Comfort and coffee

As a grieving widower, I need some kind of comfort.  I am damaged, and in pain.  I need some kind of succor.  At first, I tried to find it with the churches of Port Alberni.  Quite a number of the churches of Port Alberni.  However, that exercise seems to be fruitless.

I tried to find it in volunteer work.  That's been a little bit better, and there are some very nice people in a number of the volunteer organizations around town.  But they're all busy, helping other people.

So, apparently unconsciously, I gravitated to another source of comfort.  I am being blessed by the church of St. A&W.

As previously noted, I am drinking far too much coffee.  I don't even like coffee.  The only other time that I drank an awful lot of coffee in my life was when I was going to Regent College.  As a science student, among a bunch of artsies, taking an artsy program, and not even knowing how to write, or choose topics for, essays, I was a bit stressed.  I was also helping M (who has a place in not one, but *two* of the stories of our wedding) buy the coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and other necessary bits and pieces for the coffee station at the college.  For these, and possibly other reasons, I started drinking an awful lot of coffee.

So, I can see that it's quite evident that I am using coffee as a comfort at this, very stressed, point in my life as well.  I don't know: maybe it's the combination of glucose and caffeine.  (I am, in addition to all the other stresses, also trying to diet, which is not going well, so the coffee is sort of a dietary delusion, providing some carbohydrate comfort, while letting me pretend that I'm only drinking something.)

I don't like coffee, and I take it with far too much cream and sugar, but of all the coffee that I don't like, A&W is the one that I find it easiest to tolerate.  The other tolerable coffees around town are McDonalds and Tim Hortons, so obviously I have a thing for chain coffee.  The fancy coffee places around town all tend to dark, bitter sludge, which I have to lard with so much sugar that even I can't pretend that this isn't really terribly dangerous stuff for a diabetic to be drinking.

The A&W staff are very nice, and the policy is for what seems like unlimited refills.   They also know me, and my weird order, and it's a nice place to sit, and gather my thoughts, and dictate stuff like this, entries for the blog, or sermons, or other work, or reviewing of the grief books. They have wifi, although their wifi does tend to drop unexpectedly for unexpected reasons.  I'm not quite sure what's happening with that.

. . .

And, A&W has just let me down.  You didn't notice it, but I just disappeared for a while.  That was because A&W's wifi suddenly decided to stop working.  And to stop doing pretty much anything.  So, I'm over at the no frills, using their wifi, and buying limes.