The Brownie Effect: One Small Poor Choice that Lead to a Slew of Stress

Brownies ruined my weekend, destroyed my health and almost killed my dog

 Never bake brownies past 9pm and don’t eat them past 9pm either, especially not with a dog in the house. It’s strange how in life the butterfly effect can be so real and damaging. One small poor choice that seems minor at the time can have a disastrous chain of events. It makes me realize I need to be much stricter with myself and not let myself sneak past small evils or small compromises when I know better. I knew at 9:30 it was too late to start cooking browniez, but what I didn’t know and couldn’t predict is that the batch I made would for some reason take twice as long to bake. I should have known because I didn’t have eggs and had to use a substitute and in the past I have noticed some slowness to my oven, but never would I have guessed it would take me an hour and a half to make brownies. Then I ended up eating them and staying up 2 more hours leading to a chain of events where I got less sleep and had to take naps the next two days to recover from my loss of sleep and have enough energy to get my work done. This lead to less time for other projects and important household chores. It also lead to there being brownies to eat. Two days later I went to eat a brownie, I put it on a plate and then put that plate on my coffee table ready to eat and settle down with my dog. Then I remembered something I needed to grab from the other room. 

Terrible mistake, as soon as I heard my dog smacking his lips I knew it was already too late. He had gobbled the entire brownie. 

I cried and then spent the next 2.5 hours researching whether it was an emergency , how much cocoa is in this particular type of brownies and calculating the math behind how many kg my dog is and how many grams of chocolate he can have before it’s serious or fatal. I got a lot of vets just saying taking him to the vet and then other vets saying it’s probably fine because brownies aren’t even that much chocolate . Then a bunch of people on Reddit talking about the large amounts of chocolate their dogs ate and were totally fine. Then one vet saying to give them activated charcoal which I just happen to have so I tried that. But I had to calculate the dog amount from my people capsules which was something like 24-90 capsules so I went with 24 because that already feels insane . I opened the capsules and poured them on top of some plain A2 yogurt and gave them to him fearing that I was possibly now poisoning him with some other substance, but everything online says activated charcoal was fine and this was actually a really small amount compared to what is recommended. 

So anyway looking back on my life I regret making brownies on a work night at 9:30pm. I was being stubborn and wanted to achieve my plan of tv and brownies even though I knew it was past the desired time for getting ready for bed. I made a bad , small , seemingly unimportant choice and it lead to a series of bad results and damn out right nearly killed my dog. Ok according to everything I read he was never in any major danger, but it surely was scary. Probably all unnecessary stress. Stress oddly is the entire reason I had a craving for brownies in the first place. And so it seems, when you make decisions in stress you beget more stress. Never underestimate the nagging voice in your head that says “this is probably not the best idea”. No matter how small, do not ignore that voice. Based on the information in front of you and past experience it may seem like you are just doing a minor bending of the rules, just dipping a little toe into the waters of chaos, but it will mess up your entire routine and possibly kill your dog. It’s not worth it. Just stick to the disciplines and routines you know you should follow for your best health and you will avoid unexpected and unnecessary consequences. The time didn’t fit the crime, but then again maybe it did, because my true crime was not listening to my gut instinct, my true self gently whispering what was best for me. And this is a lesson I will not soon forget. 

Kind of like this creepy ai brownie butterfly