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The man and his wife were reading. They listened intently for any sounds from upstairs. Both their ears and the baby monitors told them, however, that their darling, sweet, but hyperactive children had finally fallen into slumber. Neither understood how such dynamos could be quite so perfectly still when they were asleep. Both refrained from checking on them. The heart monitor—which they had designed—told them that all was fine.

A scattered few looks at each other, then they rose in unison, heading towards their special place. A breath of cold air as they opened the door, but they knew that their body heat would warm it eventually. (Here, too, the monitors burped and burbled.) Detritus tossed, apparently casually to the untrained eye, littered the surfaces. They set the alarm clock.

“First one to finish wins,” they agreed.

There was frantic scrabbling for tools, then only the occasional chink of metal against metal. When each had accumulated some headway, he looked at the other.

“Don’t you think that a 5/16ths is just a little excessive, Ree?” he asked.

“I’m not taking anything from a man who doesn’t believe in adjustable cog ratios, Mark” she retorted.

And so their evening passed.