Waxology: The Study of Wax in All Its Many Forms

Oh where to begin about this wonderful night of mischief and stupidity?

It all started two weekends ago when Janna's and my roommate went to Disneyland for a week. This roommate, from the very beginning of the semester, decided to decorate the entire apartment with her things. I was okay with the decorations because they started out cute, but then it expanded to pictures of her, photo albums of her family, things of hers on the fridge, ugly ceramic Jesus', and the best one...a wooden doll that you can manipulate into different poses. Janna and I became a little overwhelmed with the constant face of our roommate looking down at us. So in an act of rebellion (which we could only perform when we knew she wouldn't get mad at us for a couple of week) we decided to move things around and add a little touch of us.

First off, I added a cute poster of a couple kissing to our wall (this poster got added before she left and we could tell that she hated it even though it is ridiculously cute). The next thing we add (after she left) was a picture of Janna, Whitney, and me that was taken on our cruise last year. Since the picture frame did not have a stand to hold it up, we decided that the ugly ceramic Jesus would work perfectly to hold the picture up while making the decor more bearable. Next, we moved some of her picture frames to the bottom shelves (which she had been doing to the one and only thing we had on the bookshelves since the beginning of the semester) and added our own little doodads to the now vacant spot. I added a little plaque looking thing that says "believe" to the wall. The last, and probably most jarring thing we added to our now splendid decor happened to be giant egg thing that Whitney had left here from last year. We stuck it high and in the middle so no one can miss it (perfect!).

Well after our decoration spree, we thought our mischief was done, how wrong we were. Back on Tuesday of this week, Janna and I were in the kitchen just sitting at the table. Behind where I was sitting there is a little table with different little things on it one of which a candle and a candle warmer. I picked up the candle and started smelling it and poking it with my finger. It's just so fun to poke because the wax isn't like regular wax; it is soft and squishy and fun to play with. So I posed the question to Janna, "should I stick a pencil in this?" Of course she said yes and so I started sticking the pencil in and swirling it around. Janna then wanted to take part and so she started playing with it. What happened after this point I totally blame on Janna and her peer pressure.

Janna took the pencil out of the wax and started "exfoliating" with it--AKA smearing the wax all over her hands. The fun and pleasure she possessed made me want to participate and so I, too, followed suit. So there we were covered in wax "exfoliating" our hands when I made the statement, "I'm glad anonymous roommate isn't here to see us doing this. I'm pretty sure she would be upset." At that point in the conversation, Janna decided to go wash her hands off and I continued playing with the wax. Janna came back and sat down with me and we continued to talk for a few minutes when low and behold, our anonymous roommate decided to show up when she said she would be staying at her house all week. I had had the sense of mind to stick my hands under the table but I didn't get a chance to take my leg off the table before she came in. So there I was in a rather strange position (which she commented on) as she wandered around the kitchen. She finally left to go get the mail which gave Janna and me time to run back to my room. We hid in there until she left and prayed she wouldn't see the candle and all its messed up glory.

After she left, we went back out and I cleaned my hands off. Janna then wanted to and use hot wax to see if it exfoliated better than cold wax. Just don't ask.

So she turned on the candle warmer but it was taking to long so we used the stove (good thing we have an electric stove and the candle container was metal). After the wax melted it was too hot to put our hands in so we decided it would be fun to poor a little over the railing of our balcony...again, don't ask.

I then had the brilliant idea to use a candle I had in my room to see if that worked better. Well the candle was melting on the stove, Janna and I got dinner (ice cream, two pizzas, strawberry peanut butter m&m's, and chips) and watched the Olympics and a movie. After the candle had finished melting, we decided to stick our hands in it and make hand molds. So we went through the process of dipping and cooling and shaking our hands cause they were burning for the next thirty minutes. I have to admit, the molds would have turned out awesome if we would have only done one hand so that the other could take of the wax without doing to much damage. Since we did both hands, it became quite a feat to get the wax off. We ended up putting the wax back in the candle to remelt it and try again, except for the mold of Janna's thumb which she liked and put up with our new decorations.

Well I started to melt the wax again (on the stove) but it was taking to long so I turned up the heat...oops. I thought I had tempered the glass enough, but I was sorely wrong. The glass exploded and the wax went everywhere. Janna grabbed a blanket and started fanning the disgusting smelling smoke away from the fire alarm as I opened all windows and doors. After the wax cooled (and preventing the alarm from going off), we had to scrape it off the bottom of the stove and the surrounding kitchen area. That took us a good 45 minutes but we laughed the entire time and rejoiced that AR (anonymous roommate) wasn't there to get mad at us for destroying her spotless kitchen.

Somehow this entire process took us from 5:30 to 11:30 at night but totally worth the wasting of six hours. Sometimes you just have to do something stupid to relieve built up stress from school, AR, and life and that is exactly what we did. It just so happens it was one of the best nights ever!

The End