remember that one time when I flew 5,000 miles to Hawaii and left my cell phone sitting on my kitchen counter in Virginia?

Yeah, so that happened.

D'OH!

One of the great things about Hawaii, The Sequel was that I thought packing was going to be so much easier the second time around. Since we'd just been to Hawaii a few months before, I already knew what I'd need and what things I didn't use during the first trip and could leave behind. And then I go and FORGET MY CELL PHONE.

I realized it just as my mother was about to drop us off at the airport. "My cell phone!" I exclaimed, as I remembered that I had put it on the charger on the kitchen counter a few minutes before we left the house. I wanted to make sure that I had a 100% charge for the 10.5 hour direct flight from Dulles to Honolulu. "You should've made a list", chided my mother. Oh, a list! You're telling The Queen of Lists to make a list?! "I had a list", I told her. "And I had crossed off everything...except...cell phone." Wop wop.

It wasn't worth missing our flight to go back to retrieve the phone, so Larry and I boarded at Dulles and I prepared myself for a travel experience without music, internet, social media, taking photos, or Candy Crush. Ugh. I had spent so much time mentally preparing myself for 10.5 hours of iPod music and phone games...and now all I could do was...eat candy?! Misery. (I did have a couple of books with me, but I'm usually so tired that I have a hard time concentrating on reading on planes.)

Just the essentials. I like to pack light. :)

Aside from flight boredom, it was actually kind of nice not to be chained to my phone. Someone wants to e-mail or call me? Tough titty, I don't have my phone! I'm the first to admit that I should spend less time looking at that thing anyway. But the biggest adjustment was not being able to take photos. I love using my phone to document my travels and without Instagram, I felt a little lost. So I improvised. I had a handful of index cards and some black and blue pens in my purse. Instead of Instagramming our trip, I would sketch it.

I started with sketching our experiences on the plane. I drew these in the air - quickly, turbulence and all to document our pilgrimage back to Hawaii:

As for the forgotten phone, unfortunately I really did need it since Larry would be at meetings during the day and we needed to be able to communicate to meet up afterwards. My mother sent my phone to Honolulu via FedEx overnight. It arrived the next day. It was an $85 mistake. D'OH.

Even though I had my phone back with me and could take Instagram vacation photos, I still continued sketching some of the amusing things that happened on our trip:

And there you have it - a peek inside my vacation brain, illustrated with demented comics. Way more fun than Instagram, right?