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!

[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]

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]

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.

[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.

[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)

[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.

[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

[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!

[nickelbabe]

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