Did any coal-in-your-stocking type of things happen to you on Christmas Day?

My mom died on the 24th, so Christmas was pretty shit

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Any chance it's corked? I don't know if that's the correct term, but is the cork light grey / moldy? I've purchased a few bottles that were like that, but I think the flavor was affected in those cases.

Alternatively, any chance you're in the NY vicinity? 🙂
That is a sad story.

I woke up sick Christmas Day and still feel pretty bad. I'm fairly certain a family member gifted me whatever I have.

same! went to my spouse's work party last week, and proceeded to develop a gnarly cold by the time xmas rolled in.

I'm better now, of course; just in time to get back to work.

Got lucky. But one year my wonderful kitty got very sick and had to be put down on Xmas eve. That coal hurt for months and years. Happily, I’ve worked through it. My two kitties got tuna on Xmas day.

😸💗
My kitty had to be put down on the 20th and we'd tried so hard with meds to get her better, but it got worse quickly. She was 17 1/2 years old and I've been having such a hard time with it, but also feeling bad for being so down right now. I think this will also take me months and years, but your story helped. We've definitely been trying to love and pamper our other twerps : )
- My heart breaks for your family. Love on the remaining fur-people extra hard and think of all the good times your lost kitty got to have with you.

Christmas morning my phone broke (shutoff at >50% and wouldn't turn on at all). The day before a flight. When all of the stores to get a quick replacement were closed. And the only way I could get any info about my flight was by having my email's 2FA keys, which were on my broken phone, and the only backup was on my desktop, which was 500km+ away.

Had to walk our catsitter through sending me the backup, and then rush to a retailer this morning to buy a replacement before my flight. Was not a fun experience, or a fun way to spend all of my Christmas money 😅

That 2fa is proper garbage when your phone breaks. My wife's phone broke, and I couldn't get her authorized on the new phone bc 2fa. I logged into a desktop that she was logged in on, got the code and everything, but that apparently wasn't good enough. Needed to be able to respond to a text on the phone that didn't work, or wait 48 hours before customer service could do anything.

Same thing with find my device. Usually, when you want to find your device, you're not going to have your device on you. If you lose your phone in a public place now, you're fucked until you can get back to another device you're logged in on. Wife also lost her phone on a trip. Here, use mine to log into your account and track it. Nope, need 2fa to get into find my. Like, I'm low-key tempted to just turn it off and be less secure after having 2 shit experiences as a result of it. I won't because security and all, but damn.
- Google used to have an app called Trusted Contact where you could designate someone as a "trusted contact" and they could request your location. You'd get a notification for the request and if you don't respond in 5 minutes, the location is automatically shared. This way you weren't always sharing your location with someone and would know if they are trying to see your location. This helped me a few times finding my phone from my SO phone, without needing to log into account with 2FA
This kind of thing is why I still print out all the travel related stuff when I'm going anywhere.

Having that paper copy in my pocket as a backup gives me a lot of peace of mind.

I had to cancel Christmas for my eleven-year-old foster daughter.

Last Monday, her mom (who was doing really well after eight months, and we were trying to organize an overnight stay on Christmas Eve with), had a mental breakdown that resulted in the police getting called and her one daughter that had moved back in had to move out. DSS then canceled all unsupervised visits. We were all devastated by this setback, and we tried everything we could to arrange some kind of visit Christmas Day, but they wouldn't budge (once we found out the full context of the incident, we agreed that was the right call).

Move to Friday, the 22nd. I get a call from my wife that the girl had stolen a gift bag with some shampoo and soaps that was to be donated to one of those adopt a family programs at her school. When confronted, she denied stealing it, claiming she was told it was for her (it wasn't, nor was the kid that she claims told her that aware of this). We were livid. My wife made her bring the gifts to the girl and apologize. After, she doubled down on her innocence and wanted to know if she was still going to be receiving all of her Christmas presents (she's extremely materialistic). It was at this point, I told my wife that she was not going to receive anything from us, which she reluctantly agreed.

Before we could even inform her of that punishment, she attempted to run away. The only reason I heard her is that she closed the storm door too loudly. When I chased after her (in 22 degree F weather, and she only had a fleece jacket on) and yelled at her to get back in the house because she was grounded, she refused. Eventually, I had to call the police because of the danger (she has a history of running away). She initially refused to polices urging to come back to the house, until they told her that if she refused, she would have to go to a juvenile detention facility for Christmas.

I then had the task of telling her Saturday that, because of her actions the day before, she was not receiving any presents from us for Christmas. Her first question was: "will I still get the phone that my mom bought me?"

We've since been monitoring all exits out of our house since Friday night. My wife has slept on the couch in the living room each night.

That’s a tough Christmas, brother. Sounds like you are trying your best for a troubled youth.
Wow, I think you win this game. Sorry to hear all that. Thank you for what you and your family are going through for this poor girl, her mother, and us all.

Disclaimer: I still enjoyed the time spent on this, but....

I spent 2 hours talking with my highly inebriated and closest friend because she decided to spend Christmas with her family. Her shitty, shitty family who has always been some combination of neglectful and passive aggressive. She's also very sensitive and it still hurts her after all these years/decades that they treat her this way.

my poor dog's anal gland burst. he got to go to the vet and is currently sleeping next to me with his inflatable cone. my poor lil guy.

I'm sorry about your dog's anus
- This feels like a good place to bring up the old Demetri Martin joke about how "I'm sorry" and "I apologize" mean the same thing... except in certain cases.

My kids (18/16) did not get me a present for Christmas. They got gifts for each other, my wife (their step-mom) and their step-sister (with my assistance). Yet still failed to think of getting their father a gift. They both have driver's licenses, cars, and their own money. I'd have been happy with a $2 bag of sour patch kids. Shit, I'd have taken the fucking coal if they just would have remembered.

Is this like moments of bad luck, or unfortunate "gifts", or things that make you say "oh ahh I could burn this and accelerate climate change"?

yeah any of that.

Because Christmas Day is supposed to be a magical flawless wonderful day full of joyous gifts and love,

But sometimes shit happens.
- I was the one putting the coal in the stocking this year and gifted someone a rock. It was a gag gift in a set of actual gifts, and it was on theme, but still. Gave somebody a rock for Christmas.

We usually spend the whole day with my parents, but for the second year in a row it was cut very short by winter weather.

The year before that it was illness, and before that the heart of the COVID pandemic.

I was really bummed because I don't think my parents have many Christmases left.

I threw out my back while lifting weights on Christmas Eve. Spent Christmas dealing with lower back pain.

Ass on the toilet, face in the tub. I was in the bathroom from around 9pm to 4am.

Almost sounded like you were setting us up for a rhyme:

Ass on the toilet, face in the tub, 8:00 p.m. I stumbled home from the club.
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The clutch in my wife's car started slipping on Christmas day. We had to limp it home and switch to my car which is an '89 Honda Prelude. My wife doesn't like my car but at least it gets around for now. First world problem.

Oh boy, you're about to learn a lesson in humility and perseverance.

What? About the ants? This is nothing. I've been through hell and back a million times over much worse things.
- Yeah, the ants. Maybe they just followed a scent trail into your house and live far away. If that's the case then it'll be easy. A couple of addresses ago we had a fire ant colony living under our foundation. Nothing we did got rid of them. Even powerful poisons that they take back to the colony only worked for a week or two until the next round hatched and they were right back. It sucked! Best of luck! Hopefully they live far away.

Seven years ago on New Year's Day my little sister unexpectedly passed away, and just a few days ago my stepmom (a mother of little girls 7 and 9) passed.

I would have taken 100 Christmas's of coal over this. It will be hard to not go into the holidays bracing myself for the next disaster.