WOKE UP MY first morning in Noe Valley to the sound of a baby crying. I shook Crawdad and said, "Do we have a baby?"

She mumbled something about drywall, rolled over away from me, and went back to sleep. I took this to mean that we did not have a baby. –It was safe to get out of bed.

Looking out the window at what should have been acres of vineyards rolling down to sunrise over a fog-frosted valley, Sonoma Mountains necklacing the horizon, instead I saw stairs. They went up to our neighbor's apartment, and on up from there to our other neighbor's apartment. Left, right, up, and up, we were surrounded, squeezed, choked by neighbors, one of whom had a baby destined for a career in opera. I went outside to let the chickens out, but we didn't have any chickens. They were over in the East Bay, waking up to last week's review.

I used to love living in the city. I'll go do city things, I thought. Go get coffee.

At the XO coffeehouse, corner of Church and 30th Street, everyone's got babies with them. Babies, laptop computers, and cell phones. Old news, I know, but the bathroom at this coffeehouse has a diaper-changing station. That's a first.

Halfway through my cup of coffee (good), I had to get out of there. The mother at the table next to me was typing on her laptop and talking into her cell phone headset at the same time – baby watching, wide-eyed. This is what we do, kid.

I walked. I didn't know yet about Big Mama, one of my chickens, making a run for it over in Oakland (see last week's Cheap Eats), but, in a weird moment of synchronicity, I too broke into a trot. I didn't mean to, didn't mean anything by it, had thought I would walk around a while, scout out the neighborhood, maybe find a few pigeons to look at. But the next thing I knew, I was running. First real exercise I've had since the accident, back in May, and it felt pretty good.

I started to think about baseball, and soccer. Ping-Pong. Then I remembered a rec center somewhere around here, playing Ping-Pong with Crazy Jeffrey years ago. I circled back around and there it was, Day and Sanchez. This could be cool, I thought. But the only open door on the whole big building opened onto some kind of a day care center or something – a huge room literally wall-to-walled with bright yellow (and red and green and blue, but mostly yellow) plastic, shaped into Big Wheels and blocks and all sorts of climby crawly things, kids running around like hamsters in heaven.

Holy crap.

I went home and woke up Crawdad and said, "Let's move to the Mission."

It would have been a great time to move, everything still in boxes. Instead we went and ate breakfast at Hungry Joe's, always a favorite. After which I had renewed faith in just about everything. Enough so to actually spend the rest of the day unpacking. Except for dinner, which went down at Regent Thai.

Like every other place mentioned in this article so far (not to mention Drewe's Meat Market!), Regent Thai is within a couple blocks of our new digs. It's at Church and 29th, across the street from the old Star Bakery.

Crawdad sat against the wall on the one-wall-long booth, her baby blue sweater looking real pretty against the plethora of purples decorating the booth-back in a whirlwind of nondescript shapes. We've moved three times in three years and are tired of moving, tired in general.

She ordered tom yum gung ($7.25), spicy and sour shrimp soup, and I ordered ped pad khing ($7.25), roast duck in a black bean sauce with spinach and tomatoes, ginger and onion. Everything on the menu is under 10 bucks, mostly well under, and lunch specials are under 5.

I can tell you that the tom yum and the ped pad khing are spectacularly delicious and artfully presented, and I'm sure the three or four framed reviews hanging in the window will attest to the excellence of many other dishes, but it is my lot in life to be the one to warn you: small, small portions.

Have a cheeseburger before you go, or a pizza after. Or order for four, but then it might not be cheap eats anymore.

Anyway, I didn't mean to write this review, or at any rate to review Regent Thai. I really only wanted to describe to you the color of Crawdad's sweater against that odd background of purples and violets and indigoes. Plum. Grape. Red.

Other than which I don't know anything about anything, except this: that I am so back.

Regent Thai. 1700 Church (at 29th St.) S.F. (415) 643-5893. Daily: Lunch, 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m.; dinner, 5-10 p.m. Takeout available. Beer and wine. Discover, MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible.