The night before departure….

So I finished yesterday’s blog claiming early credit for having completed our packing, little did I know that what we had actually completed was our draft pack, not our actual final pack. So we awoke this morning, a little later than usual and planned to drop the kids at school before packing the car ready to go by lunchtime. Well that was the plan. I had an early appointment, Bec had a few errands to run and then we decided at the last minute to arrange a couple of Christmas presents for the kids pillow cases (just in case Santa can’t find us in Bangalore), and then headed home to pack up.

Once home we realised that we had to clean out Maggie’s room in preparation to knock out a wall, move furniture to make way for all of this and clean out the office. This was all a bit much for Bec so she left me in charge of the relocation of Maggie’s room. Bec was upstairs trying to pack her final bag full of food and medical supplies and I went upstairs to find Bec sitting over her suitcase, tears streaming down her face claiming she was somewhat overwhelmed. For the women who is widely known as the most positive individual on the face of the earth this does not happen very often. Not to mention that the suitcase of food and medical supplies Bec was trying to cram into our additional suitcase weighed in at a whopping 29kgs.

You see Bec has been amazing in recent months and has organised ten times anything I would ever be capable of organising. As long as Bec has time, she is able to write a list and steadily work to complete her list, she is fine. However when the time runs out and Bec is under the pump, no time for lists or time to get organised Bec can get a little overwhelmed. Me on the other hand when I have plenty of time I just procrastinate and go around in circles and find it difficult to focus until there is some time pressure. So today, at last I came into my own, focussed and purposeful and was able to at last return some of the support that Bec has provided to me and many others in recent times. Not bad given that for the past 15 months it has been Bec leading the charge and my day of glory was the final day. For those of you who are MBTI literate you will understand me to be the classic ‘P’ personality type (very much pressure prompted) and Bec being the classic ‘J’ (planned and organised).

I suggested we delay our departure by a few hours and fortunately we had no real deadline pressure today and simply moved our departure time by a few hours. Bec quickly recovered after a few hugs and a couple of deep breaths and was back to her old self and off we went.

We picked up the kids from school, said our goodbyes to our very old Collie dog Molly and jumped in the care and headed to the airport. Bec continued her emotional day saying goodbye to a part of the world she has fallen in love with, Mount Martha on the Mornington Peninsula. We started our drive to the airport, Bec and I in the front catching up with phone messages and emails whilst from the back Maggie started singing “I’m sexy and I know it” closely followed by Gus blurting out “I’m sexy and I know it” whilst Indy stared deeply out the window pining for her old collie dog. Molly and Indy have been together pretty much since birth so it is always difficult when they say goodbye. Molly is now 13 years old, grey hair all over, only a handful of teeth left and a very old set of bones. It was always going to be touch and go whether she would still be with us when we left on this trip yet so far so good. We only hope she can wait until we get home. Little does she know she has a new room mate coming, a new black Labrador called Jasper who we have arranged to pick up on return from India. “Wiggle wiggle wiggle yeh!” Comes streaming from the back seat, for those of you who know the song, Gus merrily holding his own with his big sister.

We had a pretty good run out the airport and arrived ready to drop off our car at the long term parking lot. By this time Gus had ofcourse fallen asleep only to awake a little more grumpy and definitely not in the mood for singing. Bec goes in to sort out the car booking and I start unloading the 4 backpacks, the medical case and the food case and ofcourse the three kids. Indy who went in to help Bec comes running back informing me to reload the car and something about the fact that the company had just gone out of business, another one of those slightly surreal moments. Sure enough Bec confirms that the company we had planned to leave our car with for 6 weeks had only 45 minutes ago gone out of business, great timing hey. Fortunately there was a competitor just down the road and all up there was really no harm done. Next stop, unload the gear, the kids, into the mini bus and off to the hotel for our last night in Melbourne before heading off.

We have had our room service, Gus and Maggie have played trampolines on the bed and the peaceful serenity of the hotel room lasted all of about 15 seconds. Bec has packed and repacked all of her bags and the kids bags, the kids are rolling around in the two double beds, ofcourse pushed together and I am finishing my daily blog. Nanna and Popsy have arrived and are staying just down the hall. It’s time to say goodnight, dream a little more about the adventures that lay ahead of us and prepare ourselves for master Gus and an 11 hour plane journey to Cochin via Singapore – wish us luck, I am sure we will have plenty of new material in the coming days.