My Kingdom for a Pen

I grabbed a pen to make a quick list of stuff I needed to do this morning, in between all the other stuff I needed to do this morning.  I was in a rush.  Not in the mood for all of the little annoying glitches that can cause my eyes to do that squirrel-y thing that usually only happens on cartoon characters.  And simply "grabbing a pen" doesn't happen in this house.  Here is my jar of pens:

Everything but one good, old-fashioned, well-working pen.

Roughly 95% of the pens in this jar do not work.  It's a veritable crap shoot whether I can hone in on a pen that works when pursuing one.  I could just use a pencil, but that would be way too easy.  Plus the pencil sharpener we have does this mysterious thing where the lead in the pencil breaks when you're sharpening it, but you don't know it's broken until you bear down to write.  That can make me blow a gasket. 

Unfortunately, I am famously guilty of the crime of putting defunct pens back into the jar rather than straight into the trash.  Probably the main reason for my pen-jar-grievances.  Maybe once I find a pen that works, I'll add "Weed Out Bad Pens from All Pen Jars in House" to my list of stuff I need to do.  And if I can't find one, I can always resort to the barely visible pink highlighter that never dries out, never disappears, but is too light to read and I inevitably end up using.  Every family has one, am I right?  Oh, and I should also probably stop buying pens from the budget bin at the dollar store.  You know, the ones that never work from the very start?  That I have a million of?  And are a large factor for this post?