how to have interesting dreams

Use your cell phone as an alarm clock, because that way you can press "snooze" an unlimited number of times and wake up just enough to think "this is a really great dream I'm having" and then go back to sleep and continue it.

The downside is that afterward you can't remember everything. I do remember that we were buying a really great old house in Italy. I was also, for some reason, babysitting some spoiled little kids. At another point, my husband and I were taking our dog for a run. He was driving his work truck, I was driving a car behind, and the dog was running between the two vehicles. It seemed like the perfect setup, and it didn't occur to me to wonder how the dog was managing to run so fast for so long. She seemed to enjoy it, but worked up a huge thirst and afterward jumped up on the kitchen counter of the Italian house to drink directly from the faucet.

Then, after it had been established that we were buying the house, we had to pack to get back to the airport, because we were going back to the U.S. for an unspecified period of time (the house was apparently a vacation home). One of my former roommates was there, a couple of random friends, and lots of objects from my past life were scattered all over the house, which made it difficult to hurriedly figure out what to put in the suitcase.