Monday! You sleep through the alarm, stagger through the first blog post of the day, then force your unthinking carcass into running clothes. You zip up your hoodie, pat the pocket, ascertain the presence of the ipod, and stumble into the sunshine. You leave your inner apartment door unlocked, because the front door locks automatically, and the upstairs neighbors aren’t going to rob you (they are your landlords). Said front door always sticks; you pull it shut and it’s not quite shut, so you do the responsible thing and go back up the stoop and pull it closed with a satisfying bang.

You pull out your ipod and pat the other pocket where the keys are only the keys aren’t there.

In your stupid haze, you think this is a mistake. It will be revealed as a mistake if you pat your pockets harder. The problem will be solved if you throw your shoulder against the well-slammed front door and force it open. Only the pockets are empty and the door stands firm. There is a spare key, somewhere, maybe, but where? You scramble around the porch and the basement door and the mailbox and the driveway and there is no spare key. You run down the street to J.’s house, J. has a spare key, only no one answers when you knock.

You run further down the street to the coffee shop where D. works, because D. has all the necessary numbers in his phone, but D. is not working today. Luckily his co-worker takes pity on you, and what follows is a long story of borrowed phones and relaying messages between people in four towns and in the end people come to your rescue and then, later, your boyfriend calls from New Jersey and reminds you where the spare key is. And it was there all along.

There is only one thing to do: write about it in the second person and bake a lot of pumpkin chocolate-chip bread to thank everyone who helped.

(As usual, I looked at some recipes and proceeded to ignore them. This is my own creation and it makes four 9x5 loaves. You could halve it, use four eggs, but surely you have three friends who want pumpkin chocolate-chip bread. Or you could make three friends with pumpkin chocolate-chip bread.)

• 2 c. neutral vegetable oil
• 3 c. white sugar
• 2 c. light brown sugar, packed
• 7 large eggs
• 2 15 oz. cans solid-pack pumpkin
• 1 c. water
• 6 1/2 c. unbleached flour
• 4 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 3 tsp. salt
• 3 tsp. cinnamon
• 2 heaping cups semisweet chocolate chips, the best you can get

Preheat the oven to 350 and grease four 9x5 loaf pans. In the largest bowl you have, cream together the oil and sugars. Don’t bother using a stand mixer, you have a whisk and arm muscles, don’t you? Beat in the eggs, then the pumpkin and water. In a separate large bowl, whisk together all dry ingredients except for the chocolate chips. Gradually add dry ingredients to wet, switching from the whisk to a wooden spoon halfway through. Leave a few tablespoons of the flour mixture in the bottom of the dry ingredients bowl; add the chocolate chips to that and toss them to coat, so they don’t sink in the batter.

Divide the batter evenly between the pans. (I found there was a heaping 3.5 cups of batter per pan, if you’re measuring it out and baking in batches.) Bake for about an hour, or until a toothpick tests clean. If your oven is slightly aggressive, as mine is, you may want to tent the tops of the pans with foil in the last 15 minutes of baking to prevent overbrowning.

Cool loaves in pans for five minutes, then turn out onto wire racks. Cool completely, wrap securely, and let rest overnight before serving/delivering with a sheepish smile.