Any time a company says there is something wrong with a product, it's scary. But the massive Ford recall of nearly half a million minivans and SUVS is absolutely terrifying for parents today. These are the kinds of cars that they drive every day! This is the way they drive their kids to daycare or maneuver the carpool to school!

The cars being called off the road and into service shops run the risk of fire or a loss of power. But before you panic, here's what you have to know:

In a lukewarm economy, some people have gotten creative when it comes to making a buck. A new website, ParkatMyHouse.com, matches people who need parking spaces with people who own houses with driveways near the desired destination. It's a peer-to-peer operation, like Craigslist, and it sounds like a win-win to me. As a car owner, I'd much rather pay a nice person $20 to park in their uncrowded, drama-free driveway than $20 to park in a lot that will take me 45 minutes to exit. And as someone who grew up in a house with a secret back entrance to a National Park in her backyard, my family could've made a killing if this site had existed back in the '90s.

Point is, there are plenty of ways to pimp out your house for some extra cash. No need to stop with the parking! Let's look beyond the driveway.

Elin Nordegren's home before the wrecking ball hit.I think we can all agree that Tiger Woods' ex-wife Elin Nordegren isn't your everyday divorcee. And that's why I guess we shouldn't be surprised that there's still major fallout from her brutal, public split with the pro-golfer-slash-serial cheater. Elin seems to be taking pent-up aggression out on a house -- specifically, a $12 million six-bedroom mansion on the beach in North Palm Beach, Florida. She only bought it last March, but she's gone and knocked it down with plans to rebuild a TOTALLY DIFFERENT home on the property. TMZ says Nordegren has hired a high-priced architect, and every single worker is required to sign a confidentiality agreement.

Word is she didn't think the home was "modern" enough, but others speculate she's just doing it because she's so loaded, she can. I say there's more to the story than that.

Hey, we know -- not everyone in the world celebrates Christmas. Does is seem like the whole world shuts down on that holiday? What if you don't feel like spending this Sunday in your pajamas, eating Chinese takeout and scrolling through your Netflix queue? Maybe you'd like to go out and do a little shopping -- while the stores are practically empty! Heaven!

Well, I'll warn you, it's pretty slim pickings. Most of the retail chain stores that stay open for the holiday are drug stores. But hey, you need to stock up on cotton balls sometime, right? Keep reading to find out where you can shop this Christmas.

Animals are breaking into our homes in droves this winter. First there was an adorable baby seal that came in through a cat door and snuggled up for the night on a woman's couch, and now there's news that a black bear was found taking a snooze in the basement of a New Jersey man's home. I'd much rather find a cuddly little seal cub than an adult bear in my house, but you have to work with the cards you're dealt.

The sleepy bear was discovered by the cable guy who was in the home to fix an issue and no one's really sure what's more surprising: That there was a bear in the basement between the hours of 11 and 3 or that the cable guy was actually there between the hours of 11 and 3.

Is there anything that's more depressing than looking at your holiday gift list and wondering: how am I going to pay for all of these? The older we get, the more people it seems clog up that list. Is it any wonder that 40 percent of Americans say they flat out won't be holiday shopping this year because they're terrified of going into debt? What a bummer!

Folks, you don't have to go all or nothing to have a good holiday, I promise. Just doing a little trim of the holiday gift list should do it ... and before you say, "But I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings," that's possible too. Just check out this list of perfectly plausible ways to kick people off your present list:

I have a dirty little secret. I hate Thanksgiving. I know, I know. I'm a very bad person. It's a wonderful holiday about family and close friends coming together, remembering all we're grateful for. It's about cooking and eating a lovely, traditional meal shared long ago by two different cultural groups, the Pilgrims and the Indians. Or something.

But I'm sorry, I just can't get excited about having the same old food every year on a cold, gray, dark late-November day and over-eating until you feel like you're going to die. Not to mention the fact that you're so tired from ingesting all that tryptophan in the turkey and gorging on a huge meal in the middle of the afternoon that you're ready for bed by 5 p.m.

Yes, if there's one holiday I could definitely do without, it's Thanksgiving. It's really just a celebration of that deadly sin called gluttony, isn't it? But this year I've found a pretty creative way to avoid the whole thing altogether. I'm going to have a baby.

A man staying in a low-cost motel in Charlotte, North Carolina, found that his room was out of toilet paper. His rage-filled reaction -- causing $2,000 in damages to both his and a nearby room -- is being characterized as crazy by most news sites reporting it.

Never mind that the guy is living in a no-tell motel reserved for the homeless and those living on the fringes, like the place where the guys kept house on My Name Is Earl. I seriously doubt if the whole place is worth $2,000. But even if it were a Holiday Inn, I can think of a lot of situations in which this is a perfectly normal response.

What could lead a man to such a desperate reaction to a lack of tee pee?