François Payard Bakery, 210 Murray St., Manhattan

I don't have enough friends in New York, as regular readers of this blog (i.e. my husband) are aware. I pine for friends. And I realized a couple months ago that what I really need, going forward, is friends with kids, which is not a type of friend I have actively sought in the past. It's a whole new, friendless world. Or at least it was until today!

Our friend Anne (yes, we have SOME friends here) helpfully alerted me to a listserv for Upper West Side new parents, and I have learned a ton from their postings, but there aren't really any good opportunities to interact with any of them directly unless you already have kids, and even then, I don't live on the UWS! But someone posted about a downtown listserv, so I joined that too. It is the Hudson River Park Mamas, aka  HRP Mamas. If this makes you think "Herpes Mamas" every time you see the abbreviation, well, you are not alone.

Anyway the beauty of the Herpes Mamas is that they have subgroups of people with kids (and expecting kids!) by date - so I am in a subgroup of women due Jan-Mar 2012, which has 29 members so far! All living close to me!! I sent out an introductory message to say hello and several of them wrote back and offered to get together, so I met two of them today. And I loved them! They are Katherine and Lucy, both due in March like me. They were so nice and interesting and we were all so relieved to share things with people going through the exact same experience as us. I had the best time.

We met at Francois Payard Bakery, which is new (at least new at this location in Battery Park City). I had a tomato/pesto/mozzarella sandwich that was good, if pricey ($8), and the most luscious, huge cup of thick, dark hot chocolate ($5). But I just have to say how nice the staff was. When they noticed I was pregnant they pointed out that they have decaf coffee, and they made sure that my hot chocolate wasn't too strong, and they cleaned around our table for us, and were just generally very pleasant.