Dream within a dream

Have you ever dreamed that you were dreaming...and then "woke up" and continued to dream? I had a pretty crazy one last night that was incredibly vivid.

My crew was on a fire somewhere in a dense forest. For some reason I was the highest ranking one among us, and our overhead were elsewhere. I had our lead sawyer lead us out to the line and I took up the back so I could make sure everyone made it ok. Partially into our hike, we heard a loud road from the right of us. We turned and looked and the fire was blazing out of control and heading straight for us. There was no where to go, we were trapped and could not out run it. I was terrified, we were all going to die. A voice in my head said "Wake up Carrie, wake up! You're at your home in Montague". I couldn't wake up no matter how hard I tried. Suddenly the fire had passed and we were all ok.

I woke up in my own bed in Montague and went to see if I needed to put another log on the fire in the woodstove. When I got to the woodstove, the logs sitting beside it were black and reduced to mere charcoal briquets. I looked around to find my walls burned through and still glowing hot from the smoldering fire. The fire had burned through the living room wall and into the ceiling in the guest room. I grabbed my cell phone and ran outside to call 911. I felt so heartbroken by the extent of the damage to my house.

When I got outside it was a warm summer day. There was water spraying everywhere. The fire had burned into the ground and burned through the sprinkler system (that isn't even hooked up to water anymore). People driving by on the street stopped and one guy yelled that my roof was on fire. I turned to find flames shooting out of my roof.

I woke up again. In my own bed in Montague. I decided I had to check the woodstove. It was fine. I put another log on for good measure. And went back to sleep.

As I returned to my house, there was a fire chief that greeted me at the door and tried to explain to me that my house had burned down. I asked him if my boss had put him up to this, being as I must have told him about my weird dream. The fire chief handed me a handful of cash...for guessing right that it wasn't true and my boss had put him up to it. My boss was standing behind the door laughing.

Incredibly strange. I have these dreams fairly often where I wake up in them and go about my day. And then wake up again. It can be frustrating, especially if I've already "woken up" and gone to work or something and then I wake up... and have to go to work.