A Conflict of Interests

I have a tremendous internal struggle, a conflict between two essential parts of my nature that plays out every time I sit down at a restaurant, which happens at least once a day when we’re on vacation and sometimes more, and is brought into even sharper focus now that we’re on vacation in Greece where the food is just so damned good, and that is the conflict between my desire to lose weight, which is actually kind of important and even a health issue, and not just vanity, although lord knows (figure of speech) I’, m not exactly lacking in the vanity department either, and my desire to get my money’s worth.
The kids wanted pizza tonight, they’ve been complaining about having souvlaki all the time, which is silly because they’ve had other choices, but they didn’t bitch about having to walk around the ruins of the palace of Knossos today (which I’m glad we saw, but I was a bit disappointed – the massive numbers of people there, looking very much a part of the 21st century, kind of made it impossible to FEEL the antiquity of the place and, in the end, it just seemed like a bunch of old rocks) so I figured it was their turn to call the restaurant, and they wanted pizza.
Anyway, the price was great, we considered just getting one large pizza for the four of us and that might have even been enough, but pizza is deceptive and what looks like a lot can be gone very quickly, so we ordered a large seafood and a medium pepperoni, and it was more than enough. We had to ask for the rest to go, and hadn’t done that yet this trip, and didn’t know if that was an acceptable thing to do in Greece, but it turns out they were fine with it, although I’m still thinking it’s not commonly done because the box was more like a chocolate box and we had to stack the pieces one on top of the other to make it fit.
Well, we were ready to go but then they came around with the complimentary dessert – loukoumades, which are balls of deep fried dough, glazed with honey, and there was a whole stack of them, surrounding a mound of ice cream in the middle. It was exquisite. They also brought out a carafe of some liqueur they called raki, which was wasted on us because I don’t drink, swore it off over 20 years ago, did AA meetings and have been living sober one day at a time ever since, and Helena has never drank much, she might have a glass of wine if she’s forced to at a business function, but more than 2 glasses and she is a bit ill, Isabel is too young and Sam, while we allowed him to sample it, was out with his parents and not with his friends, so not exactly the greatest moment to get hammered.
But we sure did plow through the loukoumades and now, 3 hours later, I’m still feeling a bit stuffed.
Sure got my money’s worth, though.