Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch. . .

. . . Ariana and I have been busy doing our share to prepare the house to be put on the market.

The first order of business was bringing half of Neil's comic book collection to a game shop in Fairhaven. I had stopped there the day before to inquire about selling Neil's comic books. When they said that they only buy in bulk, I answered back, "Believe me, we have bulk. We have cartons and cartons of comic books."

The shop guy gave me the schedule of the comic book guy, saying that he would be in the next day between 11:00 and 1:00.

So yesterday morning, Ariana and I went to load up the comic books in may car. But before we could even get to the comic books, we had to roll out the lawn mower and the field and brush mower. Then we had to remove a small ladder and 3 bikes. Finally we were able to get to the comic books.

My car was only able to fit 14 cartons of comic books. That's about half of Neil's collection, which consists of over 7000 comic books.

We met Mark, the comic book guy, at Over the Edge. He reviewed the contents of every carton, writing down the names of the comic books that caught his eye.

Mark was not authorized to buy the collection. That was something he had to first discuss with the owner of the shop, who was away at a convention. But Mark said that he would give him a call and see what the owner would say.

If everything would be cool with the owner, Mark could be at our house as early as this Saturday, going through the rest of Neil's collection.

Here's hoping. And let's keep our fingers crossed.

After Mark reviewed the 14 cartons of comic books, the next order of business was to bring them back home, put them back into the garage, and replace the things that we took out of the garage.

Once that was done, the next order of business was to work on de-cluttering the house so that we don't waste any time in getting it up on the market.

I assigned Ariana her room. I needed her floor to be picked up and clean so that when it came time for me to drag Neil's old mattress, box spring, and bed to pitch out the door in the chill room, I would have a clear path.

I, myself, took on Neil's room. Because Big Brother-Big Sister was scheduled for a donation pick-up on our street next week, I wanted to go through Neil's clothes, as well as his sheets, blankets, and quilts.

Most of the clothes I was able to bag up right away because they were clean. There were about 20 bags of clean stuff. But I had 6 bags of dirty stuff, in addition to 3 big arm loads of nasty blankets, sheets, and quilts.

In the meantime, Ariana was bagging up her dirty clothes and bed stuff and bringing them downstairs to add to the already prodigious pile of laundry.

In addition to finding clothes that she forgot she had, Ariana found a fair amount of jewelry.

She went to Neil's room to find me and tell me that she and Ryan were going to take the gold and silver down to the pawn shop. And she asked if there was any jewelry that I would want her to bring down so that I could get some extra cash, too.

So I took a break from my cleaning upstairs to go downstairs and scavenge through my jewelry collection. I had a pretty good pile of jewelry. Even though a lot of it was stuff that I still liked, I had to be honest with myself by asking myself when was the last time I wore that jewelry and will I wear it again.

Once Ariana and Ryan were off to new Bedford, I resumed my cleaning in Neil's room.

A short time later, Ariana came back. She made $70.00 on her jewelry. But she couldn't sell mine because the pawn shop required that I be there to sell my own jewelry. So I said, "Let's drive down to the pawn shop."

It was my first experience with a pawn shop.

While the pawn broker was sorting through my jewelry, I noticed that the gold claddaugh ring that I found with my metal detector was missing. Ariana was afraid that she could have lost it.

As the fellow was painstakingly sorting, measuring, and recording my booty, I kept feeling this tickling sensation on my toes. It was a damn fly.

And then it dawned on me. That fly was attracted to the cat crap that I had stepped in earlier while cleaning out Neil's room. (Apparently that one specimen did not make it into the litter box.) That also explained why I kept smelling something unpleasant around me.

Looking at the bottom of my foot, my suspicions were confirmed. There it was, cat shit stuck in the grooves at the bottom of my sandal. So while still in the pawn shop, I worked at scraping away the offending material onto the rug, in front of the counter, which I had noticed was already considerably dirty from the foot traffic.

Anyhow, my transaction was just about wrapped up. I had to sign my name a few times and have my picture taken. And then I was handed back my driver's license and $97.00.

We were on our away back. But before going straight home, we stopped at Light House Liquors in Marion to collect more empty boxes that the owners had been saving for us.

Back home, I didn't have much more to do in Neil's room as far as clothing was concerned. It was just as well because it was getting to be time to feed the animals.

The rest of my evening and night would be spent on the computer while doing several loads of laundry and sorting in between.

Today will be another day of cleaning.

What shall I tackle in Neil's room today?