Repeat after me: Bah nedity, Diple bah nedity.

Two weeks of unemployment and I’m burnt out. (Yes, I can hear your tiny violins playing from here.) Thanks to a week of non-stop goodbye dinners, lunches, drinks and brunches, we’re exhausted. Good thing we have the next year to recover.

But first a special shout out. Thank you Sarah, for not only putting a roof over our head for the last week but offering to get up a 5am to drive us to the airport. Someone buy this girl a drink for us. She is awesome.

Yes, it’s true we moved even further east for the last week. We had no choice; Sarah insisted and when Sarah insists you can’t say no. On the day we check out of our hotel, we were woken by the sound of jackhammers, so we were thankful that she insisted. In the words of Adrian, “we love you Sarah!”

So east we went but east we didn’t stay there all the time – after all as I said before, it’s hard to break a lifetime of living on the west side. Well, that and we still had lots of shopping and general housekeeping to do west of Yonge Street. We went to Bank A, Bank B, storage locker, Bank C, back to Bank A, MEC, storage locker, computer store, and finally, back to our storage locker one last time to drop off our winter coats.

And in between all the errands we managed to squeeze in a couple, actually five more going away events Now, before I continue, a warning. You may want to undo the top button before reading the rest of us this.

First was dinner and drinks with Loryl. And more attempts to convince her to join us somewhere before Russia (Phase 2). If you’re anywhere near her give her a little nudge for us.

There was Victoria and Jamie’s for mac ‘n’ cheese and board games. Thanks for dinner and letting us each win a game. And your gift will be much appreciated on many a airplane/bus/train/camel/boat/donkey ride.

Then Sonali and David’s for curry and drinks on the town for the boys and drinks in the house for the girls. Thanks to Sonali for the full tummy and leftovers. Thanks to Justine and Jack for the gift. And thanks to the lads for returning Adrian in one piece.

Oh and of course my family wanted an opportunity to stuff us as well – multiple times – and even more opportunities to express their apprehension over our trip. Please stop worrying; if you need to pay ransom, bail or hospital bills, Andrea has access to our banking. I’M JUST KIDDING, MOM. Honest, we’ll be fine and if we’re not we won’t tell you.

And finally there was a stop to see Liz and Graeme and little Leon. Not only did we get fed yet again but we received a very inspiration speech courtesy of Leon. His memorable words were: “gat bough irries... Da bah nedity… Diple bah nedity”. And let me tell you, wiser words have never been spoken. For those of you not fluent in the language of 2 year olds , Leon was quoting his current hero, Balu, of the Jungle Book who said “Forget about your worries. The bear necessities, the simple bear necessities.” And we’ve now adopted it as our mantra.

Especially as we began packing our bags. Soon they were as stuffed as we were after all those dinners and we weren’t even half done. Leon’s words were coming back to haunt us and not because it was the only thing he said to us all evening. So we slowly removed things from our pack, stripping everything down to just the bear, I mean, bare necessities. Finally, at 9pm the night before we left, the zippers on our bags closed. With that out of the way, we are finally able to forget about our worries and it’s all thanks to the diple bah nedity.