Any mother who is fortunate enough to have been blessed with daughters will agree with me, that once they become teenagers, nothing is sacred anymore.
Take the tweezers for example, a pair of tweezers is possibly one of a girl's most important possessions and it doesn't matter where I hide mine, THEY find them.
I find that the older I get the more CUNNING, SNEAKY, FURTIVE, POSITIVELY AVARICIOUS I become about my tweezers.
But tweezers are not the only only items which come between a girl and her mum. Scissors too become a problem.
it doesn't matter how many pairs of scissors I buy for my girls, how many of those pretty manicure sets they get for their birthdays, oh no, it's mother's scissors that they seek cos they know exactly where they are. In the silver trinket box on her dressing table, of course, whereas their scissors of course as usual, are nowhere to be found !!
Now that I have a grandson, the problem has become even more complex. There is only one set of scissors in the whole house, that is sure to be in the right place, and that is Grandma's pair.
Nail files are yet another bone of contention, a mum always needs a nail-file in every room in the home, one in the kitchen one in the bedroom, one in the bathroom, and of course one in the car. I mean a rough nail could be the ruin of a whole day without a nail file at hand, but it doesn't matter where I hide them, THEY find them and then instead of putting them back in the same place, they are lost, gone forever to that land of lost tweezers, scissors and nail files where there must be a stash a mile high !!
Orderliness and possessiveness about small things obviously comes with age cos I remember my mum complaining about the exact same thing !!
Now lip-ice is another bone of contention in our house. There must be a lip ice by the bed, one in the handbag and one in the kitchen, and there generally is, whilst my beautiful daughters are out of the country as they generally are, but when the girls are home,and although our house is now extremely blessed and filled with fun, laughter, squeals of delight, (and a happy Dad), there is also a marked absence of anything that looks remotely like tweezers, nail, files, scissors and lip ice.
Now He Who Must be Obeyed always sneers at us girls about lip ice.
We are "lip ice addicts" he tells us disparagingly.
HE has never needed lip ice in his entire macho life !! It must be something to do with lip stick because a girl's lips actually scream for lip ice and the mind can only think of one thing and that is to find lip ice somewhere, anywhere !!
The offspring are fastidious about their lip ice requirements funnily enough, it has to be the local Third World Vaseline Lip Ice, I send dozens of them to all corners of the world which is strange considering how many fancy lip ices, salves, glosses and garnishes there are in the first world, especially the Paw Paw lip salve from Oz!!
Now I am not the only one besotted by tweezers, the security folk at airports, since nine eleven, have also become fixated with tweezers. Its not just scissors and knives that they confiscate these days, its tweezers and nail files too.
Now I ask you with tears in my eyes, can you imagine me, two bricks and a tickey tall, matronly in the extreme, not the fastest thing on two legs and definitely the most feeble, can you imagine moi hijacking an airplane with a pair of tweezers. !! (That is assuming I could find any in the house when the little darlings are home !!)