Tea Pot

This lady has  tea pots.

I own a tea pot now.  This is perhaps not as consequential in reality as it is in my psyche but you should know a couple of things: I don’t really drink tea, I don’t care about tea, and generally I think tea pots are dumb.  Not like, conceptually dumb; conceptually I get it, and in fact they’re a lovely tool.  I just…maybe it is more correct to say, generally I think tea pots are ugly.  Thaaat’s the ticket.  They tend to be either traditional, in which case ugly-fancy with a patina of “how to be ladylike” about them, or more casual, in a “yuck yuck, I’m just a country momma but I kin still make a good ole pot of tea!” vein (full disclosure I own a collection of serving dishes in the shape of

These are perfect. 
It's totally a different thing.

vegetables and a variety of pig and chicken sculptures and they are beautiful, I fully stand by THOSE ugly ceramics), or faux-artsy in a Pier One Imports flavor that, while I am deeply susceptible to in so many other useless tacky consumption-addict items of theirs (where do I get my proud roosters?  You guessed it!), I recognize for what it is in tea pots. 

(I do not recognize it for what it is in Christmas ornaments made out of twigs and leaves in the shape of woodland creatures, or soup bowls shaped like pumpkins, or the previously mentioned roosters or elephant pigs, but the tea pots are just a bridge too far.)

Do I own that pig?  Yes I do.

"...omg these white people....."

In tea pots I’m like, do I really want to spend money on pretending I have a deep and informed interest in Japanese tea culture that, when questioned, will immediately be revealed as “I have no idea what inspired this generically Asian-style ceramic but I am 100% sure it was made in China and certainly that counts as me being exotic and worldly, plus they had it in blue, I like blue…”  So even Pier One teapots do not turn my head.

It doesn’t help that to me, generally all tea tastes like it sure would smell good.  Like, that is the flavor. It has a flavor that makes you go, gosh, whatever this dingy water came from probably smells delicious.  All twitter comments about the flavor of la croix apply to teas except instead of just fruits, the spectrum widens to include baked goods, flowers, soaps, and concepts like “harmony.”

The functional side of tea pots, I will admit, I like.  I like it in the same way I like a garlic press (which is an actual valuable tool, unlike a bagel slicer, which remains just painfully dumb) and a jig saw and a shovel.  It’s a simple, direct, actually-useful tool based on essential concepts in action, and that’s kind of my jam.  It’s why I like church key can openers better than electric ones, even though they take longer to use and you might get tetanus.  Who cares that you’re bleeding, your SOUL is healed by the essential doing-ness of the thing you are doing.  (“Andy” thinks this makes no sense but he also doesn’t see the point of making your own vinegar, so he can’t be trusted.)

Well I went to a thing the other week.  It was a craft fair, but not like the one out front of the retirement community where everyone is selling salt and pepper shakers that are painted in polka dots and the quilt from Roseanne.  This was a Big Deal craft fair, with Big Deal vendors who make Big Deal stuff.  It was gorgeous stuff, really, and if I were independently wealthy I would have so many completely baller edgy jackets and subtle, stimulating necklaces (plusalso all this stuff). 

We would be best friends.

(If I were independently wealthy the first thing I would do is become a falconer, and take my Lady Hawk everywhere like Paris Hilton and her rat dog, with the same attitude of “I don’t understand why this is a problem, she is my soulmate.") 

 One of the venders in there was a potter, and I learned an important lesson:

Teapots are not ugly.  Cheap teapots are ugly. 

It was an "ah ha" moment.

I love ceramics, love love love them (serving dishes shaped like vegetables, people.).  The ones I like best make you want to touch them all the time, and I don’t know if you would have guessed this but I am not the number one reigning queen of impulse control so I 

Ima break it.

DO touch them all the time.   This is also how I make friends at Big Deal craft markets, if friendship is defined by one person having a face full of childlike joy while the other one is deeply, deeply uncomfortable.

Anyway, there was a potter, and he made v cool, clean looking, functional but beautiful and VERY touchable stuff like mugs and teapots and serving bowls and vases and teapots and I loved them all and since it’s my birthday, my step mom got me a Big Deal teapot and I frigging adore it.  There is no good place to display it in the house and I don’t drink tea and also I had to get it home without shattering it, which was its own adventure, and I just want to keep touching it.  It is beautiful.

So now I have to figure out how to like tea. 

Tea is something that has this air about it of, well but you should like it. 

This guy
doesn't drink tea.

Real people like tea.  People who are not soulless voids like tea.  They maybe have one cup of coffee in the morning to acknowledge that they are still bound by their human body, but they prefer the rest of their day, when they imbibe tranquility by the perfectly-seeped thimbleful and, idk, get their taxes done on time.  To me, tea tastes like warm water with an aroma of how bad you are failing at appreciating the true wonder of this mystery called life.  I even like drinking hot water—just that.  Just water, but heated up.  Warms you up, makes your tummy happy.  But give it a dumb name and make me wait three minutes and give it an aroma that is a lie and I don’t know why I didn’t just make coffee.

As previously mentioned, however, part of what is appealing to me about a tea pot is the true functionality of it.  It is made to be used, and designed to be very good at what it does.  So I want to use it, or at least try.

Ugh, but tea tho…..

It’s the kind of pot that comes with a screen in it because Big Deal tea comes from loose leaves.  So I need loose leaf tea that I might actually like.  How…how, Reader, do I figure out what kind of tea I like?  They all smell good and that means a whole bunch of nothing when it comes to the flavor.  They all have a list of reasons why they’ll cure what ails you.  They all have names made of words, or at least sounds.  This is much like me trying to find a decent bottle of wine when I don’t know anything about wine, except I will actually drink the wine even if it’s not my favorite, and the same is not true of bland, tepid herb water.

I'm listening....

So like…are there tea selling establishments that offer flights of teas, or tastings, or something?  Yes, yes it seems there are.  They are called houses or rooms instead of bars or pubs, and the food is less deep-fryer and grill focused then the brewing establishments I am more familiar with, but they exist.  There appears to be a spectrum from fancy-pants to acid trip.  I am not sure there is a dive bar equivalent, but if there was, it’s porbably not where Big Deal tea lives.  I bet they all generally pretty much have their scone game on lock, and I am a fan of scones, and also costuming, soooooo I’m interested.

Hypothesis: the tea room employees will become just as (or more) frustrated than people who work at craft beer bars when I walk in with my “I don’t know what I like, I don’t want to learn about your product, I don’t care about your hobby, but I am picky, please serve me a drink” attitude.

It has been pointed out to me that, in the meantime,

I mean, because obviously, right?

I could just make coffee in my tea pot (it has also been pointed out that I don’t like tea, never have, and probably never will.  While we all have to acknowledge this is true, Reader, I really want to wear an astronaut costume to some sort of Mad Hatter tea room to munch on some cookies or perhaps a Scotch Egg, so we’re in this now).

And this is the moment where it pays to have an awesome tribe.  Cuz I while I don’t like tea, I know people who do, and they have, like, all the teas.  Furthermore, they are also interested in committing to ridiculous events, and now there are plans for a tea party.   A goblin tea party.  There will be tastings. There will be scones (I assume).  There will be everything ranging from clothes to outfits to costumes.  There will be pinkies in the air and also whisky.  I will use my Big Deal tea pot and hopefully, when it’s all done, I’ll know what weird dried leaves to Amazon Prime to my house (or just more Foldger’s Classic Blend, whatever). 

Real talk, when this suggestion came up, I actually legitimately had a moment of, well but tea parties happen in spring or summer and it's still February...

This is gonna be great.