Slice of Life


Just returned from the Jersey Shore from a family event. I was able to catch up with all of my cousins as well as my brothers. There are 8 boys and only one girl in our generation of children. Within a couple of generations, there will be a lot more Bierker's in the U.S. Not from me in all likelihood, unless something Abrahamic happens. It was neat to get to know my cousins' kids' better or even meet them for the first time. One of them was wiping wedding cake frosting on his face like war paint last night at dinner and my older brother and I were egging him on. His dad, at a different table, was super chill about it and found it amusing too. Good parenting. Let kids have some fun. Adulthood will beat fun out of them if they are not able to keep that kid fire alive and part of this sustainability is the ability to be a kid when a kid.

I have worked with far too many teens who are prematurely parentified for one reason or another. I don't believe I would be a good parent (call it an occupational hazard with working with kids all day... I really don't want to have to re-up when I come home) and I quite enjoy being single. I work with other peoples' kids, that is my calling and I am cool with it. I am heading to Portland, Maine next weekend where I don't have to negotiate doing so with a spouse. I do what I want. Work is on hold for a bit besides heading in Tuesday to clean up some senior final transcript issues/submissions to colleges and post-secondary schools. So, it is summertime and life is good.

While down in Atlantic City and environs, I tried to stick to my better eating habits of late and for the most part I did. I have gained close to 30 pounds in the last decade and some of it is muscle. Maybe 10 pounds of it. The rest is fat, particularly belly fat. So, I have dropped about ten pounds in the last couple of weeks but probably put some of it back this weekend with the beer I drank. I can't say that I am dieting per se. It is more redirecting my food choices to healthier options and reducing the amount of unhealthy foods I am eating. Today for lunch I had a Gyro minus the french fries. It was really good and I didn't have the sleepy and sedative post-carbs crash.  

Yesterday, my brothers and I bought the South Philly style pizza slice pictured above down at some small shop on Long Beach Island. This is real pizza, not that Papa John's doughy-monstrosity. The dough on this is thin and semi-crispy but still pliable. The piece was huge, with just the right amount of tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and olive oil. Since I am from the Philly-area, I know good pizza and this delivered. One of my brothers lives in Minneapolis and the pizza is uniformly bad so he was real happy to get a slice of this. The night before we went to an old Atlantic City restaurant whose pizza was good but not great, and it left him bereft. So, we tried again and there you go.

I was tempted to order two slices but when I saw how big the slice was, I was happy I had not. It was the perfect slice. One of the paradoxes of life is that more leads to less. Better to have 2 or 3 beers and call it a night. Or, a slice of pizza, and really savor it rather than shovel 3 slices down. A couple of pieces of good chocolate rather than the bag of crap candy. One cigar a week than a pack of cigarettes a day.  God wants us to enjoy His gifts but not abuse them and make them idols. It is a daily battle fought with food and drink.

One last thought about idols in general...we don't see ourselves as idolatrous because we are not literally bowing down to some statue. However, the big screen TV and smart-phones are image generators and what we watch just might be what we worship.

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