Oops.

Rosy here. Thank you Charlotte for that wonderful introduction. And Charlotte, I hope you don't mind the changes I made to the layout. The old one hurt my eyes.

Today I had one of my most feared moments in the subbing experience: I woke up nice and late at the hour of 6:30 (slept in an hour!), got ready at a reasonable pace, drove the 40 minutes or so it takes me to get to most schools that I cover, made some wrong turns as per usual (my GPS, Tiffany, tries to help all she can but I give her so little navigational skill to work with sometimes), and arrived right at my scheduled minute of 8:30 to a new school (for me), we'll call it "Happy Grounds Elementary." After the usual chaos of locating a sign-in book and having no one staffing the office to send me in the right direction, I was finally introduced to my fellow 1st-grade teacher (and a rando whose hand I shook out of awkwardness because he was standing there) and sent along my merry way to my classroom. Several little first-grade darlings sat camped outside the door ("YESSS! A sub!"). I opened it to be greeted by the expected darkness but also--music and a lavender scented humidifier? What was this? I stood blinking in the haze and spotted a woman in the corner near the teacher's desk.

"I'm here to sub? I think? For Mrs. Gretsky?"
"Oh that's me! Didn't I put the right date?" said a pleasant, older woman in a patriotically-themed shawl. "I called yesterday but I was sure I put in for tomorrow." I double-checked my confirmation email. May 6.

Oops.

Bless her, she tried to make the best of it, and gave me a few pointers (one of the first being, "Don't be afraid to be mean to them!" At least I know what to expect now...tomorrow) and showed me around, but honestly nothing could stave the awkwardness and embarrassment I felt at my unprofessional overlooking of the date posted for this assignment.

So I was sent on my merry way home, without a job, and with any drop of professional pride dissolved. It will be fun to explain Ms. Rosy's irresponsible mishap to the no doubt adorable Happy Grounds students' interrogations tomorrow.