My Mom sometimes jokes that my Dad’s idea of making a sandwich is eating a spoonful of peanut butter and then eating a piece of bread. Sure, my Dad will man the grill and carve a turkey and arrange the pieces so nicely on a serving platter that you can barely tell it’s been carved. He’ll also handle live lobsters, crabs, clams-that sort of thing. He also does an amazing job cleaning up after dinner parties-dishes and all. But the normal daily cooking and cleaning is Mom’s job. My parents have very certain lines they don’t cross when it comes to whose job is whose around and outside the house.

In a lot of ways, I’m glad that my husband and I share all the household chores. I guess it’s the change in times, a difference that can commonly be seen between generations. It’s fun to be a team-we’ll both weed the garden, both clean the house-whatever task is at hand. After all, who really wants to weed the garden or clean the house? Sure, we can take pleasure in these things, but generally speaking, a chore is still a chore. And chores can become tiresome when you’re doing them time after time.

I take pride in the fact that I can, and my husband knows I can, wield an axe, a hammer, a sander, and pretty much any other manly tool that most women, it seems, snub their noses at. I’ve fed the wood chipper, ran the belt sander to refinish the living floor, brushed on the acid-wash to clean the stone walls, and ran the roto-tiller through the garden. But we share the same task list, and the top-priority thing is just that.