The Lovely Anna Speaks (Again)

Six years ago I had my wife, The Lovely Anna, be my first (and last) guest blogger here on The MAD Blog. She wrote the following post about being the wife of a freelancer which I am reposting today because I am still on vacation (with The Lovely Anna) so I don’t have time to write and neither does she. All she says here is still true over six years later except we’ve now been married 26 years, all our kids are graduated from high school and either off living life or going to college (except The Animated Elizabeth, who will be home with us forever), and I still haven’t let her try and ink my word balloons again:

My husband Tom asked me to do him a favor.

This is not unusual, most days, at least once, I get a request for a favor. Usually it’s to help with paper work, run to the bank or post office, or deliver supplies to one of our booths. Being that I can’t draw or even ink the boxes for his MAD pages, (Yes, this was attempted and I failed miserably) I try to help out where and when I can. Anything so that he can keep working on the deadline. Today’s favor had to do with The MAD Blog. He is trying to finish up a big MAD job, and doesn’t have time to write any meaningful posts right now, so he asked: “Can you write a post about being married to a freelancer? You’ll be my first ‘guest blogger’. Go ahead and make fun of me.” So…

Hi! My name is The Lovely Anna, and I am the wife of a freelance illustrator (Insert Hi Lovely Anna! here). No, there is no support group for spouses of freelance illustrators, or bloggers, or foundation board members, or computer nerds, or caricature artists. There isn’t even one for spouses of members of “The Usual Gang of Idiots”. Even if there was, I probably wouldn’t join. I would get so co-dependent. I would spend all my free time trying to save all the poor women whose husbands are always at their drawing boards, because they can’t say no when the phone rings. I would be trying to help them figure out the best way to get Dr. Martin’s India Ink out of studio carpets. I would have to make a website, listing all of the best hotels in the world with bathrooms big enough to ink in during the middle of the night while the rest of the family sleeps. I would have to help them with meal preparations, making sure that they can find good recipes for things that can be re-heated when it takes FOREVER for their artist in residence to come to the dinner table. These poor women! Someone has to help them! How can they be expected to live like this?? Oh, wait… I live like this. Yeah, I’m not good at support groups, I always try to save every body else from my everyday life.

What is it like to be married to a freelance artist?

• Pro: He is always at home.
• Con: He is always at home.

• Pro: He sets his own hours.
• Con: His hours are 24/7.

• Pro: He is very creative and humorous.
• Con: He thinks he is funny.

• Pro: He is so talented, his phone rings off the hook.
• Con: He answers every call.

• Pro: He was there for every first step, first word, dance recital, baseball game, concert and taught all the kids how to ride their bikes.
• Cons: None

Tom is a workaholic. He loves to draw. He loves his computer, and was born to blog. He spends more time in his studio than out. At times, he has problems with time management, but shutting off the phone and turning off the computer usually puts him back on course. He has never missed a deadline, even when it meant missing sleep. Our house is so far from the norm, but it’s all we know. We have been married 20 years this month, and I have always been lucky enough to be a stay at home mom. Tom has always had something on the drawing board, or was working at one of the parks to make sure we have everything we need and I was able to be home with the kids. Tom has learned to block out the everyday events happening upstairs, and I have learned to pretend that he is not home. We check in with each other many times a day, and sometimes even sneak away for a lunch together.

I would recommend marrying a freelance illustrator to anyone lucky enough to fall in love with one.

It’s worked for me so far.

The Lovely Anna is the long suffering wife of Tom and mother of four… five if you count Elizabeth twice. She graciously agreed to write this guest blog post to spare readers another appearance of the “Dreaded Deadline Demon” and Tom didn’t even have to bring up the afore mentioned “trying to ink the word balloon boxes on a MAD job” incident to guilt her into it.