Exciting Purchases of January

Purchase #1

The Planet Earth series by BBC. I have wanted an excuse to buy this for FOREVER. and finally my elementary science class has given me that excuse, since I can watch it for one of my assignments. It is in the mail as we speak, and I am practically peeing my pants because I want it to get here SO bad so I can start watching it. I'm nerdy like that.

Purchase #2


Or should I say...purchases. The Provo Library hosted a used book sale today, which I was super excited to hear about because I'm going to be teaching soon and I don't want to donate all of my nice personal books to my class library. This was the perfect opportunity to stock up, so I went crazy and probably bought wayyy more books than I should have. THREE huge stacks, to be exact, and somehow the fact that I couldn't even carry all of them to the checkout line didn't stop me. Luckily they had bags up at the register so I was able to drag them out to my car. I got 53 books for only $26.50. Some favorites include, The BFG, a collection of poems by Jack Prelutsky, Harry Potter #6, The Eragon series, a bunch of those DK Publishing nonfiction books with the awesome pictures, Magic Tree House series, and The Lost Years of Merlin series. Is that not amazing?

Purchase #3 The other day on Amazon I ordered a bunch of hermit crab equipment...why you ask? For my elementary science class, not only do I get to watch Planet Earth for homework, but I have to raise an invertebrate and take observations of it. This is supposed to help us refine our observation skills that we will be teaching our students, and it will give us practice at having a type of class pet. Also it was to help us get over the "heebie jeebies" as our teacher called them, of critters that children may bring into the classroom, like bugs, creepy crawly things, etc. Unfortunately, the only interesting invertebrates that worked for this project includeded mealworms (no), crickets (disgusting), millipedes (creepy), and hissing cockroaches (heck no). Since technically hermit crabs are invertebrates, my group asked if we could do those instead. I can't wait for the little cage to get here so we can go purchase our hermit crabs!

And last but certainly not least, purchase #4


Now, I do love my kittens but I do not love cleaning up their poop. And I realize the name "Citikitty" is totally gay, plus the concept is a little strange, but hear me out. It started as a joke, when someone showed us a youtube video of a cat pooping in a toilet. We laughed. Then we realized that there are a plethora of videos of toilet-trained cats on youtube. We wondered, do people seriously do this? We laughed, and then reconsidered. Why wouldn't you want a toilet trained cat? Then we went on amazon and did some research. Apparently hundreds of people have done it, and love it. And really, what's not to love? Ok, cats look really weird squatting over the toilet, but who cares? As long as I don't have to scoop their poop every day I am happy. Plus, litter is expensive. We did the math, and we can save hundreds of dollars a year with potty-trained cats! Plus, it is just so convenient.

So I am ecstatic to say that we started the kittens on this a few days ago. They are already ahead of schedule, with the first hole punched out on the training seat. Basically the concept is that you have this mini litter pan that sits on the toilet. As they become more comfortable, you punch larger and larger holes in it until, voila! No more litter and they are pooping straight in the toilet. How convenient.

Sometimes I amaze myself at the extremely bizarre things that excite me.