The family ornament we chose to sum up 2019

Well. THAT was a year.

I'm ready to be boring for awhile, please and thanks. Because 2019 was a lot of things - oh god, so many things; all the things - but a snoozefest it was not. I published a book that resulted in the most emotionally intimate and exhausting book tour of my life. I wrote two more that'll be out next year (you can preorder one of them now), and put my seventh (!!!) into contract. I started a new marketing side-hustle, and actually work out of an office (IMAGINE) a couple of days a week now. I moved. Again.

Last night was not the first night that I have appeared in my own personal horror movie. No no - that night happened several months back, on one of my very first nights alone in this house without the kids.

I had installed a very fancy security system that had alerts on virtually every door and window and crack in the wall, and so when I awoke in the middle of the night to what sounded like a moan in my backyard, screamed at the top of my lungs, and then heard my very fancy security system announce "GLASS SHATTER...MASTER BEDROOM WINDOW" you better believe I was up and out and hiding behind the china cabinet in my dining room in .02 seconds. Did I grab a butcher knife on my streak through the kitchen? Yes, yes I did.

The next thing that happened was that a very nice lady's voice came over the very fancy alarm system's very fancy control panel, and told me that she'd alerted the police. She asked me how I was; whether I had a weapon; whether I still heard any noises. Half an hour later, police still decidedly MIA, she and I had become old friends. I knew where she'd grown up, and how many kids she had. I was by then sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the china cabinet with the knife in my lap, explaining to her that I was a newly single mother and that I was alone in my house, not to mention the fact that I was blonde and wearing nothing but underwear, which means that if this had been a horror movie and someone had actually broken into my house, I would be oh my god, so extremely dead. Like, many times over.

This is the first picture of Lucy I ever posted here.

Lucy’s first name was Rosie; I don’t know if I ever told you that. She came to me as a surprise: A girl who my back-then boyfriend and I were friends with had bought a teacup shih tzu with one blue eye and one brown eye for some unconscionable amount of money at a Malibu pet shop. And then that girl decided to go to London and maybe not ever come back, and so she gave the dog - Rosie - to us. I didn’t know this; what happened was that my boyfriend decided to surprise me, so one day in the fall of 2005 I was sitting at my kitchen table doing whatever, and the door opened, and I saw my boyfriend's nine-year-old daughter standing there. She kneeled down on the floor and parted her curled hands, and this fist-sized ball of white fluff came speeding towards me. And that was it, I was in love. I liked the name Rosie but I wanted her to be my own, and so I named her Lucy. I don't remember why I picked that name, but from then on that's who she was.

My dad happened to be staying at my house that day, and when I ran to tell him about Lucy he'd barely even look at her, so annoyed was he that I’d gotten a dog (too much responsibility, why would you do that, et cetera). But later that afternoon I had to go out for some appointment or another, and so against his protests I left her with him - literally just dumped her on his lap, said “I’ll be back in a bit,” and left. When I returned a few hours later, I walked in to find my father and my new puppy snuggled up on the couch, gazing into each others' eyes.