- Uop past midnight. 3am feeding. 5am hurts. Back to bed? #
- Stayed up this morning and watched Terminator:Salvation. AWAKs make for bad plot advancement. #
- Last night, Inglorious Basterds was not what I was expecting. #
- @jeffrosecfp It's a fun time, huh. These few months are payment for the fun months coming, when babies become interactive. 🙂 in reply to jeffrosecfp #
- RT @BSimple: RT @bugeyedguide: When we cling to past experiences we keep giving them energy…and we do not have much energy to spare #
- RT @LivingFrugal: Jan 18, Pizza Soup (GOOOOOD Stuff) http://bit.ly/5rOTuc #budget #money #
- Free Turbotax for low income or active-duty military. http://su.pr/29y30d #
- To most ppl,you're just somebody [from casting] to play the bit part of "Other Office Worker" in the movie of their life http://su.pr/1DYMQZ #
- RT @MoneyCrashers: Money Crashers 2010 New Year Giveaway Bash – $8,300 in Cash and Amazing Prizes http://bt.io/DQHw #
- RT: @flexo: RT @wisebread: Tylenol, Motrin, Rolaids, and Benadryl RECALLED! Check your cabinets: http://bit.ly/4BVJfJ #
- New goal for Feb. 100 pushups in 1 set. Anyone care to join me? #
- RT @BSimple: Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow"— Robert Kiyosaki So take action now. #
- RT @hughdeburgh: "Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now." ~ Sophia Loren #
- Chances of finding winter boots at a thrift store in January? Why do they wear our at the worst time? #
- @LenPenzo Anyone who make something completely idiot proof underestimates the ingenuity of complete idiots. in reply to LenPenzo #
- RT @zappos: "Lots of people want to ride w/ you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus w/ you…" -Oprah Winfrey #
- RT @chrisguillebeau: "The cobra will bite you whether you call it cobra or Mr. Cobra" -Indian Proverb (via @boxofcrayons) #
- RT @SuburbanDollar: I keep track of all my blogging income and expenses using http://outright.com it is free&helps with taxes #savvyblogging #
- Reading: Your Most Frequently Asked Running Questions – Answered http://bit.ly/8panmw via @zen_habits #
Public Service Announcement: Anger, Children, and Cars
If, in the course of a basic morning, your three-year-old decides that you need to pick out her clothes, even though she’s been handling that every day for months, don’t be surprised if she rejects your first three choices. She’s just being lazy.
If, after you’ve settled on clothes, you tell her to pick out some socks, expect the same behavior. She’ll lie on the living room floor saying “You pick them out” for 20 minutes, only to throw a fit if you don’t pick the ones with fairies. At this point, it’s okay to yell at her. Really.
When she tears them off and throws them across the room, you don’t even have to be gentle when you put them back on and strap her shoes down to keep her socks on.
Then, when you’re walking across the yard, and she refuses because she’s mad, it is again okay to hold her hand to guide assist drag her to the car, but it works best if you are strong enough to keep her suspended above the ground when she tries to sit down to stop you.
Of course, when you get to the car, she’s going to run back to the front door because she can walk by herself.
Literally throwing her into the car at this point isn’t okay. Tempting, but not okay.
As the man said, I told you that so I could tell you this:
It would seem, now, that it would be a good idea to flip the child latch on the door to keep the contrary little brat from escaping while you circle the car to the driver’s door, or worse, slow down for a stop sign. It is a good idea.
The thing to remember is that, in your anger, when the world has gone red and you are cheering on the biological traits that make it nearly impossible to hurt your children, it is easy to stick the screwdriver in the wrong slot in the door and jam your door latch.
When that happens your door won’t close. Your little monster won’t stop aggravating you, and the child who has chosen to play the role of little angel this morning will start getting crabby about the wait. That doesn’t help.
After you throw the kids in the spare car–the car which doesn’t have air conditioning on the hottest day of the year, so far–and get the brats to daycare, the internet can show you what does help.
If, when you close your car door, it bounces back open because the latch is jammed, no amount of poking at it with a screwdriver will fix it. You’ll bleed for no good reason. Grab the door handle and hold it in the open position. Then, when you poke the latch with a screwdriver, it will pop into the correct position with very little effort.
It’s amazing what a door that closes will do for your morning.
The End of Litter
In honor of Earth Day (a day late), I’m going to talk about ending litter.
Not the stuff you find on the street or throw from your car window. I don’t mind that because, on a long enough timeline, everything is biodegradable. Mother Nature is tougher than I am. She can handle my McDonald’s wrappers.
No, I’m talking about the real scourge: cat litter.
We’ve got four of the things, and let me tell you, they make poop. Everyday. I keep telling my wife that they are going to continue making poop as long as we keep feeding them, but she continues to give them food.
For those of you who don’t know, most cats use a litter box, which is a fun pan full of a sand-like mixture of diatomaceous earth and bentonite clay, which trains your cat to use the neighbor kid’s sandbox if you let the little potsticker go outside.
Thanks for that.
So, everyday, our four cats crap in a couple of pans full of sand. Until the sand pans get too full of cat crap. Then, they use the couch.
Who decided this was a good system? Is it a conspiracy of Big Couch to force people to buy new furniture on a regular basis, the way Big Oil suppressed the 1000 mile-per-gallon carburetor, Big Pharma suppressed the cure-all hemlock pill, and Big Sword suppressed world peace during the Dark Ages?
There’s got to be a better way.
Right?
Enter the CitiKitty. It’s the miracle cat potty trainer featured on The Shark Tank.
Here’s how it works:
- Move the litter box to the bathroom and start using flushable cat litter.
- Once the cats are comfortable with that change, put the CitiKitty on the toilet, under the ring and add litter.
- In a week or two, when all of the cats are comfortable with the setup, pop out the center ring of the CitiKitty. This gets the cats used to doing their business over water.
- Every couple of weeks, pop out another ring until the cats are used to standing on the slippery ring and crapping directly into the water. Praise the cat when it happens, because cats give a crap about your opinion.
- Throw the litter box away and brag to your friends.
Because I love testing things to make my life easier, and I hate cat crap, I gave the thing a try.
It worked great until step 3. Apparently, pooping directly into water is similar to trapping a vampire with running water and causes the cats to panic and find somewhere else to poop, never to return to the bathroom.
There’s really nothing better than stumbling into the living room half asleep, turning on the news and flopping onto the couch, only to find a little lump, still warm, under your butt.
Don’t get me wrong, step 2 was a pain in the neck, too. In order to use the toilet, you have to take the stinking sandbox off of the toilet without spilling litter all over the bathroom, find a place to set it that isn’t disgusting, do your business, put the litter pan back on the toilet, and wash your hands really hard. If you’re a friend of my son’s sleeping over, it’s easier just to not notice the litter box sitting there and top it off in the middle of the night.
It’s a heck of an idea. The best execution I’ve seen for getting a cat to crap in the toilet.
But it doesn’t frickin’ work. If you’ve got a cat using the toilet, I’m guessing you had to sacrifice the neighbor kid to some kind of evil Lovecraftian entity to make it happen, because the CitiKitty didn’t do it.
How Cheap Can a Disney Vacation Be?
Earlier this month, I took my family to Disney World. That’s me, my wife, and my three kids (ages 8, 9, 16). Disney is one of the most expensive vacations you can take in the U.S.
We went from one Saturday to the next, in the beginning of August. August is just after peak season, so prices and crowds were down a bit from early summer. During the school year is out of the question because my wife is a school bus driver at an understaffed company. It was a bit hotter, but the price and family availability balanced out the heat nicely.
We stayed in a 1 bedroom resort on Disney property. It was a bit more expensive, but the room slept all five of us, my wife and I had a separate bedroom, and it was equipped with a full kitchen and laundry.
This wasn’t cheap.
We spent:
- $1595.96 on airfare and car rental, as a package
- $75 on upgrading the seats on our flight one way, because those were the only seats available next to each other.
- $131.11 upgrading our rental car during pickup. The third row seating was nice, both for our day trip to Cocoa Beach and for our grocery run with five suitcases.
- $4396.21 for the hotel, 4 days of Disney parks, and the included Magic Bands. Magic Bands are the awesomest way to handle hotel rooms, resort tickets, and food. You don’t need to carry a wallet in Disney World.
- $715.26 on things charged to our Magic Bands, including miscellaneous coffee, snack, and water purchases in the park, a few small souvenirs, approximately $380 at in-park restaurants, and a couple of gifts for the people who took care of our pets while we were gone.
- $15 for parking at the Cocoa Beach Pier
- $152.28 for lunch at the restaurant on the pier
- Roughly $350 on groceries and one fast food drive through meal one night
- $118.31 at the horrible Wolfgang Puck Express restaurant at the Disney Springs shopping center
- $31.59 on gas for the rental car.
- $47.35 for a movie to kill time between hotel checkout and airport check-in
- Total: $7628.07
We saved:
- $1404.14 by using signup bonus miles from two Chase Sapphire cards, bringing the flight plus rental to $188.82 plus upgrades.
- $1870.16 by using Capital One Venture card rewards. A bonus reward on one card, and regular miles on another.
- Total: $3274.30
Grand Total: $4353.77
We had about $2000 of that saved before we bought the tickets and $2000 more budgeted to pay the remaining bill quickly. $4350 spent on a trip with a $4000 budget isn’t too bad.
We opened the rewards cards more than a year ago to make sure we’d hit the sign-up bonus qualifications in time.
A few Disney tips:
- Your first day in the park, find a Disney Vacation Club booth. Go to a timeshare sales pitch. For real. It’s a low-pressure pitch that’s over in 45 minutes if you’re not interested (and you won’t be. Timeshares–especially at retail price–are stupid. Don’t sign up.) that will net you three tap-and-go fast passes and a $100 gift card. The fast passes alone saved us about 3 hours of lines.
- Install the Disney app. You can get directions to rides and manage fast passes and dinner reservations.
- Subscribe to Touring Plans. It costs $10 if you have a coupon, and there’s always a coupon. You can plan out your day at each park, including fast passes and breaks. It will give you wait times and walking times and suggest what is possibly the most efficient way to see everything you want to see. We saw 90% of everything everyone was interested in without running around. You really can do all of each of the parks in 4 days.
- Take breaks. We got there early, then left a bit after lunch time to head back to the hotel for food, rest, and swimming. We came back shortly before dinner and spent the evening. That skipped the hottest, busiest part of the day and helped avoid small children getting crabby. Take breaks.
- Go to each of the parks on their least busy day. It’s easiest to see it all if you plan to be there when fewer other people are competing for line space.
- Don’t waste your fast passes on rides with short lines. We made it through the Pirates of the Caribbean line in 10 minutes. That would have been wasteful.
- Try to book all of your fast passes in the morning, so you can schedule new ones for later in the day. You can’t add new ones while you have pending ones on your account.
- Use the timeshare fast passes at Magic Kingdom. They don’t have to be scheduled and must be used on a moving ride. Magic Kingdom is the heaviest concentration of moving rides, and they have the longest lines.
- Have fun. For real, don’t forget to have fun. If people are getting crabby, pack up and head to the hotel for a few hours. The only park that makes this a pain is Magic Kingdom, since they hide the park a mile away from the parking. Don’t force the park experience, just let go and let things happen. Says the guy who brought an optimized agenda to each park
This was a good time for us. I’m glad we waited. We’re in the short window where the girls will remember the trip and the boy hasn’t moved out and gotten a busy life of his own.
Carnivals This Week
I seem to be failing frugal parenting. My son spent the entire week telling me how happy he’d be if we could go to the game store so he could spend some of his money. Tying emotions to shopping is badbadbad.
Live Real, Now was included in four carnivals last week:
Carnival of Financial Planning – Edition #224 at AaronHung.com
Yakezie Carnival – Mardi Gras Edition at Young Adult Finances
Canadian Finance Carnival #76 at Canadian Finance Blog
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie – Rain Man Edition at Thirty Six Months
Thanks to all of the hosts for including my posts.
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