Anonymous Duckbill users record a notable episode in their Duckbill experience - with love and gratitude to NYMag's Sex Diaries for the inspo and years of entertainment.‍

‍DAY ONE‍

6am. My alarm goes off and I button mash the snooze. I set my alarm a bit early this morning to research stocking stuffers, but it’s raining, and I was up until midnight trying to get a final draft of a work project out the door, and there’s no way I’m getting up to figure out what my mother-in-law could use in her stocking. I roll over, put my pillow over my head, and decide stockings are going to have to wait.

9am. Open my laptop to find an email from my boss with 13 points of constructive feedback on the draft I sent her last night. I decide that the only thing I’d like less than implementing her feedback is figuring out this stocking thing, so I Google, “Best stocking stuffers for mother-in-law.” The internet shows me a bunch of tacky “Best MIL” mugs and keychains, which are non-starters, so I head to a generic “Best Stocking Stuffers 2023” link. 

“Do you think your mom would like a silk pillowcase in her stocking?” I text my husband. “Not really,” he responds. Super helpful.

12pm. I step out to grab lunch with my Work Bestie, and spent the walk venting about the in-law stocking situation. The truth is, I’m not sure how this ended up on my to-do list. At some point in November, I asked my husband to text his parents, “So excited to have you for the holidays! Assume you two will do stockings for each other?” (Hint, hint.)

“Could you handle them?” they wrote back from Greece, where they were celebrating their recent retirement. “We’re so busy with all this travel!!” Bah, humbug.

We decided to split the work, with my husband handling his father and I, his mother. 

“Next year,” Work Bestie says, “Tell the in-laws to go back to Greece for Christmas.”

6pm. Tonight is our company holiday party, and I’m still stressing about the stockings. 

“Have you tried Duckbill?” asks J from Product. J is that impossibly cool woman who is always on top of the latest trends, and tech and I’d probably despise out of jealousy if she weren’t so lovely and helpful.

J takes my phone and signs me up for duckbill.ai, then downloads the app and enters, “Find stocking stuffers for my mother-in-law. She is retired and likes to travel.”

I am skeptical, but also desperate. We’ll see how this goes.

DAY TWO

7am. I wake up with too much of a hangover for the two meager glasses of mediocre champagne I drank last night. I scan my phone for any particularly delightful or worrisome messages or headlines and see a push notification from Duckbill. “We’ve got options for you on your Mother-In-Law Stocking Stuffer project!” I swipe right and grab my glasses to focus more intently.

“Hey,” I nudge my husband, who is still snoring beside me, “These things are good.”

“What?” he mumbles, as I hold my phone up to his face.

“Look - Duckbill sent us a bunch of options for your mom’s stockings,” I say, and hand him the phone as I get up to brush my teeth.

A few minutes later, I return to retrieve my phone.

“These look great,” he says, still in bed, checking off box by box of options for magnetic toiletry containers, Greek olive oil, an eye mask perfected for air travel, and an assortment of face and hand creams that I’m tempted to order for myself. I scan his selections and realize these items will more than fill the stocking - and knock my mother-in-law’s socks off, too. “Think they can do my dad, too?” I hear my husband say.

We send our requests off to Duckbill, enter a new request for hubby’s dad, l and cross my fingers that they arrive as easily as they were recommended.

DAY THREE 

9am. It’s Saturday, and I’m drinking coffee when I see a delivery truck arrive outside our home. As soon as the truck drives away (sparing the poor guy my PJs look), I open the door and grab the parcels. As I open them one by one, I find the stocking stuffers, just as we had requested them - along with an extra set of face and hand cream as a reward to myself for handling my mother-in-law’s stocking like the pulled-together, all-star daughter-in-law that I am.

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