Spousal banter

My wife and I often follow certain traditional marital roles.  She does most of the cooking and cleaning, and I do most of the "heavy" lifting like lawn mowing and snow shoveling.

But not always.  Sometimes I cook and sometimes she shovels snow and often we help one another.

This evening while she was preparing dinner I ground coffee for after dinner.  When we were done eating, she said, "You may take the dishes to the kitchen, and you may bring the coffee to the living room."  I replied, "What?  I'm the lord of the manor and you're supposed to do what I say."  She went to the living room.  Oops!  The coffee is ready and I'd better go get it.

We've been friends, lovers, companions, combatants, and many other relationships for over fifty years.  Many times one decides to do something outside the house without much thought of the other's plans.  Many times we co-operate on planning an activity of a moment or for years.  Our vows did not include "obey".

What has sustained us in the give and take of daily life is knowing that the other is there "in sickness and health."

Military quote of the day

"The British never clearly understood what they were against–a revolutionary struggle involving widespread support in the population.  Hence they continually underestimated the staying power of the rebels and overestimated the strength of the loyalists.  And in the end, independence came to mean more to the Americans than reconquest did to the English."

- The American Revolution, Gordon S. Wood, p. 78.

Whose independence from whom?

Do these statements apply to times, people, and places other than for which they were written?

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution...:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.


He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

They are from the Declaration of Independence, 1776.