georgeplant061

For love to last a lifetime, it takes a lot more than luck. It takes a life long commitment.

In a song full of idoms, here's one more, though this one had some wordplay done.

The idiom is: "Cut off your nose to spite your face", meaning to hurt yourself in an effort to punish someone else. Sounds like an odd thing to do, but ... people do the darndest things.

So the wordplay here changed the meaning of the original. It doesn't mean much in itself, but it leads into the wonderful next line about big old hearts dancing in their eyes.

"Sly as a fox" is an idiom for someone who is cunning and experienced; someone who can get what they want by any means necessary (sneaky and underhanded included).

"Crazy as a loon" is an idiom for someone who acts completely goofy or acts like the Mad Hatter of Alice in Wonderland.

Both of these are presented by the wife as left-handed compliments about her husband.

These "not quite sure they were compliments" are typical of older married people who've learned to appreciate the uniqueness of their spouse.

"In Spite of Ourselves" by John Prine appears on his 1999 album of the same name.

This duet with Iris Dement was written with her in mind. Prine's wife said she called Iris to tease her about the song and Dement said it took a lot of courage to sing some of the lines the first few times.

(Iris Dement and John Prine:)