Woke up at 6am for some unknown reason, cuddled with Kylie cat, picked up Ted at his house at 7:30 since he returned his rental car on Friday when he was supposed to leave to drive his still-in-the-shop station wagon back to Phoenix. We met Julie at Junior's for breakfast. Then Ted, Julie and I worked on his house, painted, packed Erik's car to the dump, and cleared everything out and over to my house.
Then all of us and Erik worked to clean up and reorganize my garage so that we'd have somewhere to put the stuff that Ted will take to Phoenix when his car is fixed, here. We didn't have time to go out to eat together, but we all took him to the airport and then went to Russell Street Barbeque in his honor.
Even though Ted hasn't been around much and I've barely seen him in the past year that he's lived here, I was incredibly sad to see him go. Part of me hoped that he'd fall in love with Portland the way I did. I'm glad that he's going somewhere new instead of returning to that old place he still refers to as "home." I came to rely on his help fixing up my house, yard, car, and the holes rended from our shared familial history. It's greedy to want him to stay, but oh I do.