You may recall that, although I don’t write about them enough, don’t take them for enough walks, and don’t give them as many hugs and kisses as they richly deserve, the Ohana includes two basenji dogs, Rudy (our main basenji) and Dollie (our smaller auxiliary basenji, who was adopted not for us but for Rudy). The basenji is frequently described as the barkless dog from Africa, and it is true that while they can produce a single woof, you will not hear from them the repetitive barking of most breeds.

This is not to say the basenji is mute. Like the Australian dingo, they produce a sound which has been described as a yodel or a chortle; but anyone who calls it either of those things is lying to you and should be ashamed. What a basenji does, unmistakably, is baroo. Dollie, our female, does not do it whatsoever — the only sound I’ve heard from her is a crying scolding sort of whine which is invariably directed at poor Rudy — but Rudy can produce a truly impressive baROOOOOOOOOO. One of our favorite games is to baroo back and forth at each other; since I adopted him when he was four months old, he thinks I’m his mother, and he adores me. Rudy generally baroos with the expectation of a treat; I do it for the sheer joy of barooing. (If you ever get the chance, find a basenji and try it for yourself.)

I love McDonald’s cheeseburgers; I have, all my life. A Big Mac or a Quarter Pounder won’t do; it’s got to be either a cheeseburger or a double cheeseburger. Charmingly, the formula hasn’t changed since I was a kid, and it’s always the ultimate in delicious comfort to bite into one and taste the perfect balance of cheese, onions, mustard and ketchup.

Of course, they are the one of the worst things you can eat as far as fat and calories are concerned; but I don’t eat very often. Usually just once a day, and sometimes I don’t eat anything for a couple of days at a time. Therefore, when I do eat, I can bite into a double cheeseburger with a clear conscience. (My health and nutrition oriented friends are gasping with horror at this point, but you have to understand that my body has always thrived on a certain amount of abuse.)

My other guilty pleasure is reading true crime stories. At present I’m following the “suitcase murder” case from New Jersey, and I followed the Scott Peterson case so closely it was embarrassing (twice-daily visits to the Modesto Bee website). I’m in the middle of a book about the Green River killer, and I’ve read everything written about Ted Bundy. Is this any way for an otherwise intelligent, well-read woman to spend  her time? It’s not. Of course it’s not. But as with the McDonald’s cheeseburgers, it’s a guilty pleasure that doesn’t involve breaking any laws, Commandments or marriage vows. And those are the kind of guilty pleasures I can live with.

Today we had one of those mornings: trying to get our family of five out the door for work, school and day care, all three kids at once were having a “needy” morning. Matt wanted extra cuddling, something to drink, and his Toy Story sweatshirt. Julia, who has fully stepped into the Terrible Twos and is fiercely independent, wanted to fight me every step of the way about getting diapered and dressed. And five-year-old Sam lay in bed and groaned at me.

My stomach hurts, he said.

With the perfect illogic of a working mother, I told him Sam, you can’t be sick today. I have a deadline at work, and besides, I stayed home with you on Monday when you had a fever. You have to go to school.

He said he thought he would throw up, but I handed him a metal wastebasket and made him get dressed anyway. His steps, as he walked to the car with his dad, were theatrically slow and painful, but go to school he did.

I’m pretty sure he was faking it. He had a few new action figures, and they were set up in a nice tableau at which he cast longing glances as we left. And so it starts: the game of playing sick. I know all about it, because as a child, I was a pro.

I recall mornings when my mom stuck a thermometer in my mouth, whereupon I ran it under warm water as soon as she left the room until it reached an appropriate temperature. Around 100 was good — too low and you’d go to school anyway, too high and you’d end up in a tub full of cold water. Who knows how many days I whiled away in bed reading books and watching Gilligan’s Island instead of sitting in a boring classroom?

Thank God for ear thermometers. As far as I know, kids haven’t come up with a way to fake a fever with one of those. YET.

You have to wonder how they come up with these things. This morning while I was getting the kids out of the car at day care, Matt suddenly said I hope nobody cuts off my peepee. He clutched his equipment and really looked quite worried. If someone cut off my peepee, it would bleed.

I couldn’t believe it. Good Lord, Matt, where on earth did you get that idea? I asked. Nobody would ever cut off your peepee.

Well, people have knives, he said as if to himself.

Well, yes — but they’re NOT for cutting off peepees, I told him.

They’re for cutting fruit, he decided. I agreed, emphatically.

Who knows where a four-year-old boy gets a notion like that? Has he tapped into some primal fear common to every human male? At any rate, I was horrified. I hope I helped him feel better; I hope I gave him some assurance that his peepee was safe.

Candice has requested that today, the first day of spring, be a day to blog about war. This is a touchy subject for me, because when we first went into Iraq, I trusted our President. I wanted so much to believe that what we were doing was right.

In retrospect, I can admit that every instinct in me cried out against it. I was no fan of Saddam, but I had to admit he kept the trains running on time, and the “proof” that he supported terrorism or was involved in 9/11 was sketchy, to say the least. I knew in my heart that Iraq would end up in complete anarchy and disarray if we took out Saddam. But I supported my President. I trusted him.

I fucked up. HE fucked up. We fucked up. And there’s no way to undo the damage, to take back the lives that have been lost. My husband said that he would not have sent our sons, had they been old enough, to fight in that war. That, right there, should have been proof enough. But we tried to believe. We have long since stopped believing.

I had some dental work done yesterday, which left me hurting, so for breakfast today I had:

• One Starbucks venti coffee with three espresso shots
• One 40 mg. Prozac
• Two 500 mg. Vicodin

Damn, I’m in a good mood today. Happy Friday!

For the past year, I’ve been experimenting with working part time and being a housewife and mother part time. The idea of all this was to take some of the pressure off me, but it transpires, as I’ve always expected, that I COMPLETELY SUCK AT HOUSEWORK. I can’t help it; I was raised from birth to have a career, not to scrub toilets. And the sad truth is that my weekday afternoons, which were meant to be spent cooking and cleaning and shopping for groceries, were being spent watching Spongebob with my five-year-old.

All that has changed now. I’m back working a full-time schedule, and Sam will go to day care with his brother and sister every day after kindergarten lets out. And my dirty, dirty house is right now being cleaned professionally for money. It is the best feeling in the world to sit in my office and quietly earn money while someone else scrubs the toilets.

Okay, so I spoke too soon. I wasn’t back on my feet after all. What I have to show for smoking cigarettes from my teens until my late thirties is pneumonia every single winter. It’s taken me all this time to start feeling like, well, myself. Whoever the hell that is.

In other news, Julia has learned to make heavy use of the two essential words of contrary toddlerhood: mine and no.  She’s ramping up for the Terrible Twos, don’t you know, and shows every sign of being just as stubborn and argumentative as Erika and Matt, who are as ornery as alligators on steroids. (At least I got one sweet kid; Sam has his father’s happy easygoing nature.)

So. I am alive! And writing. And working. And riding herd over Julia, who has a perfectly demonic knack for getting into things she isn’t meant to have. I keep telling myself this is the last toddlerhood I will have to live through — it can only get easier from here. Right? Right? Please tell me it will.