Officially Abandoned and Des Moines/White Center Adventures

Today Rachel officially left us.

She is currently on a plane headed for Japan and away from her home and friends. This is an account of the related adventures.

After six days of running errands, sorting through her belongings and packing those items that made the final cut for the trip to Japan, Rachel had a goodbye dinner with me, Megan and her lovely friends from Bellingham and Tacoma. We went to a place of much happiness - a wine bar. There we drank bottles of wine, and ate delicious foods like chocolate mousse cake and fine cheeses.
Cheese like this:

and this:

and also marble blocks that turned out not to be cheese at all.

After testing the wait-staff's capabilities by having them split the price of every dish on the table in multiple different configurations, we bid everyone adieu and Megan and I went home with Rachel. I, of course, got lost. Kent/Covington has roads that fork multiple times in succession with no streetlights or indication of which road you might be taking. Also, I'm terrible with directions. But eventually we all made it back to the Spero house in one piece.

Then there was the task of getting Rachel out of the way while Megan signed the card we had for her. Rachel turns out to be easy to distract, but runs through each distraction rather too quickly.

First I sent her out to my car to grab the clothing purchases left out there (Rachel suspects nothing).

On her way back in I locked the garage door so she had to spend a minute telling me I was a jerk and to let her back in (still suspects nothing).

Then I insisted that she try on the pair of pants that she hadn't tested since they got altered, which she does happily and prances about in them for a minute or so (still nothing) - until she decides that she has to go show them off to Megan as well (who is in the other room).

At this point I gave up and just told her to let Megan finish what she was doing first - Instant Suspicion! Whatever we are up to she wants to know NOW!

Fortunately Megan was just about done writing her portion of the card and so we were soon able to placate our impatient friend, who delightedly plopped down on the floor to open her gift.
We got her this:

I also made her a card to go with her gift. It is a magical card... one that will protect her from harm.

(you can click on the images to make them bigger)

More packing ensued, with much mismatching of socks and forcible squishing of suitcases.

During this time, Rachel's sister Eliana also returned from Mexico and showed us her battle scars. Apparently clubbing is a dangerous activity in Mexico - one leading to stitches.

Finally everything was ready to go and we retired to the couch to chill and watch a movie until it was time to drive Rachel to the airport. At 4:30 we successfully left the house, with much bumping and thumping of suitcases that I'm fairly certain weighed more than most grown men. Somehow, we were also successful at getting these bags in and out of my car.

As Megan noted, we made a pit stop for last minute supplies at QFC, which is mercifully open 24/7. (All grocery stores should be open 24/7, by the way. There is no reason that a grocery store should not be open all the time, the world would be vastly improved if no grocery store ever closed.) There we picked up some refreshments - Rachel chose to purchase both water and chocolate milk. As usual, her eyes were too big for her stomach and the practical restrictions of time, considering the fact that we were nearly at the airport and she would be able to take neither of these items through security with her.

Leaving her at the departures gate was rather strange - it hasn't really set in yet that she's gone for the rest of the year, so saying goodbye was both sad and surreal.

We then drove off and proceeded to take wrong turn after wrong turn. Megan is usually quite good at giving directions, but apparently that skill isn't present at 5 in the morning when she has had no sleep. I have no navigational skills whatsoever. This is the result:

There is a part of the road leaving the airport where you can go back on I5 or 405 or you can head into Des Moines. We saw this, commented on how no one wants to spend time in Des Moines, and somehow ended up in Des Moines about a minute later. From here we figured that we should get ourselves back on the freeway to Rachel's. There was a fork where we could have done this, but following Megan's unusually poor directions I turned right onto 509 instead, heading towards Seattle. At some point, we assumed we could turn around, but passed the first exit because we weren't sure that there was also a southbound entrance there. There was. The second time we did better, getting off at White Center for a brief but exciting tour of the freeway overpass. And from then on out we actually managed to drive all the way back to Rachel's house as though we weren't navigationally retarded.

So finally, at about 6 in the morning, we got back to pick up our belongings and grab a few hours of sleep before heading home.

Now I am back and can't quite believe that I'll never drive to Covington to visit Rachel again. It is truly bizarre, and I'm not all together sure whether I am starting off this coping business with much success.