Alone at Home

I'm not sure whether the guy is actually out shopping with his wife, putting on a good face but secretly wishing he could be alone at home and not deal with it, or if it's actually about a lonely man who fantasizes about all the mundane stuff that comes with a relationship, he's so desperate NOT to be alone at home. The bridge seems to imply more toward the former, and that maybe the reason he is "alone at home" in his mind is out of embarassment and fear of being seen as a "weak" husband, following his wife around on errands.

The singer is complaining to the audience, but not to his wife, about all the boring stuff he has to do in order to make her happy.

This is very selfish of him, since that's how God makes marriage: If you're not going to become a religious or priest, you get married and the test that God gives is that you have to put up with the other person and do things for them to make them happy. There's rules to the whole thing, and it's not just about you. The purpose of life is to live in community, even if everyone else fails at it.

Jonathan Coulter's songs are very interesting, but like everything else, what's going on in his own life (or that of his uncredited songwriters) comes through. Jon isn't married and has never been married. This song and "Shop Vac" are really just inane fantasies of his about how things work in the real world. Fiction in songs is just as useful as fiction in the real world.