Plane Rides

I'm pretty sure I have a bunch of stories about Hawaii but right now all I can think about is the plane ride home. Which, by the way, I should never have been on - I should have won the lottery from three weeks ago that I finally checked. But I think they gave me the wrong ticket. Because this one wasn't a winning one. To be honest, it was a bit shit and I only got one number so I think I'll go see if I can exchange it. Pretty sure that's cool.

Anyway, I'm on a plane coming back to LA from Hawaii - I find my window seat next to a kid about 9 years old. He was absorbed in whatever game system I am too old and uncool to recognize so I knew he wasn't going to be any trouble. However, what was trouble was the women in the middle row. All of a sudden I heard her cussing out the elderly woman sitting in front of her who had asked if she would mind not bumping her seat so much. Apparently the "bumper" was using multiple disinfectant baby wipes to wipe down all four seat in her row and her arse kept knocking the seats in front. After the polite request was made, Bumper launched into the fact that her son would die from anaphylactic* shock if the area was not completely decontaminated and what kind of person attacked a disabled child. The elderly woman didn't know where to look or how to defend herself. While I don't know if the aforementioned child was in fact disabled, I do know for a fact that he was absolutely mortified by his mother's behavior and was quite possibly praying to go into anaphylactic shock so as to avoid the drama of it all. To my disappointment, after a lot of under the breath muttering, the drama petered out and there was no fight on the tarmac resulting in the flight being cancelled and me staying in Hawaii for one more day. So, I ask you, what was the point?

To make matter worse - for the first time ever, my Kindle decided it didn't want to leave Hawaii either and went into a sulk, refusing to turn on. Who knew it liked sand in its crevices? So without anything to read, I turned to the movies - for which you have to pay for and for which I find very annoying**. I picked the movie, Belle. Five minutes into it after a soliloquy by a man about the awesomeness of his manly member, I realized this was probably not the right movie. Turns out, Belle is not on offer anymore but they hadn't updated it and I was actually watching Dom Hemingway. Which I did not want to watch. I pushed the attendant call button and 15 minutes later*** when they arrived, pointed out the error. They offered to refund my money so I could pick something else. Which I attempted to do before the system completely collapsed. Honestly, I hardly pushed any of the buttons and I only called it a f*%&head once. So there I am 5 hours and 40 minutes ahead of me and nothing to do but entertain myself. After 5 minutes, I realized I am very boring, took a sleeping pill and passed out. I am an excellent flyer.

*For the record, spellcheck keeps trying to change "anaphylactic" to "prophylactic" which I'm pretty sure is very different.  Possibly one can get anaphylactic after prophylactic contact?
**Hawaiian Airlines - not a shout-out, more of a veiled threat.
***Imagine if I had anaphylactic shock? What would have happened then? I tell you what would have happened, I would be dead. Nice job, Hawaiian Airlines.

How To Go To A Bar On Your Own

• Leave the house. Congratulate self on good plan
• Return to the house to get Kindle (just in case)
• Select your outfit carefully - bar seats can be tricky to manage. Dresses and skirts will get shorter when you sit on a bar stool. Depending on the crowd this can be a positive... 
• Do a drive-by, but with your legs, of several bars to scour for an even mix of (a) empty spot at the bar (b) interesting looking people* (c) large groups**
• Select your bar, casually saunter in, look around questioningly as if you're meeting someone. Head to the bar and grab a seat. I like to sit in between a couple but not many people are open to this. I find being persistent works. Sometimes you end up with three seats to yourself.
• Ask for a menu and peruse it as if your life depended on it and there is nothing more interesting, because once they take it away, you are left with looking at your phone, bringing out your kindle or making an origami crane out of your napkin which you would think would be a huge talking point and have people flocking to you***
• Order something respectable and sophisticated. Like this****:

Classy.  Just like me.

• Consider ordering food - just remember, as a solo person, you are invisible to the wait staff so make sure they remember you by telling them everything you are allergic to. Eliminating gluten from your diet is tough but not nearly as tough as eliminating talking about eliminating gluten from your diet.  This is not the time to try - you need to drive the point home otherwise you will starve.
• Take a notebook and start drawing or writing in it - this is to draw people over to you to see what you're doing that has you so engaged. It will not work
• You will be judged for being a woman in a bar on your own. No one will believe that you just wanted to get a drink and hang out. And make new friends so you can invite them over for dinner parties where you will sit around and have witty and intellectually stimulating conversation.  Not around a fire pit.  Because you don't have one.
• At a certain point, you will realize that since you have no one to talk to, you have drunk a little too much, a little too quickly. That's when you receive an imaginary text "You can dance - Sincerely, Wine". And you do. And you can't. And it's a bar not a club. No one else is dancing. And they want you off the bar. But you had a hard enough time getting up there so there is where you'll stay. So you pretend it's a piano and you try and look all sexy and writhe around on the bar and then you fall off and realize getting down was easier although more painful than you first thought.
• If you have not been kicked out at this point, you take your seat with grace. And a little huffing and puffing which sort of ruins the grace part.

*This is very hard to tell. And hard to do without appearing judgmental. Luckily this is my blog so I can do whatever I want. Avoid very beautiful people. You don't want the competition. You also don't want super ugly people.
**Sometimes they won't notice that you have attached yourself to them and are pretending to be one of the crowd. Casually helping yourself to the bottle of wine they have ordered will help you to blend. Generally. Sometimes you will have to leave. Very fast.
***You would be wrong
****This will also let your fellow bar-goers just what kind of person you are.  And they will want to be your best friend.  Sometimes, they won't know this immediately.