My daughter leaves back for college in two days. I had hoped that we would go out for hot dogs one night and have a nice conversation about life. I knew she had a couple things she wanted to do before she went back to school. She wanted to go to Trader Joes and she wanted to eat ramen. I suggested we go to Parkview Market, which is a trendy food court in Hartford that overs many food stalls of almost every variety of food type and ethnicity. She could get ramen and I could get a hot dog. I checked to see if they had a Ramen one and I couldn’t find one. I did see two ramen stores in our town that were very highly rated. I mentioned their names and Zoey said she really wanted to go to one of them, but she said she would be happy to go by herself tomorrow when I was at work. I said no let’s go there tonight and so we did and we took her mom and had a very nice meal. I marveled at how well she used chop sticks to roll the ramen noodles. She was also very knowledge of the items on the menu. She made some great recommendations. I had a pork belly bao-bun which was delicious. Her mom got an edamame dish. I tried some of the edamame, but they both laughed at me because I thought you had to eat the whole edamame, which was very fucking chewy, rather than just eating the pea beans inside the skin. For my main course, I got Beef Po, which was good, but it wasn’t a hot dog. “It’s okay if you don't like it,” my daughter said. “You don’t have to pretend to like it.” “No, it’s very good,” I said. “Thanks for choosing this place.” “Thanks for taking me out, I love you guys!” she said to us.
We talked about her regular stuff. Nothing deep. It was nice to all be together.
Afterwards we went to get her mom ice cream. $9 for one cup at Ben and Jerry’s. Rip. Neither my daughter or I ordered any. We don’t like ice cream as much as she does. She really likes ice cream. Almost as much as I love hot dogs so its okay that I spent $10 on it. It made her happy. We walked for a bit after dinner. My wife took a picture of me and Zoey and Zoey took a picture of me and my wife. I went over 5,000 steps for the day.
Back home, I got an email from my agent about my hot dog book proposal. She had some good directions for improvement, but she didn’t really say she liked the writing. I’m kinda bummed. She is a very honest to the point agent and not a coddler. Sometimes I need coddling.
Belly full of Po, mind troubled that I am the only one digging the hot dog vibe, and sad that my daughter will soon be headed back to school, I still had to eat my hot dog for the day. I just had a simple one before getting an early bedtime. Boiled dog in a plain bun. It tasted like a hot dog.