Move Number 3

We moved into a slightly bigger house, close to the motel we stayed at when we first came to North Carolina. Our jobs were going okay. I still had my job in retail and my boyfriend was still working in a factory. I had gotten in touch with my parents by now. This was December 1998. We got through the whole them being mad at me. They just wanted me to come home and I told them no. We were there for a reason and it had nothing to do with them. My parents begged me to come home for the holidays. I talked to my boyfriend and he was okay with going back to Maryland for a visit. The house we were staying in had this really old heater that rattled like it was going to fall apart when you turned it on. And it smelled really bad. So we didn't turn it on very often. It was always so cold in our house. I remember in the mornings, getting ready for work, I'd turn the heater on and get dressed in front of it because it was so cold in our house. The winters in North Carolina where we were at were terrible. Tons and tons of snow. Because I worked retail, they weren't keen on letting people have off at the holiday season. I finally worked it out with them that I would work right up until I left and then they let me have a few days. So we had about a week to visit in Maryland.