A personal aside

(a whine by any other name would sound as sweet....:)

Spring: 1997: Looking back, I think I was suffering from a form of addiction, "fan addiction" analogous to alcoholism or any other habit forming drug. Maybe I’m defining a new syndrome here with my "research". Whatever was going on with me and my Moody obsession, it wasn’t pretty and my finances were suffering. And I was spending far too much time writing to other idiots on Moody fan groups on the Internet.

It isn’t easy to begin with, to raise a kid by yourself, which I was trying to do. Stephan was in 6th grade, and while a very bright kid and avid reader, was turning out to be a pretty poor student, for whatever reason. When I dragged in from my low pay job at 5:30 he was sitting in a wrecked apartment, playing Nintendo (that his father bought) and no amount of fighting, nagging, cajoling, guilt tripping (etc) would change this. "What homework?" My job sucked and I was not getting promoted (in fact I was hearing rumors of financial crisis in the accounting department).

I had a rather serious pen pal in Salt Lake City however, an old friend (actually my best friend’s Ex boyfriend in High School), so I decided I was going to do a serious life change. Portland had nothing in it for me. So from February through April 1997, I did the following things, and in no particular order:

• Quit the job
• Bought a new car on credit
• Watched a beautiful blue and pink comet named Hale-Bopp grow, linger and glitter in our night skies, WOW was this COOL!!!!!!!!! on our way to the Sun………
• Sent Stephan (and his Nintendo) to live with his Dad in Bremerton (and his slapper step-Mom). Stephan was big enough to defend himself by now, and maybe a little slapping would get his grades up, who knows. I sure wasn’t making any headway!
• Went Cross Country to see Justin’s solo shows
• Packed up my cat, put most of my stuff (books, tapes) in storage, threw out a lot, and moved to SLC with my boyfriend.

I eventually figured out my boyfriend in Salt Lake City had two other chicks on the line (one in town, the other by email) so that only lasted about six hair raising weeks. I moved back in with my parents (big house) and got a job substitute teaching, which has worked out just fine and is a great vocation and job I love. So life changed a lot for me this Spring.