to me that Neopia is an entire planet. If I chose only one specific locale on that planet and made that the focus of my intentions, I'd probably have better success getting there.

I'm in House #1. [So much for recognizing dream signs... :/] I look through a window that looks out onto the patio from the side opposite the dining room [um... in real life, that would be the bathroom window, from which such a view would be impossible...] and see that there's a wasps' nest hanging from the eaves outside the dining-room window.

I'm in the garage, and I say goodbye to P. There are two cool, old, red, elongated, flat-topped cars there (one might have been a convertible). My parents are taking me out somewhere, but I haven't been able to find anything I want to wear, so I'm only wearing my royal blue bathrobe. [I used to have this robe in real life, but I don't anymore.]

[Dreamskip.] I'm driving the brown car into the parking lot where our hair salon and the OSH hardware store are [back in our old town]. I'm naked, so I try to crouch down so that the other drivers around don't see me. When I try to park, the driver of the car that's parked crookedly in the space next to mine decides to back out and straighten his parking job, coming close to hitting my car, but narrowly missing it. I cower in my seat, frightened. When the driver gets out of his car and comes over to talk to me, I look down to check the arrangement of my blue bathrobe, which I'm suddenly wearing again, and make sure it's covering me decently. The other driver tells me that he didn't hit me.

Then, four young boys (10 or so) come to my car and start pestering me relentlessly, climbing in it and all over it and talking to me loudly and annoyingly. I yell as loudly as I can at them to GO AWAY. I'm surprised that I'm capable of yelling with that volume. After I yell at them like that about three times, they finally go away. I'm trying to keep my blue robe on and maintain my modesty, with only partial success. I continue to do so once I've moved from my car to a patio table on the sidewalk outside the hardware store. [I don't recall getting from one location to the other.] People pass me by on the sidewalk as I try to keep the robe up. Next to me on the sidewalk, B.W. and his chorale friends are getting dressed for a performance.

-----------------------------
Side notes:

This was an interesting twist on a classic anxiety dream. It featured the common dream scenario of being naked in a public place and ashamed of it, but it combined that scenario with two stressful occurrences from my waking life: a minor car accident in a parking lot, and the very spirited all-boys class I've been teaching once a week. In the dream, I yelled more loudly than I ever have in real life. Do I unconsciously wish I could yell that loud in reality? It's a plausible hypothesis.

Non-lucid, Semi-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in an old, dusty, dark shop with gray-brown, wooden walls, a high ceiling, and lots of rows of wooden shelves. Mr. H. [my first music teacher] is there. When I see him, I tell him that I'm glad to see that he's still around and still active.

There is a sign hanging from the ceiling above a passageway that leads to another room. The sign points the way to different departments of the store. I walk through the passageway into another, larger area of the shop. This area is the grocery store. A large family with a bunch of kids is grocery shopping there. I hear one of the members of the family mention that they only ever buy produce from Ralphs [a grocery store chain in my area], so they won't be buying any here.

[The dream shifts, and] I'm playing Petpet Park. I'm controlling my usual player character from a third-person perspective, just like in real life, yet my computer isn't part of the dream; the world of the game is the world of the dream, and I'm controlling my character using only my will. [That was pretty awesome, especially for a non-lucid.] I'm walking around a spooky, Halloweeny-themed area [that looks nothing like any of the ones that exist on the real site]. I'm inside an old building. While there, I set off a quest by causing a penguin non-player character to start walking forward from his spot next to the wall. He's off on his way to make a potion. This event is the first in a quest series that is accessible to non-paying members as well as paying members. I spend some Nickcash to get into a small room off to the side.

I decide not to go through a narrow doorway into an area where I could start some other quests. Then, the spooky atmosphere of the area starts to scare me, and I decide I want to get out of there. After getting outdoors, I decide to try to fly to Celestial City. [Celestial City is another in-game area with a more beautiful, peaceful mood. In the real game, player characters cannot fly. I think the fact that it occurred to me to try to reach another in-game area by flying indicates that I was gradually beginning to realize that I was dreaming, and not playing the actual game.] I fly away from the ground [or rather, my player character does; the dream is still in third-person point of view], deliberately playing the Celestial City background music in my mind. I close my eyes [somewhere around here, the dream shifted into first-person point of view] and open them again, trying to make it daytime, instead of nighttime. It works for a few seconds, but the sky quickly darkens to night again.

[The dream shifts again, and] I'm watching a scene from a movie involving a flyover view of an airport. I can easily identify the shooting location as Ontario International Airport because of the view of the mountains rising behind the airport buildings. In terms of design, the buildings resemble the old buildings that were all there was to the airport back when I was a little kid. They're bigger than the old ones, though, and in the same position as the new buildings, although they're not as long as the new buildings.

[Dreamskip.] I find myself flying over L.A. and the ocean. I am now definitely lucid. I can feel my pulse pounding in my head. I strongly suspect that the sensation is coming from my real body, but I choose to ignore that thought and focus my attention firmly on the dream. I use the moving-my-fists-together-or-apart technique I've described in previous entries to control my flight.

I'm driving along Pacific Coast Highway. I decide I want to drive to Newport Beach. I know I've succeeded when I pass a motel that has a sign on it that says “Newport Beach.” I also pass another, two-story motel that has water slides built right into the front of it.

When I get to the street that leads down to the beach, I turn left, then peel off to the right to follow the road that leads down from the mesa and over to the beach. [This road exists in real life. The motels do not, as far as I know.] Since I've met my goal of driving to the beach, I think, I am awesome!

Night of May 23-24, 2011

I'm at Disneyland. I'm visiting with some guy who [apparently] designs and develops roller coasters. I watch a video of a roller coaster in action. The video freeze-frames at various moments.

At Disneyland, there is a new building under construction, and it is visible from the hub. [I think] It's in that space that they can never quite decide what to do with, the space that used to be home to the House of the Future and is currently a character meet-and-greet. The new building fits in well in its location; it's built in the same architectural style as the rest of Main Street. [It made sense in the dream.]

It is dusk, and the sky is clear and incredibly beautiful. I walk slowly down a completely deserted Main Street, carrying in both hands a lit candle in a clear glass cup. I take the time to deeply appreciate the deep beauty, calm, and peace of the scene around me. As I walk, the following thought crosses my mind: No matter who you are or where you go, you'll always find your way back home.

The goal toward which I'm walking toward is a single lightbulb, mounted in a light fixture in the teal-colored, wooden wall that forms the main entrance to the park. This light fixture is right next to one of the doors by which people enter and exit the park. I set my candle down on the steps leading up to the door, then go out through it.

On the other side of the door, there is a wide, concrete-paved entrance plaza. Out here, it's still earlier evening; the sky is on fire with the golden light of a sun that hasn't set yet, but will soon. There's still nothing but a vast expanse of parking lot beyond the perimeter of the entrance plaza. I see F.J. [a real-life friend] crossing the plaza, approaching me. He's been looking for me, because he's there to pick me up and take me home.

[The dream shifts.] I'm in a fancy restaurant, [possibly] in Downtown Disney or at the Disneyland Hotel. I'm with someone who I know is actually Eames, even though he looks exactly like Leonardo DiCaprio. [:-) Plot bunny?] He picks up a drinking glass from a nearby table and shows it to me, showing me that this restaurant is where one can find the kind of glass that my candle was in. He then tosses that glass onto the floor, breaking it. I'm horribly embarrassed by him.

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Side notes:
This was a particularly clear, vivid, and beautiful non-lucid. Not only was the scenery beautiful, but so was the sense of happiness, peace, and well-being I experienced while in the dream. I still felt wonderful when I woke up from it.

Night of May 24-25, 2011 [I think; or it might have been any day between the 25th and the 28th. That's what I get for not bothering to write them down immediately.]

I'm in my current bedroom with J. [a real-life student of mine]. I'm hugging her and pouring out love and affection, as if she were my own child, even though I know she's my student. She returns the love and affection, hugging me back.

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

Night of May 20-21

I'm in the upstairs bedroom of a house. Built into one wall is the entrance to a long slide, which I go down. The first part of the slide is plastic, tubular, and constantly curves back and forth in random directions. After a bit, the plastic tube slide connects smoothly to another section of slide, this one made of polished, light-colored wood. The wooden portion of the slide turns through 90-degree corners in between straight runs, and it goes through a series of spacious rooms that are made of the same light wood.

Later, I'm back in the upstairs bedroom again, with some other people who want to go down the slide. I describe to them what the slide is like.

Night of May 21-22

I'm in the main hallway that runs through the middle of my church. There are tables lined up in the hallway, and I'm sitting behind one of them. Other people from my church are sitting behind the other tables. We're all talking to each other about the church activities we do. [This was all day residue. This dream was essentially a replay of what I had just done that day in real life at our church's spring talent festival. I count this dream as further evidence in favor of the hypothesis that dreams are produced when your brain is recording the day's experiences in long-term memory.]

[I had a lucid dream in the next cycle, but I've forgotten a lot of the details. The following paragraphs contain what I do remember of that dream.]

I realize I'm dreaming and think, Oh, cool. I'm dreaming. That means I can do anything I want to. I find myself in a rectangular room in which all the walls are full-length mirrors. I look at my reflection and notice that I have my long hair and bangs again [which was the hairstyle I had for most of my life until last October], and that my bangs are chopped off all unevenly, with little sections that end in different lengths. I either exercise, or just think about, two or more of the dream abilities I've already learned [I'm not really sure, because I don't remember this part very well], and then I decide to try an ability I've never tried before: changing my appearance.

I close my eyes and visualize what I want my reflection in the mirror to look like when I open them: I want to see myself as an old woman, with my hair gray, but still long. I open my eyes, only to find that it didn't work. My reflection still looks the same as it did before. The thought of trying to shapeshift into some kind of animal crosses my mind, but I decide not to because no animal that I particularly want to turn into comes to mind.

[Different dream, later in the night.] I'm visiting my boss's house, which is huge and very nice. My boss gives me a very kind, generous compliment about my after-school teaching. He says something along the lines of, “You're a great teacher. You treat them like people.” [“Them” meaning the students.] I'm very flattered.

I go outside my boss's house. There is a small, private jet parked outside. A group of people I know and I are about to leave on a trip somewhere in the jet. Before we leave, I decide to go and use the portable restrooms that are located on the opposite side of the grassy field I'm in. One of them is a standard portable restroom, and the other is bigger and wider; it was removed from a commercial airplane, I know. [It made sense in the dream.] I can't get into either of them, though, because my mom is blocking the entrance to them. She tells me that I can't come in because P. is in the restroom right now.

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Side notes:

In real life, I have two jobs, each with a different boss. The boss who appeared in my dream was not the one from my after-school teaching job; he was the one from my office job. It makes sense, though, in a sideways kind of way, that Office Boss would compliment me on my teaching in a dream. Two things that I know I really, deeply want are for my teaching efforts to be appreciated and for Office Boss to like me. I think my mind just combined the two desires and had Office Boss express appreciation of my teaching. (Office Boss has seen me teach in real life, but only once.) This dream, and the one I had on March 26 about being hired for that one job (which I did not get hired for in real life, by the way), lead me to this observation: Sometimes, when you really, really want something to happen in real life, your mind will grant you your desire in a dream.

Cool, my first attempt at forging. It was unsuccessful, but I'm not really surprised. I'm looking forward to continuing to work on that skill.

I begin to understand why we have a thread devoted to pictures “for daily lucid inspiration.” Lucid dreaming is beginning to feel routine and unremarkable, even when I'm in a lucid dream. It felt that way in this one. My initial excitement about the phenomenon has worn off. Now I see why one would want a source of daily lucid inspiration.