I was fuming a tad over the dishes in the sink (a lot of emotions seem to be coming out with the tap water from my kitchen faucet lately) late this afternoon, because I was thinking about how fate had conspired to keep me in the kitchen cooking food that Dan had looked up all the recipes for and made all the groceries for.

There's a big dinner we're having with friends tomorrow night - a Tu B'Shevat seder commemorating this year's birthday of the trees on the Jewish calendar. Dan came up with a nice couple of recipes courtesy of the Internet and some Sephardic cookbooks in our possession, and then, earlier this week, he dropped a small nuclear device - uh, he said, "I've got a band performance next Thursday, and since I have that going on, maybe I should be going to choir practice this Thursday, and you can stay home with the little guy and cook all of this up, if that's OK..."

Like a doofus in love, I saw his point of view and said, "Okay." That was then.

This afternoon, it was, "Oh, NO. What did I get myself into? Why am I always sooo sympathetic?"

Well, something or someone intervened. Edie let Dan know that we wouldn't be having choir practice at our synagogue for the next two weeks because of Mardi Gras, and when Dan called me from his car to ask my honest opinion of what should be done, I told him I thought he should stay home and cook.

I headed to choir practice, which consisted largely of an hour of reorganizing our choir books and then singing for another half hour, with many jokes being shared during the music shuffling. Most of the jokes had to do with priests, ministers, and rabbis, with one good one cropping up concerning Finkelstein and Jesus. A marvelous time was had by all.

I headed home, walked in the door to the gorgeous smell of the brisket Dan is cooking for tomorrow night, and he said to me, "Our son began to talk about God at bedtime."

"What?!!!?!?"

"He wanted me to read that Ruth and Naomi storybook to him (by Jean Marzollo, for you parents out there. It's very good). Then he just started going on and on about God. About how God lives in New York and all kinds of stuff."

"Oh, my GOD!"

"Exactly!" Dan said, grinning.

I went out to walk the dog, came back, and helped chop up some veggies to throw in with the seared brisket for when it was time for it to sit in the oven.

"So what exactly was he saying about God?" I asked as I cut up some carrots.

"Oh, just that God was in New York, looking after all the taxicabs," Dan said.

"Huh."

All I could think was, if that's true, that explains a lot.

And I was very happy I hadn't told any of the religious jokes at the synagogue earlier in the evening, although I did laugh at some of them...

Forgive me, Lord...