The monks knew I still went to my old church occasionally. I also told them I acted as a welcoming committee, and that because the church was smaller, I introduced myself to anyone new coming in, so they wouldn't feel self-conscious.
After I told Fr. Joachim about Br. Ansgar (before going to the Abbot), a new family came to the church. I introduced myself to the "Schneiders". It wasn't just Christa, but her mom and Dad. For the longest time, years even, although I wondered, I just couldn't believe Christa was connected to the Abbey lawyers in any way. I then thought perhaps someone was listening in to my conversations and emails with her, and finally, I had to accept it was more likely she was directly giving information to others about me. By the time I felt I had enough evidence, I wasn't even shocked.
Her father was Robert Schneider, and he had formerly been a U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon.
Christa was the one to initiate going out with me outside of church, and I thought we hit it off. Initially, I had been better friends with her roommate, who was Hungarian, and who was interested in taking a "European tour". I thought I still had some money left from selling my house as I found a check for $10,000 in a stack of my mail. I decided I wanted to spend it by traveling a little with Anika (I think this was her name) and then settling in Austria to do more volunteer work with youth. I also chose Austria because there were a lot of primary documents about darwinism, greenies, and other things I was interested in researching then--including religion and Catholicism.
About the time I met Christa, I started having car vandalisms. (Most of the vandalisms happened after I moved out of the Tualatin apartment and began primarily when I moved to a new studio, on my own, in Tigard. So first I was in Lake Oswego, then Tualatin, then Tigard. I also had a lot of break-ins into my apartment in Tigard, and one time, the only thing taken was a CD which I helped to record as a back-up singer. Nothing else was missing.)
I remember one incident in particular, when I still lived in Lake Oswego and was going to meet up with some guy who worked at a bike shop in L.O. and had asked me out. I told Christa about it and where I was meeting him. It was my second date with him I think, and it was going to be the last one. When I finished dinner with him, I went to my car, and the tires had been slashed vigorously. I was parked on the other side of town, and had already had vandalisms done to my car near my apartment, and at college, work places, and then where I was parked for social things. This was maybe the second time something happened with my car. The first time, my antenna kept getting vandalized and a mechanic told me it was purposeful and strange, and later when I went back to the same mechanic after my radiator blew up, he told me someone had disconnected the hose and there was no way it was an accident. I don't think Christa did anything but I now wonder who was getting information about me, and I do know they had to have been RCC.
I met with Anika about Europe and I remember telling her about some of these things that were happening to my car. She stopped and looked at me, and had a strange expression on her face. It was like she was putting something together in her mind. When I found out the $10,000 check was an old one and that I'd already spent one which was reissued when I'd lost the first, I told her I couldn't go afterall. She said okay and left me with a strong warning: "Stay away from Christa. She's psycho."
I knew they'd had some conflicts and assumed it was bad-roommate blood between them. I became friends with Christa and she asked me to go out with her for a drink on Fridays, in Portland. I told the monks all about it. I also, about the time things were falling apart with the monks, and after feeling frustrated with "junk jobs", I decided to enroll in college again. I went back to the community college. I had decent grades but realized, as things got out of hand later with the monks, that the only way I was going to make it, and stay in school, was if I planned carefully.
Before I enrolled again, I had my car towed several times by Triple A, for slashed and punctured tires, every so many weeks, and then radiator blow ups after being parked at the college parking lot, and other malfunctions.
I also noticed being followed around this time, and became distressed because all of this was happening while the monks were covering things up what happened there, giving me the runaround, and I felt, sort of egging me on and abandoning me all at once.
Christa wanted to talk about everything except what was happening with the monks. She wanted my entire life story and family history, and to know my plans day-to-day, but wouldn't respond to email about the RCC or monks. She knew which jobs I was applying for, what classes I was taking, who I was dating, everything.
I later found out she was baptized Catholic and I believe her entire family is, and she claimed they became "born again" later. Almost all of her friends, I later realized, were also Catholic, and I thought it was no big deal.
After I met Christa, and realized I couldn't go to Austria, I moved out of Lake Oswego (where I'd been for a couple of years) and to Tualatin, Oregon, sharing an apartment with Sharon Anderson, someone I was introduced to at church.
Sharon was from Medford and Nick Fanelli had introduced us. We didn't know eachother and on the day we moved in, I noted the chrome on every piece of furniture she brought into the house, as she gaped at the worldmarket bead curtains I hung in my doorway, made out of shellacked nuts. She brought in a huge flatscreen T.V. and I hauled in very large, heavy, and solid clay pots, filled with climbing red roses, white hydrangeas, and cyprus and juniper trees, filling up the deck. She brought in a new laptop and I had a desktop from 1998. I remember seeing her read one book: The Bible, and I had my entire hallway lined with about 40 books from the public library, about the "Green Revolution", Darwinism, Germany's social and political climate, and the development of the Nazi party and their ideological roots. At that time, one of my questions was whether Darwinism shaped Nazi ideas, or how it contributed to the survival of the fittest mentality and acceptance of Hitler's thinking.
To put it best, our rooming situation was ill-fitted and a disaster. At some point I noticed a photo of Mary in her room, which I wondered about as well, but the worst part of living there those 6 months or so was that on the last few days, almost all of my good clothes from Nordstrom and specialty shops, were stolen. My leather jacket, a wool sweater from 1970s Munich Olympic days (it had been my mothers and I loved that sweater!), almost all of my good shirts, a long wool coat, skirts...
And then a few months later, or right around that time, my passport and guitar were stolen from my car at a Goodwill parking lot in Tigard. The rest of my purse was left behind. That happened right around Halloween, in the fall following my meeting with the Abbot.
I really need to get out the timeline don't I, and nail all these dates down.
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