“Willow, Drop that gum. Now.”

As I stood, bleary eyed and crazy haired, these were the words coming out of my mouth. Willow is my dog, and she is absolutely precious 90% of the time. The other 10% happens to be first thing in the morning and when being told to come (that’s a whole different story). By first thing, I mean anywhere between 5:30 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.

That, my friends, is ridiculously early, and when I am standing in the small yard area behind my apartment, the last thing that I want to be worried about is the dog finding chewing gum. Mostly, I just want her to handle her business so that I can get back to the heavenly pot of fresh coffee. I’m going to give you guys a dramatic monologue of the sequence of events this one blue-gum filled morning.

“Willow, what is that?” I ask through my sleep-blurred vision.

*Willow looks guiltily up at me, mouth closed oddly over something.

“Whatever, just go pee.”

*Willow turns to walk away and I see something bright blue fall out of her oddly closed mouth.

“Willow, what in the heck do you have? Drop it! No! Willow. Drop that gum!”

*Willow looks up at me and quickly snatches up the gum that someone else so nicely disposed of in our yard.

Now, at this point I am beyond perturbed. I am sleepy, my eyes aren’t focusing all the way yet, and I have had no coffee. All this considered and she still wants to play keep the gum away from mom. Really?

*Willow wanders around in the dew drenched grass that I don’t want to step in, alternating between having the gum in her mouth and spitting out because I guess it feels weird.

“Willow, that’s enough. Drop the gum. You don’t need that gum. It has someone else’s germs on it. How gross is that?”

Now, I know that she is a dog and that she licks her own butt, but I must remind you, it was 5:30 a.m.

Annoyance mounting, I force my barefeet feet into the dewy grass to get the stupid blue gum from the annoying dog so that I can go back inside to the coffee. After I got the gum away, it took me ten minutes to get the dog to come.

Oh the joys of parenthood.