Me vs. a Waffle: the snowball effect

It's funny how an inconspicuous thing can derail your entire day. A waffle, a mere breakfast food can have an enormous influence over your life. I wonder if the person who works at Eggo who made this particular waffle realized all the trouble that it would cause...

Allow me to set the stage: It all began this morning with breakfast, which would make sense since you already know that the story involves a waffle. I had a meeting at 9:30, my wife had already left for work. My 3 year old son was still asleep in our bed, somehow he managed to wiggle his way in at some point during the night last night. I was downstairs getting ready, I had already showered and was wearing my nice khaki pants, an undershirt, and socks.

I grabbed a toaster pastry from the freezer and put it in the toaster oven, making sure it was set to “toast” and not “bake.” I turned it on for the full toast cycle, and headed to the bathroom to finish getting ready. When I returned to the kitchen I found it full of smoke. I thought this was strange, because my toaster pastry wasn't at all burned, yet there was smoke pouring out of the toaster oven.

Ok, maybe pouring out is an exaggeration, it wasn't enough to set off the smoke detector (not to self – check battery in smoke detector), but it was enough to stink up the whole house. I turned on the fan over the stove and cracked the side door open just enough to get a little air in and hopefully air out the kitchen. Returning to the toaster over, I discovered at the back of the tray, which I had not previously seen, was a (formerly) frozen waffle that had apparently been through 5 or 6 “toast” cycles in the toaster oven. Now it was black, charcoal looking, and slightly smoking.

As I turned back to the door, I noticed that it was now wide open, not slightly cracked open as I had left it. The wind must have blown it or something. I also noticed my 2 Labrador retrievers headed out the now wide open door before I could reach them.

Running outside (remember, pants, t-shirt, socks – no shoes) after them, I vaguely recalled the obedience school lessons about practicing calling your dog to you so that in case they ever escaped toward a busy street (such as ours), you could call them back to you. Ya, that didn't work so good for me. Yelling after the dogs did no good, so after then I ran to the neighbors driveway, where they were busy marking their territory.

Unfortunately for me, when my son is sleeping the dogs tend to make quite a racket outside his door shaking and scratching, so we are often in the habit of not making them wear their collars. Whenever we had taken them off last, we had neglected to put them back on. So not only were both dogs without any kind of identification should they get lost, once I managed to catch up with them, I had no way of getting two 70 pound animals back to the house with nothing to grab on to. Grabbing the black one by the scruff of his neck, he howled in protest and broke loose, taking off running down the bike path that goes in front of my house. I stood watching them run as fast as they could, not looking back, until they disappeared out of sight. I don't think they even slowed down until I was out of sight.

Now I had multiple problems. 1 – I couldn't breathe from an asthma attack brought on by running out into the cold air with no shoes and no shirt on. 2 – my dogs were now officially gone and with no tags on. 3 – My 3 year old was still asleep in the house.

I weighed my options for a moment. Go after the dogs? Stay and call for backup? Hope they come home on their own? (yeah, right) Wake up my son or leave him sleeping? My mother in law was due to come over in about 20 minutes to watch Aiden, should I call her and see if she's on her way?

In the end, I ran back into the house, took a couple puffs on my inhaler so I could breathe again, grabbed my kid out of bed, wrapped him in a blanket, and threw him in his car seat. The poor boy was a little shell-shocked, I think. I don't remember a time we've ever thrown him in the car in his pajamas without even letting him wake up fully. He whimpered a bit as I buckled him in. I think I would have too.

We drove down the street hoping that the dogs (a) didn't try to cross the street and (b) didn't actually go to far. Oh yes, did I mention I live right down the street from an elementary school? And this was also about the time that school was beginning? There was a large crowd of kids and parents and teachers outside the school building as I pulled up to it. I think most of them were pointing and staring and these stupid yellow and black dogs that some irresponsible owner had let run loose through the neighborhood.

Oh yeah, those were my dogs. They were very excited to see all the kids and make so many new friends. I bet every kid in line at that school got a friendly lick this morning.

I whipped in the driveway (the bus driveway) past the “do not enter” sign (I came in the wrong way.) The car running, my groggy 3 year old in the back seat, I jumped out like a crazy person to collect my dogs. Did I also mention that I drive a Taurus? And that with a car seat in the middle of the back, there isn't a lot of room for two large dogs?

Not wanting to risk losing them again, I corralled the dogs toward my open drivers side door as 30 2nd graders looked on, and stared pushing. I pushed both dogs until they found someplace in the car to squeeze themselves into. It wasn't pretty, but then again I left graceful behind a long ways back.

The four of us made our way home, where I looped a leash around each dog's neck and led them individually into the house – which still smelled quite a bit like smoke.

I spent the rest of the day coughing from the asthma attack, smelling smoke in my house, and listening to my son tell me again and again, “we lost the dogs, dad.”

Stupid waffle.