generic loader freezing animation

here goes...

I have written a few class files to handle movie clip loading into the flash movies that i author. one of which is a generic loader that holds a loading queue, another is a listener for a MovieClipLoader that has been initialized in the class file. here is my problem...
I call a simple method from the timeline (named: addToQueue()) which adds a target movieclip and a url to the generic loader's queue. and tells it to begin loading if it isn't already loading something else. this is to keep things loading one at time. well, when anything is added to the queue in the timeline, the animation and onEnterFrame code set in the timeline freezes and waits for all loading to be completed. this is undesireable. I have a menu system that i would still want a user to be able to navigate while loading external items. I am using loadClip(), i have even tried just loading straight from the timeline without my class files. same problem.

is the loadClip() method not threaded? does flash not support concurrent animation while loading in a .swf or .jpg?

Please reply soon!

Al.