Emergency chocolate protocol

Carmen has this sixth sense about when I’m having a weird night. I was sitting on the living room floor at 9pm, surrounded by Jake’s entire wardrobe folded into perfect little squares, when she knocked on the door with a grocery bag full of dark chocolate squares.

Emergency chocolate protocol

“You’ve been stress-folding again,” she said, not even a question. Which was completely accurate – I’d started with one load of towels and somehow worked through three baskets of clean clothes that had been sitting around for a week. Jake walked in from his evening run, took one look at the scene, and just started laughing.

Turns out Carmen had a disaster of her own today – her presentation at work got moved up a week with zero notice, so she stress-bought enough chocolate for both of us.

Crisis chocolate deployment in progress

We ended up eating way too much Ghirardelli while I finished the last of the folding, which honestly made the whole thing feel less insane and more like we were just hanging out.

Sometimes the best part of friendship is someone showing up exactly when you didn’t know you needed them to.