Row, Row, Row Your Boat

I never said I was normal. I never said my relationship was normal. Nor did I try to pass off the end of my relationship as conventional. I realize that most people do not vacation with their ex’s, unless you’re referring to Demi, Ashton and Bruce. I mean, hell, they make it work. So why couldn’t I? This was the ultimate test.

Since J-Fed moved out, the relations between us had been scathing. So how in God’s name were we going to get along in the same house for the next five days? Was it really possible? Or was someone going to die? Before he arrived, I had my doubts. I didn’t know if I could maintain my composure. He had been so distant and curt with me over the last month. How was I going to be able to deal with that?

There was nowhere to run to baby, no where to hide. Yet, J-Fed put on a happy face from the moment he arrived. We went to the world’s largest aquarium where I took the opportunity to draw parallels between J-Fed and the creatures of the deep blue sea. We made it safely back to the house with no arguing. He was pleasant and didn’t display a lot of the tendencies that the old J-Fed did.

Until we got to the whitewater rafting. Now, anyone who knows J-Fed knows that his wicked ADHD keeps him from doing anything for extended periods of time… especially if it’s something he doesn’t want to do. Before J-Fed came to visit, I mentioned that I had taken daughter white-water rafting.

“But I wanted to take her when I got there,” he whined.

“We can go again when you get up here,” I promised.

Yet as we stood in the parking lot of the rafting company, you would never have known that conversation occurred. You see, J-Fed started pouting from the get-go. When he found out that the trip was three and a half hours long, I almost expected him to stomp his feet up and pitch a first rate temper tantrum. The big bad wolf huffed and he puffed and he probably could have single-handedly blown the raft all the way down the river.

“I can’t believe we’re going to be on the raft for that long. This is ridiculous. This is going to suck,” he pouted.

How was I supposed to respond to that? I wanted to grab him by his stupid head and shout “you idiot. You made me bring you here.” But I bit my tongue as I watched the piggly wiggly wiggle.

Then, the owner of the company dropped the ultimate bomb on the Fedster.

“Um, sir. There’s no smoking on this trip. It’s a family outing,” he told J-Fed.

And it was all downstream from there. He begged to troll a line behind the whitewater raft in an attempt to catch some trout, but he was denied. It’s hard to believe it could have gotten any worse… Of course it did. They stuck us in a raft with a woman and her son who talked and talked and talked. I almost expected J-Fed to chuck the little boy off the raft or at the very least hold his head under water for an extended period of time. I could tell he was even contemplating using him for live bait.

As we went down the river and I watched J-Fed writhe in misery, I thought of all of the OTHER ways J-Fed could be suffering, seeing that we were on the river where Deliverance was filmed. If only I could have watched him squeal like a piggy…