... continued....

Needless to say, I never bought another fifth for less than $20 bucks! My mother was so busy with the murder trial, and working two jobs, she simply didn't have time to catch us acting like fools. Absolute proof that a person raised with alcohol has a risk of depending on alcohol. If my life had been just a little different, I may have graduated at the top of my class. I certainly had the ability.
The school didn't bother us too much. To much about not being there. The law class was studying the case as a school project for cryin' out loud! It was simply too much. My mother had to wait until the trial was over, then we sold everything we had except what for what would fit into a 32 foot Winnebago with an 8 foot trailer. We were Florida bound, One Way! Mom had eventually found out what my sister and I had been up to. To say the she was upset would be a Major understatement. She decided that the only way to put our lives back together was to leave Michigan. 
It wasn't until about a year and a half after the murder that we were able to leave. The timing couldn't have been better though. It was the beginning of summer, so my sister and I were legitimately out of school, and this gave us time to travel and pick a place to live. We had three months to decide where to live.
At some point, my mom and my favorite Aunt had decided that my aunt and her three kids would travel with us. My sister and I were excited! This aunt was more like another mother and the other kids were more like brothers and sisters. We had spent our whole lives together every weekend and all summer long! It sure made moving a whole lot easier on us. My dad was still here, but he agreed that my sister and I needed to be where we could heal.
So there we were. The motor home was awesome for us kids! We pretended we were Rock N Roll stars on a concert tour. My mom and my sister and I left a few days before my aunt. She would meet us in Niles, Michigan, where she would trade in her car and then we would all be in the motor home.
My mom had a friend in Niles, so he came to the KOA where we were staying and showed us around Niles. I liked it there. We were on the border of South Bend, Indiana. I had never seen anything like it. Detroit can be a little overwhelming for a small town girl, but I can find my way home from Detroit, and I know where not to go!
When my aunt and the kids met up with us, it was "Goodbye Michigan, Hello Road!" We had everything we needed. 32" television with vcr player and tapes. House stereo hooked up in the back. We were happenin. We drove straight through Indiana and into Kentucky. Beautiful! With the extra people we had, mom decided that we were probably gonna need a tent. We went to this grocery store that had a little of everything. They had Glass Bottles of Soda! It had been a good 4 years since Michigan sold glass bottles. Man, there's something about a Coca-Cola in a glass bottle that is so different than plastic. That was also the first time I had ever seen a grocery store where you bagged your own groceries. It was exciting to me. (Nerd) We then went and got this huge tent for the extra people to sleep in. We found another KOA and mom and Aunt Leigh started to assemble the tent.
It had been on sale, and appeared to be missing some parts. They worked on that tent for more than three hours. Everyone laughed the entire time. The advertisement on the side of the box read "quick easy set tent". Eventually, they took it back to the store and got another, this one, they conquered. Then we all slept on lawn chairs under the stars. I don't think anyone even ended up using that tent until we were back in Michigan!
When we left Kentucky, we went to South Carolina. My cousin and her family were living there on a military base. We stayed with them for about a month. I liked it, but I swear it rained for about ten minutes EVERY DAY at the same time! I had my first bad fire ant incident there. We were in Beaufort, the only beach that we had found had black sand and red water. NOPE! I'm a Michigan girl even if I don't wanna be, I like being able to see what else is in the water I am swimming in. Not to mention, I dove in without thinking and came up spitting salt with eyes of fire! That incident cured me of that particular part of the ocean. One day, I decide to go to the base pool. I take my shoes off and set em by a lawn chair. I've got my yellow water proof headset, and I'm happenin. There are a few people down there, mostly military boys....
so I stay a few hours, get a few numbers and I am about to make my graceful exit. I jump out of the pool and dry off. Grab my shoes and as I am putting on my second shoe, it hits me! My leg is on fire and my foot is in even worse shape. I jump back into the pool and am fighting to get my shoes off in the water. No one warned me about the ants, and I had no idea that water would just piss em off even more! I learned an important lesson that day, fire ants can swim. Oh yeah, and don't put your shoes on without checking them if you are in the south!
Mom let us know that she was planning on heading back North, Florida was out of the question. There were no jobs in South Carolina where we were at at the time, but she had talked to a friend in Tennessee and we would go there and see what there was. I was good with that, I had always wanted to go to Tennessee. I think that is where I was supposed to be born.
When we got there, I knew I was right. We stayed in a little town called Bradyville. It was about half an hour from Murfreesboro. I loved it. It was time to start school and I had a choice of three high schools. I ended up enrolling at Cannon County High. I was amazed at some of the classes that were offered and some that were required. Agricultural classes make sense to me, I think they are something all schools should teach. I was also surprised to find out that I could actually be paddled by a teacher. That was grounds for a lawsuit in Michigan. I met more people and got more phone numbers and people were interested in me and what I could tell them about Michigan. Not at all the kind of reception I had expected. In Michigan, a new student is treated like a leper. If she's a pretty girl, she's a whore; heavy a pig; slow basically worthless; and poor, all of the above. Guys are basically classified by money and ability. People wonder why I want to go back to Tennessee so bad. Where I was, we got lost one day, and this lady noticed. Out of nowhere, she came up to my mom and offered her help, that is EXTREMELY RARE in Michigan.
Unfortunately, the job situation wasn't much better in Tennessee. My mom decided to hold a "family meeting" to see how everyone felt about staying or going back to Michigan. I did NOT want to come back here, but I was too young to stay alone. Unfortunately, my mom and  sister had visited Houghton Lake, Michigan during Tip-Up Town one weekend. They told me how awesome it was, I told them if we were going back to Michigan, why not Southern Michigan! We were going further North???? I met a lot of cool people up there. But I also became a big time drunk once again. That was all there was to do up there. Probably had something to do with my ability to sniff out a party crowd everywhere I went. Oh, and the fact that there were more that 30 bars up there! It was still mostly undeveloped in a lot of places. So cool, back to partyin in the woods! My mom was pretty lenient by now. I was driving pretty much anywhere by the time I was 14. It was just the three of us, she had a boyfriend, but he didn't live with us. She was a bartender by night, and a cottage cleaner by day, someone had to drive to get groceries. My reward for doing errands was the use of the car. The best part, my mom drove a Camaro.... I even drove to school some days. I truly had it made. I worked in the back of a party store putting returned bottles away during the afternoon, and had a couple of babysitting jobs at night.
My mom's boyfriend owned a bar up there. We spent a lot of time in the bar. There was a band that played there every weekend. I liked the band, and I would play pool or shuffleboard while mom worked. Occasionally, I would stock coolers or something if she got really busy. The lifestyle I had led, I had friends with benefits always, but never a steady boyfriend. I had never even thought about it. One night, while listening to the band, a guy walked up and asked if I wanted to shoot a game of pool. My FAVORITE person to play is ANY man. I was 14 now, and allowed to date. We shot a few games and he asked me to dance. While we danced, he told me his dad was the lead singer of the band. He said he had just turned 21, but he had already asked my mom if he could take me out. We started seeing each other and after about six months, he moved into our house. He slept on the couch for the first few months. I bought a car for $50.00. It was a 5 speed Honda Accord. It had a license late on it from like 1984, we drove that car everywhere. It had no brakes, and a leak in the hydraulic clutch line, but it ran like crazy! I can't believe I never got caught driving that damn car. I had it for two years, about two months longer than I had the boyfriend...LOL. We went back and forth for a little while, but it was obvious we were not meant to be. We stopped seeing each other the spring that I turned 16, that summer I had my first house. By now I had a new group of friends. I had completely quit school and started at the Adult Ed program to get my GED. I didn't really need school. I made money the way I made money. I wasn't a thief, that was a phase. I was better employed than that. I liked Adult Ed. I had my own place, I paid my own bills, I didn't think I needed anybody telling me what to do. I met a girl that led to dating her brother that led to meeting a man that changed my life once again.