A trillion falling stars

Today was my last day of being an official ”Streetlight Whisperer.”  On Wednesday I start a new job in a completely different area of the company.  I know zero people there and I had to buy tights to wear because it’s fancy!  Tights! I have mixed feelings about this and the only thing  I have to compare the way I feel right now is eating mushrooms.  Not the kind of mushrooms that you saute over a burger, the kind that make your head spin and hallucinate.

You are probably thinking “that Lori, I knew she was a druggie all along!”  And guess what?  I was,  but that was when I was 16 and flopped whoppers for a living and my entire purpose in life was to eat mushrooms and smoke pot out of the biggest bongs in America and take road trips in my friend’s Impala that was falling apart and pass out on the beach where I would wake up being photographed by 50 Asians who were there on Holiday.  (Talk about a trip!)

For people who have never eaten mushrooms, the best way I can describe it is like a constant film strip that plays in your head with random pictures.  Toys you used to play with as a child,  or flashes of things you hate about yourself.  A film that continues to play for hours.  Sometimes more absolute and vivid than others, sometimes a wonderful place that you never want to leave.

The beginning stages of the trip were always hard to deal with for me.  I would be overtaken by giddiness, but then if someone said  just a teeny thing wrong it would change my entire mood and I would want to cry.  Often times I would sit there and not know whether to smoke or eat, laugh, cry or freak out.  It was always a strange process, but I knew once I got over that initial part,  my mind would cruise over to all of the fun where I would see a trillion falling stars in the sky and wish on every one of them or where I would feel beautiful and talk about how my nails were glowing and how the world was perfect.

It’s probably pretty terrible that all of these years later I am comparing the changes occurring in my life as an adult to magical mushrooms of all things.  Before you start thinking that I am going all Don Juan on you there IS a point to all of my crazy ramblings.

Last Spring I ripped my son away from his school and his friends and the only life he has ever known because I decided to buy a house in North Portland.  On Tuesday he will start fourth grade at a school that he has been to once.  I am more anxious about this than he is.  The day after his first day of school will be my first day of work.  We both are walking into the unknown!  The following week I start school again myself. And to backtrack a little, on Monday I got engaged.  I am going to be somebody’s wife!

Needless to say its one big trip but this time there are no drugs.  There’s this part of me that is giddy and excited and hopeful and then there’s this part of me that is scared, worried and sad.  Sad that I too, have left behind good friends from my previous office.  Hopeful that I will be able to live up to the expectations of my new job.  Worried that I won’t be able to live up to my expectations as a wife.  Nervous for Ezra and his new life.  Scared shitless that I will fail at everything!   You don’t even want to know what I scored on this!

Just like the trips of the past, I have to keep reminding myself that after these initial stages,  things will fall in to place.  That after all of this,  my life will cruise over to that fun place that I know and love. That fun place where there’s a  trillion stars to wish on falling from the sky, where my nails will glow, and where once again the world will be perfect.