Up in Flames

Last night when I went into Tomie's house to help him with evening foot care, I encountered a rather frazzled Tomie.

Back Story: Tomie loves candles. Correction - Tomie LOVES candles. Every night he'll have dozens of candles burning until he heads for bed. He uses tealights to make his favorite candles last longer. He does this by burning a new candle enough so that a well forms. He then places a tealight in the well and lights the tealight.

He usually has bags and bags of plastic cup tealights in stock, but his supply was getting frighteningly low. Yet, when he placed a new order for tealights, the tealights were backordered until the new year.

CRISIS!

I found 200 aluminum cup tealights at the hardware store, and Tomie relaxed.

However, last night while Tomie was preparing his dinner, he began to smell an odd smell. He discovered that the aluminum cups of the aluminum cup tealights that he had placed in candles were heating up and falling out of the sides of the candles onto counters, and tablecloths. Nothing was burning, but that may have been pure luck/divine intervention/good fortune.

Lesson learned. Plastic cup tealights can be inserted into large candles. Aluminum cup tealights can be inserted into glass candle holders.

Tomie promised that he would be less flame-boyant.