Two down, a school bus full of high school cheerleaders to go.

Last night Jim and I went to a couples engagement party at a gorgeous house overlooking the Missoula valley. It was still in the 90's at 6 pm, but their house bordered a cool, dry forest and the patio was shaded by the big post-n-beam home. Despite the pristine setting, I was not exactly looking forward to the event. In fact, I was pissed to be wasting a babysitter on the deal. Fifty bucks to fake smile and get nauseous on broccoli and small talk.

The party was hosted by Jen, the vapid friend of the soon-to-be-bride and her ex-NFL star husband. I had met her on one other occasion, and she literally looked through my face when I congratulated her on her pregnancy and had nothing to say. I wasn't entirely sure she was a living human, and was worried that the child growing in her womb would pop out only to find her plastic mom had no opposable thumbs with which to change her diapers. In addition, her sister (Amy), lives across the street from us and on more than one occasion I had exchanged pleasantries with her. Pleasantries is actually not the word, because it was extremely painful trying to elicit complete sentences from her plastic, mannequin face. And her husband was a close talker and asked inappropriately intimate questions. The sisters inhabited a portion of my brain reserved for dumb pretty people that I have no use for. It's not a nice place, this section of my brain. It's petty and mean, actually, but fun to visit and play in when I'm drunk-talking to close friends.

So the party... the food was perfect, highlited by yummy sandwiches on croissants (still hate this word), an interesting and refreshing pasta salad, fresh homemade fruit salad, and a Huge Plate of Truffles. So good for you, plastic sister duo, I thought to myself as I ate their delicious food and sipped their tastefully selected wine. Then later I had a mildly entertaining discussion with Amy about preschools and Viggo Mortensen. Okay, so one of the plastic sisters apparently has a heartbeat, I mused as I walked around their beautiful home with a mouthful of Mojito Truffles. Then later I found myself sitting next to Jen when everyone else had vacated the patio to tour the home and we talked about how interesting Macon, Georgia is and how Alison Krausse gives us the shivers. I laughed with her about how we sing crazy-loud in the car, envisioning ourselves joining Alison on tour someday.

And then I finally had to do it.

I excused myself to go to the bathroom, and to grab a couple raspberry liquor truffles, and I sat on the toilet and visited that place in my mind. The one with the dumb pretty useless people. And I tapped Jen and Amy on the shoulder and told them they were actually sitting in the wrong seats. They smiled their gorgeous white smiles and shrugged their beautiful tan soft shoulders and swished their little bums out of the cheap seats and joined the masses of normal people milling around in the rest of my grey matter. They were non-plussed by the transition, unaware the beating they had been receiving by a drunk mean girl.

If you bump into them in my brain, you'll recognize them by their stunning beauty, interesting and funny personalities and chocolate fingerprints on their shoulders. I ate far too many truffles last night.