Old Man in Pajamas

I spent my evening opening and logging mailed requests with donations for the troop to pick up retired Christmas trees, envelope after envelope, spreadsheet entry after spreadsheet entry, the laughter and conversation drifting down the stairs of teenaged kids who were fat and happy on pizza and DVDs and were talking, because they didn't know an adult was silently working at the bottom of the stairs, about first orgasms and the phenomenon of blue balls (these were boys AND girls). Finally the horrible, horrible thought occurred to me that I might hear my own son's voice enter into this conversation and I hastily shut down and went off to bed. I lay there a little while reading a book when I suddenly had the urge to write something, anything, notes for a story, a blog post, whatever, and rather than stare at the ceiling contemplating the essential practicality of keeping a notebook by the bedside (a very good habit I've never approached having), I got up to retrieve my laptop from the table at the bottom of the stairs. My bed clothes are just a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, unless it's too warm for a t-shirt, but I figured since no one had come downstairs for over an hour while I was working, what were the odds that they would do so while I was out there just long enough to get something?

What WERE the odds? Miz Liz heard me explaining to some teenaged kid I don't even know what cupboard to find the cups in, and was chortling most energetically when I came back to bed, wearing just a t-shirt and these droopy old sweetheart boxers with the faded hearts and X's and O's.