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Holiday frivolity is already claiming doodle time and it may just be a bunch of bull, but I’m counting each character as a separate day in an effort to catch up. Yep, just making up the rules as I go along!

So hey, why not take a stroll on over here for links to see what the rest of the HoHoDooDa doodlers are doing.

Oh, and if you are wondering what the heck HoHoDooDa is, check this out.

On a pleasant autumn day, Mitch Reynolds stepped out of the Department of Agriculture, his briefcase packed with papers. He attempted to take a deep breath of fresh air, search his jacket for his bicycle clip, descend the stairs, all at the same time. He heard the door open behind him, a voice call his name. He turned, backed into a young woman coming up the stairs.
Suddenly, Mitch was stumbling, falling. The girl retained her balance but scattered her files, all over the steps.
“Oh...oh...sorry...” Mitch crawled around, helped her pick up the files. The woman stuck her silent nose in the air, resumed her climb.
Bob Fagan joined him at the bottom of the stairs, laughing at Mitch’s misfortune. They turned to watch the young woman’s behind.
“Ooh, look at that. Hey nice move, buddy. I’m tellin you Mitch, never get married”
They turned to walk toward the parking lot.
“Hey, how come you’re out early?”
“New job. I finally got an outside assignment. How about you?” Mitch had found his bicycle clip again. Bob watched as Mitch gathered his trousers to apply the clip.
“Beth’s preggers again, I’ve got to take three of the kids to the dentist while she’s at the doctor’s” Bob waited for Mitch to unlock his bike. They walked through the parking lot.
Bob was a big man with five children. Beth was very fertile. Their brood seemed ever expanding.
They parted at Bob’s van, Mitch mounted his bicycle. He took his time pedalling on the bike path, admiring the green fields in the autumn sunlight, giant trees blowing in the breeze. The path led him through the Experimental farm to the barn of The Beef Cattle Exposition.
The barn was surrounded by pens of cattle of different breeds, the office inside it. The walls of the small room were covered with posters about cattle. There was a rack on one wall which contained pamphlets, brochures and magazines about cattle. A small desk, covered with more cattle information, stood, with two chairs, at one end of the room. There was no one around. Mitch saw a door behind the desk which led further into the barn. He stepped through it. A stronger smell of cattle hit him.
Mitch looked down the length of the barn. He saw that most of the stalls were occupied by cattle, one, halfway down, also contained a person. Mitch made his way to it.
The sign on the open stall door read, VENUS. Walter James, the facility manager, stood leaning on one wall of the stall, beside a cow. He was a pleasant looking, balding man, much larger than Mitch, dressed in jeans and a work shirt, holding a brown, paper bag in one hand. He smiled, held out his hand.
“Mr. James?” Mitch, extending his hand. “Walter. You must be Mitch Reynolds. Good to finally see who I’ve been talking about for the past few months” Walter James shook Mitch’s hand with his empty one. He was referring to the many conversations he he’d had with Mitch’s superiors concerning this new project.
“This here’s the star of your show” Walter indicated the cow. “Venus”
Mitch stared at the rear end of the cow. He followed Walter toward the front of her, jumping into a cow pie, when she turned her head toward him.
Walter laughed. Mitch shook his foot in the air.
“Ha. You’ll have to watch out for that. Just scrape your shoe on some straw. Pistachio?” Walter smiled at Mitch, offered the bag.

"A writer must have a place to love and be irritated with. One must experience the local blights, hear the proverbs, endure the radio commercials, through the close study of a place, its people and character, its crops, paranoias, dialects, and failures, we come closer to our own reality... Location is where we start."

— Louise Erdrich, quoted in A Jury of Her Peers, by Elaine Showalter

Outside my window at this hour the smoke billows up from the neighbor's chimney and the pink sky goes sweet blue, toward black.

This is my home, my view, my slice of somewhere, and again and again, it appears in my books.

I write about suburban Philadelphia because as a teen I lived here and as an adult I returned here. I write about Juarez because once, in 2005, I took a trip across the El Paso border that changed my life. I write about a cortijo in southern Spain because I've been there, because once a man tall as royalty took me out into his dusty hectares in an open-to-the-sky jeep and said, Might I introduce you to my fighting bulls? I conjure a secret poet at Radnor High School because I once was one of those, and I story ghosts through a garden much like Chanticleer, down the road, because I spent two years walking through, week after week, and because a stone I had made for my mother rests there, beneath the katsura trees, and because I don't know where I'd be without seeds and all they beget.

I write where I've been, who I've been, what feels like mine. I have this place that I love. I begin here.

By Christine Mix