“I’m not a millionaire ... I just live full-time on cruise ships.”
A magnificent cruise ship on the ocean.
Giving it all up and retiring to live on a cruise ship at 32 seems like a lifestyle choice only available to the ultra-wealthy. However, two financially savvy retired school teachers from Tennessee have managed to do just that, spending under $10,000 for the first eight months at sea.
Monica Brzoska, 32, and Jorrell Conley, 36, met in 2015 while teaching in Memphis, Tennessee. The following year, they booked a week-long cruise to Mexico, Belize, and Grand Cayman. After that, they were hooked on cruising together.
Eight years later, in March 2023, they booked a week-long Caribbean cruise. When it was over, instead of returning home to Memphis, they had a wild idea: Why not continue to book consecutive cruises? So, they did just that.
Monica was inspired to start living the life she always wanted after her father fell ill and her mother told her: "Don't wait for retirement. Follow your dreams."
The couple crunched the numbers and found that if they chose the cheapest cabins and used the deals they’ve received from Carnival Cruises, they could book the first 8 months for just under $10,000. “It sounds mad, but the numbers made sense. Accommodation, food and entertainment would be included – we’d only need spending money,” Brzoska told The Sun. “And because we’d been on so many Carnival cruises, we’d earned access to some amazing offers.”
Hopping from ship to ship isn’t difficult for the couple because many disembark from the same ports. But they sometimes have to fly when they can’t walk to the next ocean liner.
The couple then quit their jobs, sold their possessions, and started a new life on the high seas. They rent out their 3-bedroom home in Memphis to maintain steady cash flow. The average 3-bedroom home in the area rents somewhere between $1200 to $1900 a month.
Over the first year of their new life, the couple completed 36 consecutive cruises. They have already visited countless destinations across the globe, but they can’t choose a favorite. "For a cultural experience, we loved Japan," Brzoska told a Carnival Cruise director on Instagram. The couple also loved Greece for its “history” and Iceland because it was the "closest to being on Mars."
One of the most incredible benefits of loving on a cruise ship is that so many things are taken care of for you. The couple never has to cook any meals, do any laundry or drive. Every night, there is something to do, whether it’s checking out a comedy show or enjoying drinks and dancing in the nightclub.
Plus, on cruises, just about all the costs are covered, so you rarely have to open your wallet. It’s a stress-free, all-inclusive lifestyle. Brzoska says that when you remove the everyday stresses from life, it’s great for your marriage. “Without the daily stresses of life, we rarely argued, but always told each other if we needed space or more time together,” she said.
The couple also makes sure to have one date night a week, during which they dress up and have a nice meal together.
Most people may be unable to give it all up and live their lives hopping from ocean liner to ocean liner. But there’s a great lesson in the story of Brzoska and Conley: You never know how much time you have left, so don’t wait for retirement to live the life of your dreams.
Upworthy has reached out to Brzoska for comment and is still awaiting a response.
An interesting approach to cleanliness...
The water bill at the Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis residence appears to be pretty low after recent revelations the couple made about their family's bathing habits.
In a recent appearance on Dax Shepard's "Armchair Expert" podcast, they admitted they're not that into bathing themselves or their two children, Dimitri Portwood, 4, and Wyatt Isabelle, 6.
The conversation started when Shepard explained his ongoing disagreement with co-host Monica Padman. The two have dissenting views over whether people should use soap. "You should not be getting rid of all the natural oil on your skin with a bar of soap every day," he said. "It's insane."
Kunis agreed with Shepard and was very candid about her bathing ritual. "I don't wash my body with soap every day," she shared. "But I wash pits and tits and holes and soles."
"I can't believe I'm in the minority here of washing my whole body in the shower," Padman replied. "Who taught you to not wash?"
"I didn't have hot water growing up as a child," Kunis recalled, "so I didn't shower very much anyway." Kunis was born in the then-Soviet controlled Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi in 1983. Her family migrated to America when she was seven.
Kutcher added that he regularly uses soap and water on just his "armpits and crotch" and "nothing else."
Kunis has passed her lax attitude towards bathing on to her children.
"When I had children," she said, "I also didn't wash them every day. I wasn't the parent that bathed my newborns—ever." Shepard agreed, saying that he and wife Kristen Bell only bathe their children as part of a nighttime routine and don't pay much attention to their cleanliness.
"That's how we feel about our children. We're like, 'Oof, something smells,'" Kunis added. Kutcher has a simple rule when it comes to his children and their cleanliness. "Here's the thing — if you can see the dirt on 'em, clean 'em," he says. "Otherwise, there's no point."
\u201cMila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher Say They Only Bathe Their Kids When 'You Can See the Dirt on Them'\u201d— People (@People) 1627410000
While the Kutcher-Kunis clan's approach towards hygiene may not be typical of the average American family, they may not be wrong according to science. Research suggests that children benefit from being exposed to germs early in life.
"This line of thinking, called the 'hygiene hypothesis,' holds that when exposure to parasites, bacteria, and viruses is limited early in life, children face a greater chance of having allergies, asthma, and other autoimmune diseases during adulthood," WebMD says.
Basically, the more your body is exposed to the more it can fight off.
"Just as a baby's brain needs stimulation, input, and interaction to develop normally, the young immune system is strengthened by exposure to everyday germs so that it can learn, adapt, and regulate itself," notes Thom McDade, PhD, associate professor and director of the Laboratory for Human Biology Research at Northwestern University.
As for Kutcher and Kunis, they both share the same attitude when it comes to hygiene so nobody in the relationship has the right to complain if the other is a little funky. If it works for them, who are we to judge?
This article originally appeared on 7.28,.21
What possible issue could a parent have had with this book?
Schools often have to walk a fine line when it comes to parental complaints. Diverse backgrounds, beliefs, and preferences for what kids see and hear will always mean that schools can't please everyone all the time, so educators have to discern what's best for the whole, broad spectrum of kids in their care.
Sometimes, what's best is hard to discern. Sometimes it's absolutely not.
Such was the case when a parent at a St. Louis elementary school complained in a Facebook group about a book that was read to her 7-year-old. The parent wrote:
"Anyone else check out the read a loud book on Canvas for 2nd grade today? Ron's Big Mission was the book that was read out loud to my 7 year old. I caught this after she watched it bc I was working with my 3rd grader. I have called my daughters school. Parents, we have to preview what we are letting the kids see on there."
The book in question, "Ron's Big Mission," highlights a true story from the childhood of Challenger astronaut Ron McNair, who had experienced discrimination as a child in South Carolina because he was Black. In 1959, when he was nine years old, McNair wanted to check out books at the library, but the librarian told him the library didn't loan books to "coloreds." McNair refused to leave the library until he was allowed to check out books. Rather than give him a library card, the librarian called the police, who ultimately convinced her to just let him check out books.
Seriously, what issue could this parent possibly take with such an inspiring story of a kid standing up to injustice and fighting for the right to educate himself? This was a child who single-handedly changed a library's racial segregation policy and grew up to be an astronaut—a genuine, real-life hero. What is there to take issue with? The parent didn't specify, so we're left to conjecture, but if there's any other possible reason than racism, I can't think of one.
Rockwood Education Equity and Diversity Director Brittany Hogan told KMOX News Radio that after hearing of the complaint, other parents responded immediately in the book's defense.
"They were saying this is amazing that they were buying copies of the book," Hogan said. "One of our parents came out and said she was going to purchase a copy for every second-grader at the elementary school that her children attends."
Hogan called McNair a hero and said, "He deserves to be celebrated. His story deserves to be told to our children. It's important that we continue to move in a space that embeds diverse curriculum."
And the school responded in the best possible way—by announcing the book was going to be read aloud to the whole student body via Zoom. That's how you shut down a bigot. Boom.
Here's Pond Elementary Principal Carlos Diaz-Granados reading "Ron's Big Mission" to students via Zoom and sharing why he thinks it's an important book for kids:
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
This article originally appeared on 9.18.23
Vicki Lawrence dropped a perfectly timed a-bomb.
"The Carol Burnett Show" had one of the funniest outtakes in TV history.
"The Carol Burnett Show" ran from 1967 to 1978 and has been touted as one of the best television series of all time. The cast and guest stars of the show included comedic greats such as Tim Conway, Betty White, Steve Martin, Vicki Lawrence, Dick Van Dyke, Lyle Waggoner, Harvey Korman and others who went on to have long, successful comedy careers.
One firm rule Carol Burnett had on her show was that the actors stay in character. She felt it was especially important not to break character during the "Family" scenes, in which the characters Ed and Eunice Higgins (a married couple) and Mama (Eunice's mother) would play host to various colorful characters in their home.
"I never wanted to stop and do a retake, because I like our show to be ‘live,’" she wrote in her memoir, as reported by Showbiz Cheat Sheet. "So when the ‘Family’ sketches came along, I was adamant that we never break up in those scenes, because Eunice, Ed, and Mama were, in an odd way, sacred to me. They were real people in real situations, some of which were as sad and pitiful as they were funny, and I didn’t want any of us to break the fourth wall and be out of character.”
It was a noble goal, and one that went right out the window—with Burnett leading the way—in a "Family" sketch during the show's final season that ended with the entire cast rolling with laughter.
In the scene, Eunice, Mama, Dan (an old friend of Ed's) and Mickey (Ed's employee at the hardware store) are playing "Password" and the word they're trying to get their partners to guess is "ridiculous." Eunice (played by Carol Burnett) gives Mickey (played by Tim Conway) the clue word "laughable," and after pondering for a bit, he says "elephant."
Eunice scolds him for his bizarre answer, then Conway launches into a wild ad-libbed story about a circus elephant that goes on and on and on.
Burnett is the first one to lose it. The cast barely keeps it together through the sketch.
But that was just one take. Between takes, the director gave the actors a note: The elephant story would be different in the next filming—and good luck.
The next elephant story was even wilder than the first, and Burnett and Dick Van Dyke couldn't stop themselves from laughing. Conway himself breaks a couple of times, and even Vicki Lawrence (playing Mama), who famously never broke character, had to hide her face for a moment.
Then, just when they finally got themselves composed and Burnett was able to deliver her line, "Go on, Mama," Lawrence delivered the most perfectly timed a-bomb and the whole cast exploded:
So delightful. And for an added bonus, watch Vicki Lawrence tell the story about how that scene came about:
See the full interview at https://emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/vicki-l...
This article originally appeared on 9.14.22
It’s totally common and absolutely gross.
Dad discovers child has pinworms and it's freaking people out
If you're a parent you're likely in one of two categories: parents who have never heard of pinworms or parents who shuttered at the headline. Parents are not really given any sort of warning for all of the eyebrow raising situations that occur in childhood and one dad has found out that there was a lot left out of that non-existent parenting handbook.
Justin, a dad that runs the TikTok page drumbeatlane took to social media to tell the world of the current nightmare fuel parenting situation he was experiencing. He's also doing parents on social media a solid by giving them a heads up on the disturbing secret plaguing the parenting world–pinworms.
The viral video starts out with no trigger warning before he says though clenched teeth, "my son has worms in his anus." Yeah, you read that right. It's a thing. A slightly terrifying but totally normal thing.
"No one tells you about this stuff when you're thinking about being a parent but apparently it's like super normal for a child to just have worms in his booty hole," Justin says.
Dr. Cerissa Key, a pediatrician, chimed in on Justin's disturbing revelation and assured him and every parent watching that pinworms are a common thing that happens in young children. But she also dropped some info that other's including Justin may not have been ready to hear.
"Justin, sir. I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But if your son has worms in his booty hole, sir, politely and respectfully, you also have worms in your booty hole," Key reveals.
Key goes on to explain that kids are "disgusting" and don't wash their hands well so pinworms spread easily if a child at school or daycare has them. She advises that parents stock up on the chalky banana flavored medication that clears them up and to wash everything on hot while being sure to vacuum your floors well.
@drumbeatlane Parenting truly is just one surprise after another. But the biggest surprise to me every time something crazy happens is that it is usually super common, just no one talks about it. So I’m warning you. Your child might get worms in their anus. #justinkellough #dadsoftiktok #parentsoftiktok #momsoftiktok #parentingadvice #parenting @Justin
People in the comment section of both videos were horrified that this was an actual thing while others commiserated with the stressed dad.
"I have no kids and now I'm paranoid I have pinworms with no symptoms," one person writes.
"I've raised 4 kids and never had this happen. Tomorrow this will be my entry on my gratitude journal," a mom confesses.
"Do I have kids? No...Do I even work around kids? Also no...do I still have the urge to take this medicine just in case anyways? 100000%," someone says.
@therealdrkey #stitch with @Justin Allllll about pinworms! It your kid has them, YOU have them. 😩 #pinworms #pinworm #pediatrician #momlife #itchybottom #itchyvulva #pinwormssuck #parenting
Not everyone was stressed, some were thankful for the information. "Thank you! We haven't experienced pinworms yet, but super informative and helps to make parenting normalized," another commenter writes.
Key suggests that if your child has pinworms that the entire family should take a dose of the medication two weeks apart to make sure any left over newly hatched eggs are also killed. While you may not have been warned about pinworms, no one ever said parenting would be glamorous. It just seems people weren't prepared for how unglamorous it could get.
This article originally appeared on 12.23.23
