Picture Day!

Today is picture day. Only kids look forward to picture day. It comes right after Halloween and the Christmas Party on their list of favorite school days. Valentine's is only fourth because they forget it even exists until February 1st.

So I have to actually put a straightener to my hair and make up to my face. I have to wear contacts so the photographer doesn't yell at me to take the glasses off or put my chin down . . . and they do yell. You would too if you had to take 600+ pictures of uncooperative children in one day. Not to mention the uncooperative teachers.

And this morning I realized the only laundry I've done in three weeks is what was absolutely necessary. You know what I mean.

Therefore, all I have to wear today is jeans and nicer T-shirts (meaning the ones that have Driggs' Elementary slogans rather than Star Wars slogans on them) which I could normally get away with for one day until I got the wash done. But I will be in 22 class pictures. I should probably look a little more professional. I did find an older blouse that desperately needs ironing, but my iron was trashed during an art project involving crayons and watercolors.

So, Ms. Pettit's Room 12 of 2008-09 will be memorialized with 22 darling children and a teacher wearing a wrinkly blouse, the same jeans she wore yesterday, frizzy hair (because I ran out of anti frizz stuff), leaning a little because she is wearing uncomfortable boots that are grinding her knees to dust, and squinting because her mascara is irritating her contacts.

All in all, a fairly accurate portrayal of what my teaching career has done to me.