Recurring Dream #3: dream within a super mundane dream (Backlog, pt. 8)

The other recurring dream I've had since childhood is a dream within a dream.  Actually, I've had several dreams within dreams, but the only one that happens recurrently is that I'll have some dream (always something different), and then I will "wake up" and start my day.  I feed my birds, I'll check email, I'll take a shower and brush my teeth, whatever mundane tasks usually happen in the morning.  Then I'll go to the bathroom and start peeing, but the peeing never ends and the more I pee, the more I have to pee.  That's when I realize: "Damnit!  I'm not awake!  I'm still dreaming!  And I really really have to pee!"  Then I wake up and go to the bathroom.

Recurring Dream #2: Flying to a pirate ship (Backlog, pt. 7)

Another recurring dream I have had since childhood is that I can fly - I know, that's a pretty common recurring dream for lots of people - but I am specifically flying for a purpose.  There is a massive pirate ship docked next to a massive, gorgeous, lush park with thick green grass and ancient oak trees.  The park gently slopes upward from the shore to a broad hill, and on the other side of the hill is a cloud city  that is for some reason on the ground instead of in the sky, where one would expect a cloud city to be.  It's a bright, white city, so bright that I can't really make out the details, but my job is not to actually go into the city, so I never get to explore it and find out what it's like on the inside.

My purpose in this dream is to fly onto the pirate ship, invisible, and free the citizens of the cloud city that the pirates have captured.  For some reason, though, I can't just open all the doors and let them all out at once.  I have to go into each cell and carry one citizen out at a time, and take them back to the cloud city.  The part of the pirate boat where they keep their prisoners looks exactly like a modern day prison: gray concrete floors, steel cage bars, etc.  No problem, though!  When I am flying and invisible, I can move through solid objects.  So I fly through the cage bars, pick up the prisoner inside, and when I do, they become invisible, too.  So I fly back through the cage doors, out of the boat, across the park, and deposit them at the border of the cloud city, then go back to get the next prisoner.

The whole dream is just me going back and forth, rescuing the prisoners.  I always rescue exactly half of the prisoners - all the ones along the left wall - and then the pirates are waiting for me at the top of the hill when I'm coming back from delivering the last freed prisoner.  I realize that the pirates can see me because I'm losing my invisibility, and THEN I realize that I'm dreaming, and the reason I'm losing my invisibility is because I'm starting to wake up.  "No!"  I think, "I still have to save the rest of the prisoners!"  But it's no use,  The pirates are chasing me down the hill, I'm becoming increasingly visible and I'm getting heavier and heavier.  It's harder for me to fly so I'm slowing down, getting closer to the ground, and the pirates are closing in on me.  Finally I'm just inches from the ground and I can hear the pirates' boots crushing the grass right behind me.  By that point, I'm aware of sounds from my room and the real world, and right as my chin hits the ground in my dream, I wake up.

Recurring Dream #1: Tornadoes (Backlog, pt. 6)

Since I was a little girl, I've had several recurring dreams.  Sure, we all have dreams about our teeth falling out and being somewhere in public and showing up naked, but aside from the common recurring dreams that everyone has, I have some unusual ones.

The first is about tornadoes.  In the dream, the setting and specific circumstances might be different, but the common thread is that there are always multiple tornadoes - often 7, but not always - and I am rarely scared.  Most of the time I'll feel a mild anxiety at worst, and then feel matter-of-fact about it.  The other common thread is that I always end up either getting caught in one of the tornadoes, but it turns out to be really weak and even if it destroys the building I'm in, I'm able to hang onto something and stay put, OR, the tornado gets smaller as it gets closer to me, so that by the time it's in front of me, it's only about 3 feet tall.

The version that I dream most commonly is that my family and I are in our old house in Leander, which was on 4 acres of land that backed up to hundreds of acres of virgin land, and the entire back wall of the house was windows.  In real life, we loved watching storms through those windows, so in the dream, as a family we're standing in the living room watching the storm outside.  As it progresses, several tornadoes start touching down all around the house (like I said, it's usually 7 tornadoes, especially in this dream).  Suddenly we realize that one of the windows is open, but when I go to close it, a little baby tornado, about 3 feet tall, hops in through the window and starts spinning around the living room.  Dad hands me a broom and says, "Break it up with the broom, Emily."  So I start hitting the tornado with the broom, waving the broom around inside it to disrupt the airflow, and it dissipates into nothing.