I doodle a lot on whatever is handy.  I probably love some of my doodles more than anything else I've done!  Some of them even end up on my famous fridge!  Recently one of my doodles accidentally ended up in a mind reader's show because I had drawn a bunny on a chalk slate, and the mind reader failed to notice it before he went on--but he did notice it when the audience kept laughing!  He was extremely lucky the doodle wasn't a dancing hot dog, which is my other favorite chalk slate doodle!  Here is a fun doodle tour of some of my favorites.  If you find yourself in here, I'm sorry in advance!

I make a lot of lists because I'm a bit disorganized if I don't.  These all came off of lists.  I obviously don't get easily distracted!

Look, one of my actual lists from several years ago!  I must have made a resolution to be more like Martha Stewart or something.  This one is still around because I liked the doodle at the top, but the pair of holey underwear flying out of the "clean out closets/drawers" entry is my new favorite, I never noticed it before!  Personally I would rather doodle than do most of the things on this list, but unfortunately, I did them all.

I live in terror of one day leaving one of my notebooks behind and having my terrible secret discovered.  When I'm at a lecture, mostly my monthly writers group meeting, I get a little restless after about thirty seconds because I hate sitting still and spend the rest of the time covertly doodling on my notes.  First I doodle what's on the table, but it's always the same stuff and that doesn't hold me for long.  So then I doodle the speaker so I'll remember what she looked like, then everyone else in the room.  About that time I give up and design three greeting cards, completely lose track of what the lecturer is saying because I'm giggling over what the alligator is doing in my drawing, distract the whole table, and wonder why I didn't stay home!  Here you are, a peek inside my writers group notebook!  Look, the same cup and saucer on three occasions!  I need to lodge a complaint.

My apologies to Georgia Bockoven, who was speaking on putting emotion into your writing, while I was doing the following on the back of my notes!

I'm also sorry to everyone who attended the Magic Collectors Convention in Chicago in 2001 and thought they were safe.  My great friend magician Lisa Cousins made it on twice, because she's fun to draw.  And David Ben twice, too.  If you know magicians, look closely, there are a lot of other famous and beloved ones on this page who will probably never speak to me again.  

Finally, the mystery of what you're supposed to do with that margin on the side of a piece of paper is explained!  Or that little bit leftover in the corner...

A tree died for this?  I love the scuba alligators!  And the itty bitty kitty on the spool of thread at the bottom.

Sometimes I go a little crazy drawing on a letter and decide to write a new one in case the recipient doesn't think it's as funny as I do!  This must have been one of those times, because I still have it!

When faxes were the big thing, my friends got a lot of these.  This one was for a little girl I tutored just for fun, but when I got a little bored in the evenings, my big friends got a lot of crazy ones, too.  They were always a big hit!  Too bad you can't doodle on an email!

I ended up not sending this envelope, but I've sent other decorated ones.  Once I sent one with a request to a recipe column in a British-American newspaper, because I wanted to know how to make English "cinder toffee," and the lady who wrote the column put my drawings in her newspaper column!  Little flying cans of mushy peas and bottles of HP Sauce, if I remember right!  I still don't know how to make cinder toffee!

One of those attempts to entertain myself...  I need to finish coloring it!  I love Mabel from Hospitality and Bert from information.  Irving needs some decaf!

Some full color doodling!  I love the one of me in my pajamas, and the Wiener Dog.  I love wiener dogs!

There must be an intervention program for doodling, but you have to admit you have a problem first...

Occasionally there is a purpose for my doodling, like casting characters for a picture book.  In this case, I was probably just doodling...

Every so often I find myself in Joe's office for a few minutes when he has to drop by in off-hours to pick something up.  He always has a dry-erase board with lots of colors of markers, something you never get your hands on if you're not in the business world.  So, I head straight for it and erase all the boring business nonsense and silly enormous finance equations cluttering it up and give it a full color makeover, and he ends up having to wait fifteen minutes for me to finish drawing every breed of dog I can think of or every sort of fast food all over it.  Then he spends the next year telling me his colleagues keep coming in to stare at it and talk to him about the doodles.  Here is a snapshot of what he's been looking at on his board for ages, since December 2004.  He hasn't let me back in there in a super long time, I can't imagine why!

Here are some close up views.  Thanks to Joe for taking these photos--you see, he still won't let me back in there!  If he did, I see a lot of white spaces that need something--I'm thinking a monkey, some bananas, a palm tree, a pink tennis shoe, puppies for the dogs in love, Donald Trump saying "You're fired!" and Supernanny in her weird cape and hat saying "That's unacceptable, get on the naughty mat!"...  If you have a dry erase board and you want it decorated, just let me know!!!  You can ship it to me and I'll doodle it up and ship it back!  What will you charge me?? 

Look, "Steel Seal Gaskets"--did I accidentally leave some actual business on there?!  I'm falling down on the job.  Hopefully it's just something to do with Mini Coopers...

This is my favorite kind of doodling, just filling up a page with little pictures of things I love with the words under them.  I always do this in the back of my spiral notebooks.  I loved Ted and Fred so much, they got their own little book!  You can see it on Page 27 of this art gallery!