On Vetiver, Rhubarb Fools and Spontaneous Human Combustion

Have you ever wondered what just might happen if you, say, used the absolutely wrong hair condition after shampooing? Might your hair begin pulsing with phosphorescent luminosity? Could it combust spontaneously and burn in a manner that cannot be extinguished with plain old tap water? Will it begin to corkscrew curl and frizzle so fast that it shatters into thousands of teeny drain clogging fragments?

It's kind of like mixing rhubarb with kiwi or pineapple - I've never tried those combinations - how do they taste? Will they fizz up on contact? Hmmm. I do know from experience that peanut butter sandwich + tomato soup = metallic listerine-like flavor. It tastes nasty but on the other hand, it just might cure gingivitis once and for all.

I bought three gorgeous stalks of raw rhubarb at the Maltby Farmers Market the other day and boiled them down with ginger and sugar so I now have some delicious rhubarb sauce. Might as well make a fool out of it. But I'm not sure there's quite enough of it to go around. Dare I add some fresh pineapple to the mixture? Or is that just inviting trouble?

Now for something completely non-sequitur: When Tini and Heiko were here last month they bought me a giant bar of my favorite vetiver soap (maybe they were trying to tell me something...?) I love the stark woodsy/tall grass smell of vetiver! It is an old old smell like patchouli or oakmoss, not as cloying as sweet grass, but not bitter, either. It speaks to me of the long ago, of somber places where silent, watchful elves once held court. A few years ago in a fiction writing class, I mentioned vetiver as an ingredient in a concoction and my fellow classmates didn't know what it was so they told me to take it out of the writing. I replied "go find some and smell it. It stays." Harrumph!

Another weird note: I had a dream last night that Deepika and I were ghostbusting at the local Goodwill and we kept pointing to a lit candle and telling this one poltergeist to go to the light and he kept blowing the candle flame out! How rude! We tried all the Christian exorcisms we knew to no avail. Finally I started chanting "Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram Om..." and he took off. Honestly, you never know what is lurking around at second-hand stores. It's best to be prepared.