justa breath of fresh aire

    once, while visiting the house of blues in chicago, i came across these fabulous incense matches in their gift shop. they are exactly what they sound like. they look like your typical book of matches, but each match stick is infused w/ various scents. you light it, then blow it out after a few seconds and it smoulders lovely smells for about a minute or so. a great idea i thought, for those unfortunate bathroom incidents men always seem to leave behind. i ended up loving them, and have since found them much cheaper via ebay (i swear, is there anything one cannot find there?) but i digress. the downfall of these matches is that if they touch any surface while smouldering? they go out. read: stop smouldering/smelling. but standing there holding a smoking match was just stupid.  i needed to find a way to allow these babies to burn, but burn alone, hands free. various incense holders did not work, as the available holes were always too small. laying them down wouldn't work either. they wanted to burn upright and were quite emphatic about it. i remembered a medical hemostat i had packed away in a closet. you know, those vascular clamp thingies? and before you start to wonder why i owned a hemostat, you should know i hung out with an EMT during my college days. so there. anywho, the hemostat works like a charm. looks roughly like a pair of scissors holding a match. i lay it in a brushed aluminum crescent moon ashtray i've had since my cigarette days and just could not part with as i still have a thing for crescent moons. then, as if i wasn't happy enough about the now sweet aromas emitting from the bathrooms in the house, i came across sage smudgesticks in a new-age store. you know, those things native americans made and burned to ward off evil spirits. today, many believe they remove bad mojo. "smudging" has become quite popular with society's more spiritual sector. now, i'm not certain i concur to that degree, and i so hope the mojo in my house has not yet reached the evil stages, but i did pick up a few sage bundles thinking once again, it could ward off any evil bathroom smells. turns out my husband likes the smell. after burning the sage of course, not the smell prior to. he possibly likes the smell more than my little incense matches even. perhaps sage is more manly than raspberry patchoulli, i dunno. (and if you're beginning to see a trend here, blame my father. he was a firefighter, and since childhood, fire has always fascinated me)

now i want you to get the visual here. a giant green stogie looking thing, (clearly hand-rolled) an ashtray, a hemostat, spent matches, and assorted sources of fire to light all of the above.

    it suddenly occurred to me, people may get the wrong idea...