Yesterday evening, I lit a candle while watching an episode of Columbo. It’s one of those fat kinds that develops a wall of wax around the outside. Previously, a hole had formed in the wall and some wax had dripped out. I had fixed the hole, but there were still some hunks of this wax left. So I put one in the candle wall yesterday, leaned up against it, hoping it would slowly melt away.
This morning, I woke up and thought to myself that I didn’t remember putting out the candle. It’s in a bowl, so it would likely just burn down and out without incident, but there’s always a chance at the end of a candle that something falls or there’s extra wick or something that makes for a bigger burn. So I went and checked the candle. It was still intact and didn’t look too much burned down from where it had been. Looking inside, I saw that the hunk of wax I had put inside was on top of the wick. It had presumably fallen on it and put it out. Serendipity.
This evening, I looked at the candle again, and noticed the wax hunk had fused solid over the wick. I tried to scrape it off, but that wasn’t working well, and I didn’t want to break the wick. So I made a wick out of a twig and lit that, melting the wax away until the wick poked above the wax. The twig kept going out, and did so again at the perfect time. I was able to maneuver the twig out of the wax to the side until it all cooled. Then I removed the twig out lit the wick, and everything is back to as it should be. Now to remember to blow it out this time.