Should that be burning?

With so much goodness occurring in the company of MiniMe, That’s Not Chinese, Dr. BJ, Skiwi and DDDG, I often forget about the intricate details that make up an evening with them. Luckily, while sharing holiday experiences with OregganO, MiniMe reminded me of a crucial detail (which quickly became a ‘situation’) involving Skiwi.

We were all gathered around the fire (yes, That’s Not Chinese has one step up from the yulelog DVD) when Dr. BJ made a very casual observation, “Should that be burning like that?” This comment caught the attention of everyone and we all turned our heads to the area of the room on which Dr. BJ’s’ eyes were focused. “No,” That’s Not Chinese replied, “It should not.”

In the righthand corner of the bookshelf mantel, one of the tealights in the votive cups had a flame about 12″ high, clearly not standard operating procedure. Skiwi quickly stepped up to save the day and blew on the flame, which caused it to burn even greater and higher. He then grabbed some papers near the fireplace. “What are you going to do with those?” That’s Not Chinese asked. “I’m going to put it on top of the flame,” Skiwi replied. In unison, everyone advised against that.

“Why not?” Skiwi asked. We all provided what we thought were logical explanations and, in the midst of explanations and That’s Not Chinese’s mantel and home nearly catching fire, I grabbed a glass of water and doused out the flame.

Upset with our questioning of his firefighting skills, Skiwi threatened to go home and get the ‘official’ firefighter’s jacket he was gifted in New Zealand, and proceeded to take the papers around to the votive cups filled with functional burning tealights and snuff them out. “See,” he said with the pride of someone who has ameliorated something major, “it works.” At this point it was obvious that the only thing ‘burning’ was Skiwi, who was clearly burning the midnight oil and, after this life saving and property protecting event, he was spent.