Is that a knife in my back?

My best friend, Lan decided to up and move to a place that rhymes with Shoulder Holorado. So it left me sad and in need of a new friend or two. I decided to take the easy route and aim for the playground moms.

I easily made friends with two moms. Jenna and Sue - (Sue is Coach's wife by the way). I started hanging out with them and chatting and eventually we swap emails and cell numbers and then our husbands become pals and play poker and talk guns like most redneck Louisiana men wind up doing and before you know it, we're all hanging out at each other's houses on weekends.

As previously stated, my husband doesn't drink at all and I drink very little out of respect for him. Our new couple/pals are HEAVY drinkers - they are the type who pour beer into travel coffee mugs and drink at every game/practice. Classy, huh?

Ziggy and I tend to be the only sober ones around. Ziggy actually tends to just hang out with the kids and will play ball with them for hours while their parents got sloppy drunk.

While this is not our normal sort of friends, they are very fun and we overlook such behavior and appreciate how easily they welcomed us into their group and honestly - they are a ball to be around.

Enter Halloween night. On Halloween night, I arrive to Jenna's house and everyone is already thoroughly trashed. I went to the party without my husband and was a little sad and didn't feel like being there anyway. Since I have had nothing but a Pepsi, I get to view the party and the adults through the eyes of the children present and I'm stunned at what I see. It was a moment of clarity. These children are witnessing things that I would NEVER allow my 8 year old to see. (Note: since Luke is with his dad most weekends during the school year, he is never with us when we hang out with them, so I don't often think about their behavior in that motherly way).

I took the children into the living room and watched TV with them. There was a grandmother of Jenna also in the room - a fellow undrunk person. The coach's two kids were there. One is 13 and the other is 8 and I noticed that Coach and Sue were missing from the party. I asked the boys where their parents were and what I got in return was SO totally unexpected. (turns out their VERY drunk parents had gone to visit another party around the corner and they came back later).

Both boys opened up and freely spoke about how drunk their parents get and how their dad was lying in the street last week and Sue was yelling at him in the street and how their mom starts drinking beer at breakfast and on and on and on. I'm shocked and had no clue what to say.

I talked straight to the 13 year old, since he was older and said, "Look I understand, because my parents drank too, I promise you that I know exactly how you're feeling. But I need you to know that it can and might get better, because my parents did. And even if they don't, you know that they work hard and love you and take care of you so just pray that it gets better and love them anyway."

It might not have been the perfect things to say, but I was backed into a corner and had to say something.

One week later, Jenna comes to me. At this point I'm beginning to notice her backstabbing drama magnet nature. I've also come to realize that she lies a bit and likes to flirt with EVERYONE'S husbands (including mine). At this point, I already started distancing myself from her, because it was almost like a slow motion movie where I could see that she was ready to create more drama. Basically, if her life is not in a total shambles, then she feels uncomfortable and creates the shambles. So I had already started hanging out a little less, and Ziggy and I were talking often about how uncomfortable we felt with their level of drinking, especially around the kids.

She told me that her grandmother, who was in the room with me, told her about what Coach's kids had said because she heard it too. All I told her was, "yeah, I know. I was there and I've been trying to decide if I should say anything to Sue about it, but I don't feel like it's my business." And Jenna told me, "no you shouldn't say anything, it will only hurt her."

So I didn't. Seeing that Jenna is way closer to Sue than I am, I took her advice. I decided that it wasn't my place to come between Sue and her kids and I'm not here on this earth to try to save every drunk that crosses paths with me. So I let it go.

I find out tonight from a totally random third party that Jenna told Sue everything and told Sue that I was the only one in the room and told Sue that I went and told everyone at the party about it. And now Sue hates me and Sue even went so far as to confront her two boys about it and supposedly she yelled at them about it and now her kids hate me too for betraying them.

I hate fucking drama. I hate it. I am the least confrontational person on earth and my husband and I both are just quiet homebodies who were looking for a few friends to hang out with and it's like - JESUS, LAN WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?? (don't feel guilty, Lan, I know you made a good decision to leave). It's like I suddenly went from have a filet mignon friend to having bologna sandwich friends - know what I mean?

So here's my question. What should I do? Should I confront Jenna? Sue? Neither? Both? I don't know what to do. If I confront, would it do any good other than to exacerbate the situation? If I don't confront, then am I just a door mat?

So that ends my attempt to make friends via the playground. I'm am the least innocent person on earth, but in this one instance, I was totally sideswiped and have no idea how to handle it.