A gestalt is a thing that is greater than the sum of its parts. And gestalt stupidity is what you get when an airheaded woman, her careless husband, and fate combine forces to completely confuse and complicate their lives. (Not fate’s. The man and the woman’s.)

Part the first: While on a business trip in a different state, the husband (”DH” from now on) sticks his wallet in the console between the seats of the woman’s (”me” from now own) minivan before going into a party with the woman (me).

Part the second: The wallet wiggles its way into a crevase that is impossible to see and virtually impossible to feel even in broad daylight.

3: DH and I come out. The wallet cannot be located. We pull the car apart in the parking lot. We drive home. We pull the car apart in the driveway.

4: DH and I both get up early the next morning to pull the car apart again. No go.

5: Assuming we were hallucinating about putting the wallet in the console (quite possible), DH asks me to cancel the credit cards.

6: I call. As I predicted, I’m only allowed to cancel the ones in my name. So I waste 20 minutes of my time and can only reorder a card for my Discover account. I order a new card for each of us. I discover that when DH tried to get a different pattern of Discover card two years ago, he’d opened another account instead, so now there are 3 accounts for the two of us. I call DH and he cancels one account and gets a new card for the other. Please insert small melodrama about his lost driver’s license and the barkwardness of NM govt here.

7: DH’s new Discover cards arrive. Mine don’t. New debit cards don’t arrive. I ask DH why. He says he hasn’t canceled them yet.

8: We find the wallet!

9: I call Discover again and ask if I can reactivate the accunt since we found the cards. No go. I ask for a card for me to be sent, then.

10: My credit card arrives. I activate it.

11: DH won’t activate his cards because he’s certain he has to do it from our permanent residence. I prove we don’t by using my card. Finally, DH activates his cards.

12: I return to my home state. Leaving my new Discover card sitting beside the computer.

13: DH calls and tell me to get the debit cards out of the mailbox. He did cancel them, after all, and if we don’t activate the new ones in time, we won’t have any ATM, Visa, or debit card access to our checking account. Apparently, they’d only send them to our permanent address.

14: I realize that I have lost the key to the mailbox. See, the post office added two new group mailboxes next to ours, and DH usually checks the mail after dark. He drove up to the last one in the row, as usual, and proceeded to try his key, which didn’t work. He thought something was wrong with his key, so he took mine. I went in daylight and discovered what had happened, but with one thing and another, my key didn’t get back on my keyring, and so I have none.

15: I make a request to have the lock changed.

16: I go the next day and get the new keys, get all the mail, and get the new debit cards, which I activate.

17: So now I have a debit card that I can use, but I’m still 2000 miles away from my Discover card, and DH is 2000 away from his debit card.

*sighs*

Have you ever gone through a cascade like this?