Ladies night

K and L's cousin M came in to town for the weekend and since she lives in a small town she wanted to have a good old girls night out. Of course I was in. As soon as I knew what day they wanted to go out I put it in my calendar. You know this girl loves to go out.
Click through to read about our night!


The Portland girls all met at my place and we played the girly game of "should I wear this or this or this with this or this or this?". Once we're all properly fabuloused, we get in my car and head over to the cousins. Which is in Vancouver apparently.* I hate the couve. I hate driving over there. I don't really know why...I just do. The couve is my enemy.
L gives me directions and we get there with no trouble. We step in the house and the first thing I see is a guy and a youngish boy sitting on the couch, watching tv. At that moment I felt like maybe I had a little too much height in my heel selection and then my brain realized it was girls night and almost almost all the other girls were wearing heels too, and those guys weren't coming with us. Why does my brain try to scare me like that?
The cousins are finishing up getting ready in the bathroom and we all wait in the doorway. And find out quickly that it's a bad place to be. No matter, because we only had to wait a couple minutes before cousin K was ready to dish out some pre-bar shots. I took a swig of my lemonade Rockstar. 
Since I don't drive a bus or limo, I coudln't play designated driver for everyone, so 3 of us in my car followed the others in cousin K's car. She takes us to a bar near her place where we don't have to worry about cover charges thanks to cousin K knowing the door guy.
Of course, we head straight for the bar and drink contemplation takes place. I notice a couple of guys at the end of the bar staring at our group and before I can form any thought, he runs up to us. He happens to be cousin K's friend, R. He also happens to be quite comical. He hangs out with us while we get our drinks and find a table. We talk about why he has trouble accepting free drinks from men when he's at gay bars. He apparently feels bad since he's straight and married. Details.
It doesn't take us long to find out that cousin M is kind of a light weight when it comes to drinking. It seems like this whole family is full of fun drunks.
Look, I play DD for my friends all the time. I play DD for people I don't know really well pretty often too. I've met a lot of drunk people. Some drunks are not so fun, as we all know. Some get a bit too crazy, as I sure as hell know. And then there are the ones that are just plain awesome all the time and when they drink it just bumps their awesomeness up a few levels. That's how I feel about K and L's whole family.
When all the smokers are outside smoking their cancer sticks, drunk cousin M decides she should go find them. When she gets off her stool and wobbles, I realize maybe she shouldn't be allowed to walk anywhere alone. She uses me as a support as she rounds the table and wobbles off through the crowd, waving and grinning a crazy drunk person grin as she goes.
When the group comes back inside, it's been decided that cousin M needs some food. Apparently, she's had very little food all day and that is why she is so drunk after only 2 shots and one small drink. When the fries get to the table she is excited to find out they're for her. She smiles that crazy drunk grin as she wraps one arm around the basket and grabs the ketchup with her other hand. She giggles as she squirts ketchup all over the fries. She started off with a nice manageable pile of ketchup to dip...and then got a little crazy and started squirting it all over. As soon as she put the bottle down there were 14 different hands grabbing fries out of the basket. That didn't seem to phase cousin M at all. She just kept eating and smiling.
R decides cousin M would make a good stool and sits on her lap. Cousin M says she has a feisty finger and just like that R is off her lap. All it takes is a little poke I guess. R decides to focus his attention on me and tells me I'm cute and he likes my smock. I'm wearing a hoodie that has short sleeves. He asks if I got it at Lilith Fair. Har har. He insists I take it off so he can wear it and asks what I'm wearing under it. I tell him a bra and he laughs. I point out the fact that the sleeves on this shirt are huge so when I raise my arms at all, you can see my bright patterned bra. Making my smock at least a little more going out worthy in my mind. He still doesn't believe me and reaches his hand up the back of my sweatersmock. No groping, just a little pat down to make sure I'm not a liar. He seems satisfied and moves his focus to A. Calls her a hottie a few times (because she is) and then goes back to harassing his friends.
A and K decide to share an appetizer plate when A finds out we won't be going anywhere else. We had been hoping to hit up a more dance friendly club before the end of the night so A was holding off on ordering any food until we moved on. Cousin K and frisky R kept telling us we could dance at the bar, but even though the DJ was playing good music, dancing at a bar where no one else is dancing, aside from the drunk couple and some people who only do a couple of hip thrusts before running off the floor, always feels a little weird. Like we're a social experiment for everyone around to study. We like it better when there are a lot of people dancing.
When the appetizer plate arrives, the fried foods call to all of us. I grab a chicken strip and watch people try to avoid burning their tongues on steaming fried foods. Still drunk cousin M grabs a chicken strip and pops it in her mouth. She makes a face and says she forgot she had gum in her mouth. Ew. She tries to salvage her gum before it's too late, even though she's already eaten almost the whole chicken strip. More ew. She seems to have a lot of trouble separating the gum and chicken. Understandably so.She finally gives up.
L wants to meet up with a boy she's started seeing and convinces us to leave after we're done eating. Cousin M is upset we're leaving early, but she's drunk so it's ok. R says goodbye to all of us. "Nice meeting you, Smock" he says as he shakes my hand. Funny, this guy.
I try to GPS my way home with my fancy new smart phone, but can't seem to figure out how to make things work. I guess it's too smart for me. L thinks she can get us back to Portland and is thankfully right. I drop K and A off at my house and then head into Gresham to drop L off. And then we drive a little past Gresham. I am the queen of driving from corner to corner of town, ya know. After turning down a creepily dark gravel road, and passing what I liken to a mini Texas Chainsaw Massacre house, L is delivered safely to her destination. My designated driver shift is officially over for the night.
Or so I thought...
I barely get a mile away when a car coming towards me on the no-street-light-havin road, starts to swerve into my lane. I assume it's someone texting or something and they will correct their lane position any second. But as we drive closer to each other I notice the car is only invading my lane more, so I honk. Just like that the car jolts back into it's proper place as I pass it. I watch in my rearview mirror as the car breaks and slows to a stop at the side of the road. Pretty sure I just saved someones life you guys.
Just call me DD the life saver.


* I suppose I should note that Cousin M is from further out of town then Vancouver. I don't really consider Vancouver out of town, since it's basically just another part of Portland these days.