I've just had an incident that makes me feel like sharing my most sad, cruel Christmas story:
In 2009, right around Thanksgiving, I had just gotten a job (at a horse farm, so it was nothing special or supportive) and my fiancee'/hubby lost his. He lost his in the most horrible way: The people running the chain-company embezzled their company's money and refused to pay their managers and employees, leaving my guy owed two weeks of pay. Needless to say, we could not pay rent on the rental house we were in at the time and we had the landlady from Hell. It didn't matter that it was holiday-time, she wanted us gone. (I mean, this woman was "crazy old bat" to a tee... she would call us up and scream at my guy and talk smack about his father, who'd rented the home before us). We spent the month scrambling to find a place to live that wasn't concerned with credit and was willing to take someone on Unemployment as the primary renter.
We spent part of the month dealing with a shady, perverted fellow who asked a lot of weird questions and gave me these... looks... Damaged my car with a minor accident driving in the snow when he demanded we look at his potential property in a snowstorm. Eventually, we found our current apartment (which I actually *like* for being next to a graveyard). I remember Christmas Eve that year was spent in evacuating the very last of our keep-able stuff from the old house to the new apartment. We packed up the cat very last because moving a cat unused to cars is always harrowing. On our way, we met the local parade-Santa Claus on a firetruck who goes around this time of year pleasing children with candy and horn-honking. Stuck in front of him, he *honked the firetruck horns* for us thinking it would give us cheer. Interesting *smells* emanated from the cat carrier already containing a stressed-out feline. "Santa Claus is Welsper's arch-nemesis" has been a joke of ours ever since.
Christmas Day that day was spent in cleaning out and arranging things. I found a sketch for a painting I did concerning the subject of mortality in a drawer in a chest of drawers. I'd thought I'd lost that sketch and thought finding it rather fitting.
Three days later, I fell down a stairwell at work and broke my arm. True story - and I was even here on ZD when I was going through all of this. (I had already voluntarily-banned myself from the Mature Discussion forum, and am glad of it because I'm sure I would have gotten myself banned for yelling at all the Republicans and Libertarians on the site. I was *not happy* with *your general kind* at the time, to say the least. I'm better now).
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A happier memory:
Some years ago, when I was still living in Arizona, but when I was in college... I asked my parents for a set of knives for Christmas because I needed knives for cooking. My entire family laughed at me for this request. My nieces thought it really funny to ask for something like that. Mom and Dad sent me an entire care-package in a huge box (since I didn't live with them anymore at the time) and the set of knives caused mirth... the big pack of toilet paper caused even more mirth. My brother (whom I lived with at the time) got the same thing... just lots of very practical items. That was fun.
