So there

I used to know this guy, actually we were sort of in-laws, we called him Boog.
Smartest guy I ever met, or one of them anyways.
Also one of the best pals I've ever had.
I was telling Count Helmut von Anteater about him a while ago.
He was one of those guys that had an early disappointment that kept him from achieving his lifelong dream, and then went on to just not really give a fuck.
He fuckin drove cab for a long time, sort of choosing the absolutely most dead ended thing he could find.
Anyways, he ended up, more by inertia than anything else, with this girl.
Naturally, she wasn't really built to keep up with him intellectually, and was totally outclassed in terms of his lack of ambition.
So, just to shut her up more than anything, since he was obviously going nowhere fast in his current sitch, he agreed to move out to Victoria with her.
I think she was from there.
Her plan was, I believe, that if they made a "fresh start", in a place where she had her family for support, that he would, you know, pull up his socks (as me sainted Ma would say), and they'd be able to do that thing commonly known as "make a life" for themselves.
And, at least, they'd be out of the insanely brutal Alberta fuckin winters.
Like I said, Boog's actual emotional investment in this deal was, to say the least, peripheral.
So they got there, and she got a job and they got a place and she started, you know, making plans.

You fuckin girls, you'll just never learn, will you?

So Boog, since real jobs were pretty scarce, and his resume was bereft of pretty much anything to recommend him for much except pushing a hack, did what many enterprising young Canookistanian men do in the face of a harping cohabitative FEmale, they take their still-strong back, their half a fuckin clue and this

And started doing contracting work.
You know, someone you know wants a deck built, you take it and by the time the gig's done 7 days later, between your friends telling their friends, and the neighbors seeing you working, you've got 3 or 4 more jobs lined up.
This guy needs a new sidewalk poured, and his sister wants her basement framed and drywalled, and the guy across the alley wants a new fence put up, and on it goes.
It's a pretty good deal, mostly it's under the table, the customer's happy because your price is way low because you got practically no overhead and you aren't claiming the income and you aren't filing the loathed and despised 7% GST, so everyone's happy.
It's a great Candidian tradition.
Heck, it's how I got the scratch together to get the fuck over here.
Also, as mentioned, Boog was in Victoria, where you can work outside all 12 months, so he was doing pretty good.
He was pretty personable when he could be arsed, and was a pretty exacting type of dude, so before long he had plenty steady work.
Naturally, the girl is starting to see, erm, well, whatever the Domestic Bliss equivalent of this

would be, I don't know, maybe, erm, lace curtains?

Anyways, as these things go far more often than most people would care to admit, the closer she thought they were getting to coming up with a down  payment on a little bla bla bla, the further away the Boog got from wanting the exact same thing.
Now, Boog, being a fairly self-reflective sort, really liked fishing.
And, of course, Victoria, being both a harbour town and the southern tip of an island, has great fishing, both river and ocean varieties.
So Boog was certainly not averse to booking for a few hours with a sixer and his rig and getting a little quality angling time in.
The thing was, as they went along, Boog was bookin to fish more and more and taking fewer and fewer jobs.
Of  course, being a fairly normal Canookislostanivakian male reared in the 60s and 70s, he was blisteringly non-confrontational, especially where chicks were concerned.

So anyways, things continued to deteriorate and their respective motivations continued to diverge, until one day she came home from work to see his tackle and gear sitting on the table and rightly assumed that he'd been out fishing all day instead of looking for work.
And she decided to have it out.
And so she did.
And she stood there and told him she was about fed up with being the only one who seemed to be really putting out in terms of building their life together, that if they were ever going to get out of that crappy basement suite, into a home of their own, in a nice neighborhood, and maybe even start thinking about maybe starting a family, that it was high time he grew up and starting assuming a little responsibility for himself, and didn't he think that it was kind of immature to be ditching work, especially when there they were, trying to work together to make a better life for themselves, and on top of everything else, instead of working, what did he think he was doing, going fucking  fishing???"

And when she finally finished, Boog looked up at her, looked her in the eye, and said

"Hey, I'm just trying to put food on the table"

Raj