Tea is weird. It's not as strong as coffee, it's not tasty in the way that juice is. Overall, it's the comfort food of the drink world. It's rarely spectacular and rarely surprising. Yes, adding milk or sweetener adds a little variety, but overall, it's tea. Tea is tea. It's lovely, but a gentle kind of lovely, like a towel fresh out of the dryer.

At the moment, the tea-drinking members of 224 (my Oxford house) are averaging four cups of tea.
Per person.
Per day.

The mornings consist of two or three people standing around the microwave and lightly chatting in a sleep-daze while waiting for each cup - one at a time - to be hot enough to brew our preferred tea. The afternoon transitions to peppermint and herbal teas, but the same principle remains. After dinner, more tea, and usually with some kind of cookies. People go to bed, not when they are tired, but when they are out of tea and there is no good reason to stay in the dining room.

I'm not sure if it's a comfort thing, or house bonding, or just a sign that I drink an absurd amount of tea (which may in fact drive the average up a cup or two), but we spend a lot of time (NOT MONEY) on tea drinking. It's a ritual and a moment of quiet. You just can't chug a cup of hot tea. It just feels wrong, like a towel fresh out of the washer.

I'm not totally sure how to say what I'm driving at without putting it this way: you deserve to take a moment and sit with a cup of tea. You deserve comfort and a peaceful space in the middle of a stressful day. You deserve the company of friends and laughter over nothing.

Basically, you deserve tea.