more things I learnt today

that I should have known before

on the day before the POVS (People Of Various Sizes) go back to school and you conduct a uniform check

once you've picked up the offending items from the furthest, darkest recesses of their rooms (clothes peg firmly clipped to nose) and then your washing machine does this:

this might be the only option for uniform cleanliness:

*

this is an appropriate use for a pudding bowl:

despite the fact that your male children do not want to have the kind of decent haircuts for school that school requires (detentions are very happily dished out by said school if hair is not worn to regulations, especially on the first day back after a holiday) and that their father could have bought them for under a tenner at the nearest barber. . .

this is not an appropriate use of a pudding bowl (even when the men of the tribe remember that the sensible one forgot to take the two not-sensible ones to the barber, and by this time the two not-sensible ones have returned to chez moi and I'm the only one with hair-dressing scissors, even then this is not the desired result):

*

setting your alarm to the "school day wake-up time" one day early. . .

. . .only has one result

things I learnt today

that I should have known before
undecorating the xmas tree and taking it to the recycling in a mohair jumper is not such a good idea

ok, so I'm blonde and there isn't a smile on my face
and my jumper is far more prickly than her outfit,
apart from that it's a good match
*

watching West Side Story with Mini-Teen and disagreeing when she asks you "not to sing along" is not such a good idea

if I wore Paul Smith
this would be the proverbial sock,
which I had to "put in it"
*

watching SE7EN with The Teen and expecting him to find it as scary as you do is not such a good idea

and hoping google images
will come up with "a head in a box"
sometimes has strange results