As I sat there in my favourite kitchen chair, knitting and sipping on my latte while watching Jordan fix the kitchen drain, it suddenly struck me that we must have travelled back in time; back to a time when men did the manly things and the women folk made the sandwiches and fetched the cold beer.

Running to grab a screwdriver—from my toolbox—I felt a panic attack coming on. Were we just another “typical married couple” with our appropriate, gender defined roles? Yikes! Can this have happened to us?

But then I got a grip; it was I who had taken the trap apart and determined that the clog was too far for a coat hanger to rectify. If Jordan had been away, I would have called Scotty, but as Jordan was home, he quickly moved into a place I would rather not be: at the back end of a snake!

As I sat there, working away on my weekend crossword, I reflected upon other household chores and I saw a pattern. After 22 years of marriage, we have gradually settled into the role we prefer to take in managing our household. I can honestly say that most of the duties I do routinely are those that I have signed-up for because I either enjoy them or, inversely, they are the lesser of two evils.

I do not do cars. The first and only time I tried to wash a car, I did such a lousy job that my brother made a big show of re-doing it. Ditto lawn cutting; I leave large, un-mown swaths. My heart just isn’t in it.  I fortunately had two brothers and later two sons and a husband to take these mundane and loathsome jobs off my hands.

I like doing garbage and recycling. “Like” is probably not the correct term here, but I care enough to do it efficiently. I have my way of doing it and although sometimes I get miffed when the “boys” walk past a bag that is obviously on its way out; I feel satisfaction in getting it out myself; a cleansing feeling. Growing up, this was always the man’s job; I guess Mom didn’t experience that purging enlightenment.

Jordan does the burn barrel. I would never even consider doing this on my own; I just don’t get the same satisfaction from fire and beer. I do, however, love to get into the side yard with clippers, pulling out wheel barrow after wheel barrow of debris. I like to tidy, not urbanize, my nature.

I often make a fire indoors on my own, but because I don’t use an axe, it pretty well leaves me with either using lots of paper and kindling or buying fake logs. When Jordan is home, he makes the fire, and leaves me with a nice pile of chopped wood. I know that sounds positively Neanderthal, but I am terrified of the axe.

In general, I am responsible for the household cleaning duties. This is largely because I do truly believe—there have been studies to prove this—that men do not perceive dirt the same as women. Have you ever seen a photo of a group of women standing in a muddy field, arms around each other, faces and clothing caked with dirt, grinning as if this is the proudest moment of their lives?

Jordan always gets up first and makes the coffee. I grind the coffee the evening before and clean up the pot after. He later drives to the bakery to fetch me a latte and on Saturdays, my Globe and Mail. This is the routine.

I do laundry. I admit that I often am perturbed when I get complaints about missing socks, or a favourite shirt that hasn’t been washed in two weeks because it missed the cut-off for the last white load, but I found that allowing everyone to do their own, while creating less work for me, led to an unconscionable waste of water and electricity. I could not stand by and watch a whole load being put on for one shirt.

I am expected to keep the house adequately supplied with the staples: canned mushrooms, HP sauce, and toilet paper. But that is OK; I love to shop. Unlike many women I know, my husband prefers to buy his own underwear and toiletries. If he runs out of toothpaste he has only himself to blame.

The one division of labour that has changed radically in the past few years, and one that I am just getting used to, is that Jordan has become an equal partner in sharing meal planning and cooking. While once he was primarily the BBQ guy, which I let him do because who really wants to stand outside in Calgary in January, and the salad guy, because I find cutting vegetables tedious, he now probably cooks fifty-percent of our dinners. All of those years that I cringed when he asked, “What’s for dinner?”, and now he goes shopping for ingredients and cooks it. I still do the cleaning up; part of the deal made when I said I didn’t want a dishwasher because I do really enjoy washing dishes at the end of a good meal.

As I sit here now watching Jordan sweating and cursing under the sink, then running out for a new pipe to fix the new leak, I think to myself: How could I ever dream of taking this joy away from him?