The Cascading Effect of Disaster

Wifey could easily catalogue a list of annoying things I do...well, actually, not really. I'm very non annoying...but this is besides the point. One of Wifey's MOST annoying habits is failing to return our upstairs phone handsets to their bases. Usually, this is no big deal, as we have an old fashioned, non cordless phone in our bathroom, but...Wifey removed the cord from that one to bring it to her Dad's nursing home room, and never replaced it. So last night, D2 left for Brickell, to see her friends and spend quality sister time with D1 on this, her last 305 weekend before returning to Gville, and Wifey and I fell asleep to some awful Casey Afleck movie where he beats the hell out of Jessica Alba, causing her to fall in love with him, and that most dreaded of all sounds broke the wee hour silence: a ringing house phone. As Wifey snored, and I jumped up, I saw it was 1:30 am. Doing my Mr. Bean impersonation, I jumped from the night stand phone (no handset) to the office phone (no handset), and finally to the bathroom old school slimline phone (no cord). I fumed. And yelled. And thought it was a good thing Wifey already loved me, or I'd have had to Casey Afleck her... I demanded she get up and go retrieve the handsets. And now my reptilian, anxiety riddled mind told me it was clearly the Miami Police calling -- trying to alert me about the disaster that befell Mary Brickell Village, and my Ds... Wifey called D1, and woke HER out of a sound sleep. She hadn't called, but no, D2 wasn't there. We texted D2, and no reply. Then Wifey called D2's boyfriend Jonathan. He answered --- yes, D2 was with him, and they were fine... So DEFCON of my paranoia was lifted...I attempted to fall asleep, but was still filled with anger, so I told Wifey "Well, then, it's probably your Dad's nursing home calling...I'm sure whatever it is will wait for the morning." So now Wifey was bolt up in bed, too, calling. The helpful night nurse said no, they hadn't called --her Dad was fine. Wifey turned off the light. I was still angry..."Well then, Pembroke Pines Police is calling about your Mom." Wifey didn't take THAT bait...and went to sleep... As of today, the mystery remains...probably just a wrong number, although having a non published number, and being on the do not call list has rendered those annoyances rare. We have called ID, but we can only get it to work when the TV is on -- the caller's identity flashes across the screen. I'm sure there's a way to get a call history, but I'm too lazy to do this. When I was a defense lawyer, and worked on some air crash cases, I recall they all had someting in common: a single mistake let to a series of bigger ones...the cascade of disaster. Fortunately, Wifey's phone malfeasance only cost a few hours of sleep -- for me and D1. And now, I have to double check the status before I turn in. As Roseanne said...it's always something.