to think I ought to be able to find a pen?

[StayingDavidTennantsGirl]

Considering the squillions of pens I have bought over the years, am I being unreasonable to assume that there should be at least one pen left on my desk? Just one, so that I don't have to go searching round the whole house, just so I can write a cheque or sign a letter?

I think the dses eat the damned things!

[nickelbabe]

empty - is being fucking killed worse than being killed then?

[StayingDavidTennantsGirl]

Maybe they have fallen through a hole in the fabric of Space and Time, twirlymum. I absolutely refuse to believe that a mumsnetter could be guilty of acquiring other mumsnetters' pens on purpose!

[twirlymum]

This thread has made me realise that I don't think I have ever actually bought a pen. I just seem to acquire them.
I probably have all of yours

[emptyshell]

Using my mothers fabric scissors for paper was an offence only one notch down from being punishable by death in my house when I was a kid. She would have fucking killed me!

Best advice I got given when training to be a teacher: get a really good adult sized pair of scissors and guard them with your life, hide them, never let anyone borrow them.

It's stood me in incredibly good stead.

[nickelbabe]

you've got to put a lock on your door.
then it's sacred space and noone can go in unless they have a key.
that you and DH keep on your person at all times - on a chain around your waist that noone can get to.

although, after your revelation about DH using the fabric shears!!!! , i think he should be banished to the basement, with his hands chopped off (and maybe the part he wees through too, for good measure)

[StayingDavidTennantsGirl]

Chopping their hands off would work, nickelbabe!

It gets worse, though - dh uses my decent fabric shears to cut other stuff with!! Cardboard, plastic, all sorts of Entirely Inappropriate Stuff. I've had to hide them now, and I can't remember where.

[StayingDavidTennantsGirl]

I've thought of something else to fume about - I'm really on a roll today!

My hairbrush. Why do the little buggers sneak into my bedroom and take my hairbrush to do their hair with? I've bought them hairbrushes of their own, but the lose them. They have money to buy hairbrushes if they want them but Nooooooo - they have to come and nick my nice, wooden-backed hairbrush (not a proper Mason Pearson, but like that). And then they don't return it so after my shower, I have to venture into the cess pits that they call their bedrooms to search for it, before I can dry my hair.

Hanging's too good for them.

[nickelbabe]

I will have to rethink my strategy when I have children.
(am seriously thinking about chopping their hands off so they can't ever touch anything)

[StayingDavidTennantsGirl]

Pen pots stop working once you have dc. I tell mine to replace pens in the pen pots when they've used them - or at least put them back where they found them, but it is to No Avail. I have a secret stash of pencils in a pink tin in the desk drawer - because it is well known that the dses are either blind to anything pink or daren't touch it, because touching something pink might make their willies drop off!!

[nickelbabe]

My obsession with Having Plenty of Pens comes from Never Being Able to Find a Pen whilst growing up.

yes, scissors were the same - millions of the pairs and you couldn't find any (well, you could always find mum's sewing scissors, but you were only allowed to cut fabric with those, which meant they were Out Of Bounds (which is probably why you could always find them)

[SueTheSlut11]

StayingDavidTennantsGirl

YANBU

[nickelbabe]

my serious response is that I have pen pots, or places where pens live.
Pens must not be removed from those pots, and if they are (ie to be used) they must be returned to the exact same place once they are finished with.
this means immediately you finish with them.

in practice, this only works because we have no DCs yet.
I also have a pen in my coat pocket, in my bag (actually, I have one in the front pocket of my babg, and one in a pencil case inside my bag - it only has one pen in it), in my Choir Bag, in my Cassock pocket, at least one in every room in the house, one on my computer keyboard at work, along with one in the top drawer of the till, one on top of the till, several in a pen pot behind the till, and several pencils (sharpened and ready to go)

[emptyshell]

microserf I used to mark kids' work in whatever writing implement I could find to hand - so orange felt pen was probably used at some point. Then I started surveying the kids' opinions and we decided on purple sparkly as a way forward... bollocks to the "red pen is evil, green pen only" attitude - the kids wanted purple sparkly!

I'm the kid of a journalist - I was always brought up with a mum who had hundreds of pens in her handbag and I've picked up the habit. Plus hubby's forever wandering home from work with ones in his pocket too... all your pens - are clogging up my fucking house!

[notso]

They all magic themselves to the bottom of my handbag and decide to leak everywhere.

Just spend a minute trying to work out if LOTF was a new LOL, laugh on the floor perhaps the realised you were addressing LordOfTheFlies!

[BettySwollocksandaCrustyRack]

They probably go to the same place as socks......where the hell do they go?? And safety pins...............and bloody blue-tac!!!!

[StayingDavidTennantsGirl]

I have solved the socks thing, poppy. Dh and the dses all like their socks not to match, so I buy the socks with the coloured heels/toes, and mismatch them on purpose. Plus they all wear the same size socks as dh now, so we have one huge population of socks that gets divided amongst the four of them. These two together mean that it's easier to find a mate for a sock that has lost its partner, because a) it doesn't need to match and b) there are billions of the things sloshing round the ironing basket.

I hope that made sense.

[poppyknot]

Is this related to socks losing their partner I wonder.

In the pen pot by the PC today I found an eye liner pencil.......

[StayingDavidTennantsGirl]

He might be the original pencil pusher, LOTF!!

[LordOfTheFlies]

I must be keeping WHSmiths in business single handed with the number of pencils I buy for DS.( buy the propelling pencils so that he doesn't have all the rigmarole of finding the sharpener) Sigh.

I'm sure he sells them at some kind of 0ff-the-back-of-a-lorry Junior School car boot sale.!

[microserf]

Erm small additional amount, the price of the house was outrageous, but thankfully mr building society mortgage took care of that piece.

[microserf]

YABU, you have children.

All our pens are hidden from our budding Leonardo da Vincis. Can never bloody find them. Which is how the vendors of our new house ended up with a cheque written in orange felt tip recently. Small amount, so didn't care

[blackeyedsusan]

scissors... what happens to scissors?

... and rubbers

[cmt1375]

I had the pen problem recently, and then discoverd that my sons had decided that pens (particually clicky ones) made good sonic screwdrivers and were off saving the universe with them..

[DogsBestFriend]

SDTG, your very own support thread. :o

[betterwhenthesunshines]

Never can find any rubbers in our house. Doesn't matter how many I buy and how many times I say, "well if you don't put them back in the desk drawer".... makes homework time a nightmare.