Two days of balmy idyllic fishing weather was forecast and I was able to deliver the “I’d rather stay home and scrub the place spotless” speech without a hint of guile.

I figured the first day would warm the water to a nice tepid temperature and the following day would unleash famished fish – that’d run me out of flies in an orgy of mindless feeding.

I had a plan.

Guys can’t clean for snot. Somewhere between grade school, where we dropped a lollipop and slapped it back in our gob without ill effect, and maturity – where we pass dirty dishes through warm water, minus soap, and call it good – we lost the ability to pass the Missus’s White Glove Test.

Sure, I’d score a few points for good behavior, a couple more for moving a pile of fly tying materials from one room to another, but dropping a couple shekels for a hired-gun “cleaning goddess” would likely square the Little Black Book of Misdeeds – and I wouldn’t have to escort Madam to the next seventeen highly charged romantic melodramas as penance.

The “Two Squee-Gee Kid” arrived without incident, and while she cauterized the interior with a flame thrower, I busied myself with the exterior.

The Plan was flawless. I’ll take credit for all the combined labor, blinking big “doe eyes” of hardship when significant other arrives for Monday’s White Glove inspection.

… and freeing up Sunday for another fishing trip that won’t be charged to my account.

I didn’t count on the neighbor’s bass boat uprooting the entire Internet with his late evening departure. The lights blink out and the TV dies, and I’m looking at a smoking crater in the lawn where the cable infrastructure used to be.

No Internet again, but at least he didn’t spatter mud on my newly immaculate abode. I pointed the enraged battalion of cable guys at the hole and in my best grade school voice, “I didn’t do it..”

As my neighbor is a fisherman, I did my best to rake the tire prints out of the grass, leading to his boat – I was hoping he’d do the same for me someday.

I dragged A.Wannabe.TravelWriter out with his trusty ATV eating, deer killing dog, and despite our late start, I was hoping we’d get one last round of late season fish death – compliments of the weather.

Too much avaricious lying on my part, I’d used up whatever Karma is required to seduce fish in my earlier misdeeds – tilting the fishing God in favor of blanking us completely.

I managed a couple small fish on a tadpole fly I’m tinkering with – and had a nice bass on for a couple headshakes, but that was it for the day.

“Foxly” was top rod, he had a doe on for a couple of headshakes, and returned later with the seat of someone’s blue jeans. I figured he had great potential as a brownline dog, but removing his collar so’s we could disavow ownership might be the wiser move…