Recently Velveeta has been hearing a lot about one of her favorite subjects other than planting roses: tea parties! Oh the finger cakes and sandwiches, the antique cups and saucers, the pots brimming over with Jasmine tea, the hats and gloves and lest we forget... the juicy gossip! What a day!

So, when I heard that there was going to be a tea party in my area I was overjoyed. First, to prepare for the party, I splurged on a new crinoline vintage skirt, satin-rimmed Adele hat with large ribbon (pink) and of course a pair of fitted white gloves. I prepared my Herbed Cheese Scones using a recipe handed down from my Great Grandmother served on an antique St. Andrews rose pattern dish and then I was ready. And what a glorious day for a tea party!

Then, and please don't think that I'm a showoff, but I decided to bring a few of my antique bone china teacups and saucers to display at the party. Only as a topic of discussion mind you, truly I did not mean to be snooty. But, some of these are well over 100 years old and hand painted, I merely thought that some of the other ladies might enjoy them.

Well! You can imagine my surprise when I got to the address and found not a tea party, rather some racous gathering of people carrying distastful signs, wearing ill-fitting pro-USA garb, and wandering around willy-nilly in a big circle disrupting traffic and pedestrians alike. Yikes!

It turns out, I was not at the wrong address. This is what todays Americans call a tea party. Truly it is a sad state of affairs. And, to make make matters worse these people attending the..... party, are not what you would exactly call the brain trust of our country. No, really, I am being overly kind. I am sorry to inform you that the people that I encountered are..... well, they are not at all gifted with brightness. Sorry, I really don't know how to put this in a nice way. They put the Duh in Dumber.

Part of the problem it seems to me, is that none of them are exactly sure what it is they are protesting. I know, I know. You'd think the organizers would straighten this out, but I can only conclude that the organizers may also be part of the problem of unsmartness. Some are protesting "Big Government" and/or taxes, while others are focused on Health Care Reform, The war in Iraq/Terror, the pull towards socialism and/or fascism. Other themes are: Obama is a muslim/not American/socialist/fascist/racist, Pelosi is a bitch, Glenn Beck is the best/king/great/"heart", Liberty (or, the lack thereof during the Obama/Pelosi reign of terror), Guns (fear of losing them and/or threats of using them), Babies being murdered, Obama/Hitler references and plenty of conspiracy theories from Obama's birth certificate to Pelosi being a robot made in a lab by mad scientists that work for Obama who is a puppet of Osama Bin Ladin and the Saudis.

Okay, I made that last one up, but really it doesn't sound too far off.

I tried to figure out what they were protesting but it was hard to put together. Lets's just say that eloquence is not their strong suit, shall we? Mostly what I got was a spittle induced cacophony of, "Arg... taxes... Obama Hussain.... government....ack... baby killers..... taxes..... Libs suck.....socialism...." etc.

Well, it ended up being a very sad day as Velveeta lost one of her Chugai Occupied Japan floral and gold trimmed teacups in a misunderstanding which resulted in a small scuffle. So, lesson learned, I will be more careful in my future choice of parties. And, I'm beginning to suspect that the invitation to a party called Creme Puffs in Oz might need prior investigation before I go dressed up as Dorothy.