If you would make God laugh ...

... then tell Him your plans.

The small fly in the ointment of my fabulously organized accordion syllabus was this: while I was trying to clean our ancient and dysfunctional front windows last weekend -- thought I might like to, dunno, see what was going on in the street -- one of them fell on my wrist. 

These are big, double hung windows, their cords long gone, and we have in our usual half-assed way been leaving them shut. When absolutely necessary, during heat waves and such, we prop them open with a wooden spoon.

The spoons -- there are two, we are efficient in our numbskullness -- are in some ways perfect. They are the right height (the swollen, paint-gummed windows won't go any higher) and are easily stashed between the windows and storms.

Each spring as the heat approaches I get anxious, wondering where I have put the spoons; each summer I discover them with joy, exactly where I had forgotten I left them.

The thing about a perfect technology such as this is that it can easily become invisible to you. So it was that, cleaning around the spoon in my sudden access of domesticity, I forgot it was there. 

As you might imagine, a spoon is easy to knock out of the way and that is what happened and the window came crashing down on my wrist and the voice of the accordionist was heard throughout the land. 

I've been putting off getting it X-rayed and have been wearing an improvised sleeve with a Chinese plaster underneath. Actually, it's a sock with the toes cut out and a hole for my thumb.

"Is it a ... tensor bandage?" a friend said, eyeing it dubiously.

"Maybe it means you shouldn't be washing your windows," someone suggested at a party. (Yes, I was wearing my manky sleeve in public.)

That is exactly it! I often hear God whispering little hints like that to me: "You shouldn't be doing housework" or "For this you went to college?"

"If thy left hand offend thee, cut it off" -- but unfortunately it was my right hand. This will mean some time spent in purgatory.

By purgatory, I mean Melodic Adventures in Bassland.

Ow.