Before my cancer diagnosis this spring, as some of you may vaguely recall from my months-ago posts, I split my time between S.F. (my ancestral home and home of my heart) and Austin, where my awesome Texan of a husband is.

Today I miss S.F. so much. Being away from my City-By-The-Bay is the worst part of all of this. I’m not kidding: it’s worse than being bald, worse than being sick from the chemo, worse than being quarantined in the house when my white cell count (i.e., my immunity from the bugs of everyday life) takes a dive. I miss the summer fog. I miss my mother. I miss the public library, so close to my apartment. I miss my girlfriends. I miss Saigon Sandwiches. I miss the Ferry Building farmers’ market. I miss The Examiner in the mornings. I miss See’s Candies. I miss….

Earlier this month my daughter and her boyfriend escaped Texas and flew themselves straight into SFO to have a little vacation and stay in my palatial Tenderloin apartment. Poor Jillian! She couldn’t do a thing in The City without me, her desperately homesick mother, calling her on her cell. “Where are you?” “What are you looking at right now?” “What are you eating?” “How’s my apartment?” To her credit, Jillie took all my calls. (I guess it’s hard to be mean to your mother when she’s bald.)

Jillian and Noni, not suprisingly, had a fabulous time in The City. They ate at some of my favorite places in the ‘hood (like Dottie’s and Cortez). Noni had his first ever (at age 33) dim sum, at Yank Sing, no less. They went to the Exploratorium and Alcatraz and Pier 39 (where the seals were apparently on vacation). Jillian and Noni spent $65 on a bottle of wine at Farrallon. Jillian and Noni tromped so far throughout The City every day for a week that their shins ached. At the end of their vacation, they didn’t want to come back to Texas, but they did. They had to bring home photos of their trip to me.

Noni was kind enough to take copious pictures of not only their activities out and about, but also my apartment. I could once again see “my lamp!” “my refrigerator magnets!” “my quilt!” (as I exclaimed upon viewing each of these photos). My apartment seems to be getting along quite fine without me in it. It looks the same, even if I don’t.

I hang around this blogging site frequently and these last months have felt funny to see my name at the top of the S.F. authors’ list while I’ve been away and silent. Thanks, y’all, for holding a spot for me, on the Blog and in The City.

I’ll be back.

Alexis Perlmutter

Still, I need a break. I’m starting to feel deep hostility toward my lovely Tenderloin neighbors. What is it that has me wanting to strangle strangers?

Could it be the sound of seemingly every man (and a few women) within ten feet of me expectorating loudly upon the street? Could it be that I’ve witnessed just one too many public urinations? Or was it the schizophrenic guy in the laundromat today, the one who accused me of “going behind [his] back.”

Yes, I did move away from him, partly because he was scary, but also because he smelled like a drunken, wet dog. I certainly didn’t intend my move, however, to be a conspiratorial one.

“I see what you’re doing,” he announced to the whole laundromat shrilly, pointing at me.

Moments later, headphones inserted into his ears, he began singing with gusto, then breaking from his song to declare Andrea Boccelli to be the world’s greatest star.

While safely ensconced in quiet Austin for the next month, what will I miss about my TL?

For starters, Saigon Sandwiches. It’s on the 400 (or is it 500?) block of Larkin and has the most cheap and amazing banh mi sandwiches. I shall miss you Saigon Sandwiches.

And the S.F. Main Library, for all its budgetary amputations, is still the most marvelous library in the world as far as I’m concerned. Who needs Blockbuster Videos, when one has the library a half-dozen blocks away and one can sequentially watch multiple seasons of “Upstairs, Downstairs?” I shall miss you, S.F. Main Library. (Yes, I do read, too.)

There is so much I will miss, but I don’t have time to enumerate. I have to pack. But Mr. Psycho-Singer at the laundromat, I shall not miss you or any of your spitting, peeing brethren.

If any of you miss me, look for me on the Austin Metroblog….

I hold Gordo’s in very high esteem in Category: Burritos. My friend, Stephanie, opines that Gordo’s burritos are tasteless and maybe she’s right. I do tend to enjoy rather bland food, so perhaps my recommendation is rightly an indictment.

We girls, Carol, Stephanie, Nina and me, had made a plan to meet for “coffee.” We had been seated at Starbucks for all of about five minutes, when Stephanie and Nina required lunch and it had to be immediate and sushi. Damn! And me with my stomach full of an enormous burrito.

Carol and I sat in Kitaro (Geary near 19th, 20th?) and watched Stephanie and Nina snarf down some truly beautiful looking sushi. Carol’s non-eat excuse was that Monday is her payday. What does this say about us, her mean friends, none of us offering to treat her?

Did you know (I didn’t) that SFUSD teachers only get paid ONCE a month? How do they do it? I guess they end up sitting in restaurants, watching their friends eat on the 30th of the month, huh?

That is less shocking, however, than another factoid I learned today. Carol, who is a speech therapist, receives no supplies from SFUSD for her classes. Yes, you heard me right. No paper, no scissors, no pencils, NOTHING. Call me naive, but I was utterly floored by this.

Carol told me that each teacher receives an Office Depot gift card with $200 on it that represents that teacher’s supply money for the ENTIRE year. Outrageous! Carol teaches 50 kids. That’s $4 per kid, per year. What the hell can be done with $4?

After Nina and Stephanie departed, rubbing their happy sushi bellies, Carol drove me home. (God bless her!) Her son, Michael, 13, came along for the ride. He is such a great kid. Today he was chattering about S.F. landmarks, most specifically, Coit Tower. “Have you ever seen it?” he asked me.

“Are you kidding me?” I retorted.

It turns out that Michael, born and raised in this fair city, had never seen Coit Tower. Carol and I gave him a short tour, including North Beach, the Broadway strip (I described the old Carol Doda Condor sign to him), Lombard Street and Coit Tower. I told him the story of Lilly Coit, her obsession with firemen, and her towering (so to speak) tribute to the firemen of San Francisco. Since Michael is only 13, I couldn’t make any jokes about firemen’s hoses….

I know people grow up in New York City without ever seeing certain sights, because New York City is so damn big, but San Francisco? Can people really grow up in this city and not have seen these sites?

It was a shocking afternoon all around….

Back to the world of the mundane. Wasn’t the weather schizophrenic today? I didn’t know whether to open my umbrella or slather on the sunscreen at any given moment.

Mom and I lunched on scrumptious dim sum at City View Restaurant on Commercial Street, a little alley off of Montgomery in between Sacramento and Clay. I thought it was awesome dim sum, nearly on a par with the stellar Yank Sing. My mother eats like a bird so for each bamboo steamer with a threesome of nibbles nestled inside, I scored two, tiny Mom, only one. Works for me! Even better, including tax, title and license, the whole bill came to $21. I was shocked to pay so little for such fabulous food.

Our afternoon’s post-prandial entertainment was bowling, at Yerba Buena Center. I’d never been there (for the bowling option) and was pleased to learn how cheap it is (at least during the work day). Mom and I rented shoes and bowled two games, all for $20. (Can you tell by my logging of dollars and cents that I’m currently unemployed?) I was thrilled to see my score increase from game 1 (50) to game 2 (55). Poor Mom. She slid from a mighty 62 (I wish!) to a lowly 50. We’ve both resolved to aim high, for breaking 100, some day.

It was such a pleasant day about town that I came home and started thinking, should I go to Glide Memorial or First Unitarian for a service tomorrow? Then I realized, the weekend has barely arrived. Hallelujah!

Happy weekend, y’all.

Yesterday, Mom and I were, as usual, running late as we dashed from my lovely Tenderloin apartment toward the foot of Powell Street to meet up with our sisters in arms for the 11:00 a.m. march. “There’s no one there!” I shouted to Mom as I scanned the view down Powell Street, knocking Bush-voting tourists out of my path. “How awful,” I thought, “that the pro-lifers are assembling here and no one is bothering to show up and oppose them.”

I couldn’t have been more wrong (and, in this instance, I’m thrilled to say so).

Mom and I reached Market Street, turned left and–God Bless America!–there were thousands of like-minded gals, guys and babes, toting signs, blowing whistles, banging drums, flying their ubiquitious green “Pro-Choice” balloons high in the air. (I appreciated that choice of green balloons, myself, that fertile, verdant, full of life color.)

We marched enthusiastically, chanting all the way almost to the Ferry Building, where we were routed left into the Embarcadero and instructed to line up on the sidewalks to flank the oncoming pro-life (could I please just call them what they are, anti-women, anti-children?) contingent.

There were thousands and thousands of us pro-choicers and I had hoped that the scary people wouldn’t be able to summon more than a couple hundred. But, alas, due to the modern technologies of bussing in from Idaho and flying in from Pennsylvania, their numbers were more impressive than I had imagined.

We, on the side of right, were a motley crew, with all sorts of costumes and hand-lettered signs (my fave was double-sided: “Barbara Bush Should Have Had An Abortion” and “George W., One Abortion Too Few”), the obligatory S.F. pink and blue hair, lots of piercings. The anti-women folks, however, looked like they’d all just stopped in at Wal-Mart on the way over, to pick up their standard issue t-shirt and sign. They were frighteningly homogeneous in their look.

“Come on, now,” said my mother as I growled, “if they weren’t over there and you were over here, you wouldn’t know the difference between you and them.”

“If they opened up their mouths, I would,” I insisted. I am not aware of having a single anti-choice friend in the world and I like it this way.

We stood there, we Planned Parenthood supporters, we beleaguered John Kerry voters, while The Night Of The Living Dead People trooped by us. Many fingered rosaries, giving us sorrowful looks (”Keep Your Rosaries! Get Out Of My Ovaries!”). Many were frocked clerics, wearing their cassocks or collars or whatever that stuff is called. A middle-aged woman behind me shrieked, each time she saw one, “Help! A child molester! Stop him!”

The anti-women people forked off Beach Street, hopefully to get on the busses that would remove them from our fair city (”This City Has A Voice! San Francisco Is For Choice!”), while our contingent continued tromping to Aquatic Park, where my mother and I (I confess) decided our suffering had to end. Our throats were sore from screaming (I mean, chanting) and we were experiencing serious lunch deprivation. I think the march was continuing on to the Marina Green, maybe even 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Mom and I split off up Polk Street to go to Thai Spice. (I highly recommend the purple eggplant there. Delicious!)

This morning, when my friend Nina called, I could barely croak. My throat definitely needs a rest. No protesting–at least not the audible kind–for me this week. This afternoon, Nina and I are going out to S.F. State where, for $5 each, we can sit in a darkened theatre all day and watch the S.F. Ethnic Dance Festival Auditions.

If you go, you’ll see me there. I’ll be the one not talking, not even between acts.

I split my time between here and Austin, Texas, and, as of January 1, 2, etc., I was posting all over the place in the Austin Metroblog. Posting to the extent that I was waiting for some fellow Austinite to tell me to shut up.

I’ve been back in S.F. since January 5, with nary a posting here. Sigh. Yeah, yeah, I’ve eaten at plenty of places that I could report on (Zuni: the clam chowder is one of the seven wonders of the world; Cortez: what is more beautiful there, the food or the waiters? Boulevard: their chocolate desserts never fail to elicit When-Harry-Met-Sally moans from me; Yank Sing: each dim sum cart more full of surprises than a big red stocking on December 25) BUT I’ve been completely unmotivated to do so.

Why? Perhaps I’m grappling with my own blog and/or blogger biases about this medium. I call myself a writer. Is this, I ponder, the best use of my writerly time, extolling the virtues of S.F. restaurants (or even describing my latest bizarre on-the-streets-of-S.F.-encounter, this one with a clearly mentally ill, homeless, deaf person)?

Yet, after reading the plethora of blog-related e-posts to my lists this a.m., I’ve decided it’s a message from the universe to get my blogging ass in the game. Consumed with guilt for not showing up earlier (though not consumed enough to outweigh the S.F. restaurant calories consumed since January 5), here I am now.

This is the part, I suppose, where someone tells me to shut up. Sorry. As our beloved (to some, not me) Governator would say, I’ll be back.