on fetishes, chalk, Decimal, China and the title of this blog

My mother, it appears, has a hanger fetish. I counted them as I packed, and she had 132 in her closet. Or maybe it's that she has a clothing fetish and consequently has to have hangers to put the clothes on...? My earrings (I have an earring fetish), while just as wild, are easier to move.

There is now a humongous heap of white foamy stuff in the living room. It's great for wrapping dishes in, but unfortunately is also covered in what looks like chalk dust, which makes me sneeze every time I walk past it. As if I do not already have half a ton of chalk dust in my lungs from Chinese school, where the very walls are made of chalk dust.

Oh, and today I said farewell to Decimal. He sits by the computer and makes sarcastic (and occasionally rather insightful) comments about whatever I'm writing. Decimal is not fuzzy on the inside. Maybe he's my internal critic?



My stuffed animals have strange names. There's Fumpy the elephant, Sniffer and Rowdy the dogs, Grace the cat, Belthka the rabbit, Decimal the leopard, Benjamin the donkey (named after the character in "Animal Farm"--both Benjamins are cynics), Missy the raccoon (his, yes his, name is really Mischievous, but it's a mouthful) and another rabbit named Acacia.

I love stuffed animals. They're so squishy and huggable, and fun to talk to late at night. Sometimes they come up with the funniest things.

Our tiny little apartment is finally looking like we're leaving. YAY! I can't wait to escape from leaky drains, doors that won't open/close, flying cockroaches under the second sink in the kitchen (we have two sinks, but one is covered by our little convection oven/microwave/grill thingy), the good (erm, bad?) acoustics which allow me to hear the neighbors fighting, someone playing piano at three a.m. and the TV on the third floor, the Chinese national anthem blasting from the school next door at seven a.m. on schooldays... But there's no guarantee that the next apartment will be better yet. Mom should be looking at it as I write this. She went to Nottingham to get the whole visa and foreign expert certificate process started. If that goes well, I can be in the boondies (out in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas) in two weeks and go to Oregon for September.

Oh, I think I should use this opportunity to explain about the title of this blog. I love the concept of dream catchers and they're pretty. One of my first memories (my third, I think) is of my grandmother making up a story involving dream catchers. However, I think that the word should be spelled "dreamcatcher" or at least be hyphenated, because it expresses one concept. So I stubbornly titled my blog "The Dreamcatcher Workshop". I also must add that the workshop part is shameless stealing of Brynne's idea, which I thought was cute.