Dream a little dream

When someone first asked me if I dream in color, I thought it was a joke.

Who doesn't dream in color?

I often have vivid dreams, and I remember a good deal of them.  Perhaps some scientist has (or will) correlate this to creativity.  Perhaps not.

But in recent years, my dreams have become either entirely mundane or just plain ODD.

I did share my most recent nightmare with you all, an instance in which I was captured in a self-aware dream that led to me experiencing my first bout of sleep paralysis.

Last night, I had a similar situation.  Only this time, it was also a lucid dream.  A lucid dream is one in which you are aware that you are dreaming, and sometimes you can control the dream (or at least parts of it).  The difference is, the nightmare I experienced was definitely out of control.

This dream, however, was not as nightmarish.  I knew I wanted to get up early this morning so I could write before I had to take our daughter to school.  Usually when this happens, I wake up at various points in the night and glance at the clock, worried that I somehow set the alarm wrong or that the power went out in the night.  It inevitably leads to a very tired morning.

Last night, I woke up, but I couldn't move my body to check the time.  In fact, the need to continue sleep was so heavy on my mind that I only remained awake for a few moments before falling back to sleep.  When I did fall back asleep, I realized I was back in a dream.  I tried to get out of it again, but again I couldn't move or stay awake.  I began to search for help within my various dreams, which I started to realize I could control.  But that's not as fun as it could have been had I not been worried about the fact that I could not wake up.  I do not know how many times I glimpsed consciousness in the night.  The only movement I managed was a periodic hip wiggle.  I knew that at some point Amy would wake me up, or Addy would jump onto the bed and wake me up, or my alarm would go off and wake me up.

Amy did wake me up, but not for long.  I reached out to her in my dream state again, a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, asking her dream-self to somehow help me wake up.  It didn't work.  Addy jumped into bed with me, and woke up me and managed to break me from the paralysis, but I only managed roll over.  I was actually trying to roll OUT of bed.  My logic was that if I could plop on the floor, the impact would jolt my body into action.  But before I got that far, I fell asleep again.  It was my phone's alarm that woke me up completely.  Let me tell you, it is LOUD and it is ANNOYING.  More annoying, apparently than a 3-year old putting her beclawed, cold feet on your back.

When I was finally awake, I didn't want to go back to sleep for fear that I wouldn't be able to wake up again.  Hopefully, tonight will prove a little more restful.  But if not, perhaps I'll try to have more fun as a lucid dreamer.  Flying velociraptor, here I come!