except for me and my Rodent friends...who...when i opened my closet to take out my warm woolly robe and slippers on this early Christmas morn....were still decorating their tree and clamoring for my attention about the size of the the string of lights and shiny balls i loaned them

GEESE!!!

ungrateful varmints

when i thinks of all the things I've done for them over the years

letting them take possession of my dollhouse when i was a kid

i didn't really care 'cause i was a Tomboy anyway...so all the dolls i got were stuffed out of sight

i started feeding them bits of toast in my crib 'til my parents screeched and sent them for a swim to the big toilet lake in the sky

I HATE PARENTS!!!

I SCREECHED TOO!!!

what r u horning in for rabbit???

u know it's really hard keeping a train of thought with all the animal swarming around!!!

anywho...they turned up again when i lived in Rural North Central Oregon during a freezing fog that vied with London for a 1st prize in solid wetness

Bored...i would have been bored to tears but i didn't want ice cubes attached to my cheeks

so at the Tuesday Bunko game we decided to have a Fog Festival...most of the town folks weren't too interested...about as interested as they had been when i put forth the idea of doing a rambling up the Main Street Dickens Christmas Carol....with each front window dressed in a Dickens scene....to be finished in the hotel restaurant by a great Christmas feast

PARTAY POOPERS!!!

that's when the mice came out of the woodwork...actually out of the wheat fields ...and we were surrounded by wheat fields

immediately the publisher of the Times-Journal asked me to write a story about them to drum up some interest

CRAP!!!

what did i know about mice and fog???

nutten really

but they began to visit me and do Dickens Christmas Carol in my dreams

BAD ACTORS...they needed to have their legs broken!!!

BUT...

and that's a big but

i simply couldn't resist... we even sent a challenge to the paper in Lincoln City...to the wharf rats there of course...to outdo us FOGWISE and MOUSE STORYWISE that year

Dang it...those Lincoln City Rats were dang good writers

AND DUALING FOG FESTIVAL AND STORIES WAS BORN