Soggy Bread, Leftover Gyoza, and NYC's Best Hot Dogs

Tuesday, May 7th: ~9:00pm

With Mimi in daycare today, most of my time was devoted to steaming spinach and bok choy, boiling chicken, and straining chicken stock to replenish the frozen "nuggets" we use for Mimi's lunch and dinner.  Beyond that I made dinner, talked with the insurance company, watched a little Top Gear, and read a chapter or two in "Gotham," a massive history of NYC.  When I'm on my own I'm a rather boring person.  That's why Tuesday's details end here and we switch back to Monday, which Mimi made far more interesting. 

Thanks to "hell parking" Sunday night, the car was at a meter that was going to go active at 8:00am.  I packed Mimi's bottles and snacks, woke and dressed her, and we headed out to the car to take Mama to work and ourselves to the Upper West Side.

We found parking right away on 76th street, our old home, and with Mimi tackling a bottle of juice in her stroller, we headed down to 72nd to get Papa some breakfast and his favorite Upper West Side indulgence:  Gray's Papaya.

Claiming to serve the "filet mignon" of hot dogs, Gray's Papaya serves ridiculously tasty dogs and tropical drinks.  Odd combination, agreed, but it does have a history or sorts and there are several other tropical drink dog stands in the city (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray%27s_Papaya).  Gray's holds a special place in my heart as I ate their dogs for lunch two weeks straight when I first moved to New York.  10 years ago, it was only $2.95 for two dogs and a drink.  Times have changed. 

The restaurant is standing room only, so after getting our dogs, Mimi and I sidled up to one of the counters and tucked in.  Though Mimi's still a bit young to fully appreciate the low-rent goodness of these beauties, she thoroughly enjoyed the bits of bun I would sneak down to her between bites.  She loved it!  This information would serve me well later in the day as it turned out. 

From Gray's we walked over to the Dakota - John Lennon and Yoko Ono's home and location of John Lennon's assassination.  From there we crossed the street to Strawberry Fields. 

Strawberry Fields was dedicated to John by Yoko Ono following his death and since its creation has remained one of the most visited areas of Central Park.  Mimi and I took a seat near the "imagine" mosaic and settled in for a good sit - Papa with a Gatorade and Mimi with a fresh bottle of milk - and  a bit of people watching.  Tourist areas, if they're quiet, can be rather interesting places to "see the world."  Two tour groups came and went while we were there.  One was a rag-tag collection of English speakers, the other a vibrant group of Italians about 25 strong.  Mimi and I were hoping for a Japanese group, but no luck. 

On our way out we were stopped by an older woman who was sitting on a bench near the exit.  I used to find this odd, even annoying, but I've found that when I'm with Mimi I'm quite popular with women over 50.  Well, I guess its only Mimi who is really popular, but given that she can't talk yet, I tend to get chatted up.  Though this woman claimed to have worked in Central Park for the past 25 years, and to have met Yoko Ono on numerous occasions, she shared that this was her first outing to Strawberry Fields, which rather called everything she'd shared into question.  But that's what's so much fun about random conversations with people in New York.  It's always a bit surreal. 

After that we did a spot of shopping and then headed for home, where we found excellent parking! 

The rest of the day was relatively quiet save for Mimi's dinner.  She enjoyed her leftover gyoza from the day before (filling only), but when it came time for the dinner roll, one of her favorites, she balked after only a few bites.  Recently, when having bread, Mimi would sometimes stop, shove her fingers down her throat, and bring the rest of her dinner back up.  This was strange to me, especially given that she had loved the bread from Gray's Papaya earlier that day.  With close observation I found that the fresh bread we had been giving her became very dense and sticky with saliva.  As a result, a giant "bread patch" had formed on the roof of her mouth.  I pulled Mimi's fingers out, shoved my own in, removed the bread, and got a smile.  In the future, I'm going to "soggify" a bit of Mimi's bread to see if that helps get it down a bit better.  If I hadn't been to Gray's Papaya earlier that day I might not have made the discovery.  I guess sometimes it's good to have hot dogs for breakfast.