The great selling debacle came about when my niece's 18-year-old boyfriend decided that he wanted to buy a piece of my land.

Having started off wheeling and dealing at a young age, I was understandably sympathetic to his plight.

Until I realized that the piece of land that he wanted was the same one I have been working on to fix up for my retirement home. Alright, I admit it, it's really just a place to hide on weekends.

But still yet I struggled over selling it, because I have really put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into the place. Well, actually, no tears. No blood either, unless you count when I sliced my leg open on the horse shoe peg. Don't ask.

On the other hand, the lure of being debt free and all that stuff was quite appealing to me. You know, it isn't all that easy to get debt free. The appeal of doing that with one quick sale was awe-inspiring.

Within moments, I was planning what I would do with the cash, thinking about the feeling I would get when I wrote that last check to my creditors and wondering what other kinds of interesting stuff I could get into if I had my paycheck free every week.

In my mind, I was cruising around in a really nice old car with a big cigar hanging out the side of my mouth. Of course, it never really works out that way.

My niece told him she didn't want to live in those God-forsaken woods in the middle of nowhere. I suppose they are contemplating matrimony, which sounds remarkably like constipated on macaroni to my ears.

At any rate, I also have another property that they were interested in purchasing. So now they are off to the bank again for a smaller loan to buy the smaller home.

You know, writing about selling "my properties" makes me sound like some kind of a tycoon, which brings to mind a raccoon with a bow tie. All told, I really own one lot with a mobile home on it. The bank and I own quite a bit more than that together. Thus we return to the predicament. I really don't want to sell any land or anything else for that matter, but I don't want to pay bills either.

"If a poor man wants anything, he has to go in debt," my father once said.

I really shouldn't call myself poor anymore. Poor is when you worry about where your next meal is going to come from. I do worry about where it's going to come from, but only in the sense of "Which restaurant am I feeding at today?" I suppose that makes me poor in a whole other way. Eating at home doesn't make sense for me. I don't have any kids or anyone else living with me, so I don't have enough mouths to warrant breaking out a trough.

Oh well. As for the property, I decided that I will sell if the buyer comes to me with cash and says, "Here, take this."

I will not advertise anything for sale, but it would be hard, make that impossible, to turn down cash.

I also need to be careful not to start thinking I can get out of working on things because they are already sold. Thinking that the next fellow will take care of all your chores is probably not the right attitude for a man to have in any case, but especially not when you are talking about major investments.

I guess you all know by now, I always take on much more than I have time to do and much more than I can afford. It is a condition faced by many a star-struck individual who sees way too many deals that are just too good to pass up on. Sometimes the deals aren't even that good. In between all the things that I want to do and all the things I really end up doing there is one common thread. It is the thought that sometime it would be nice to just stay home one weekend and watch the fire through the glass doors on my little stove and not worry about anything or anyone.

That is such a small little dream, surely I could make it come true without much trouble.

That is, until I start thinking about the old cars I need to fix or sale, the four-wheel-drive that I bought recently to fix up as a 59 Chevy truck and the land I need to clear and.... a lot of other stuff. Not to mention the wood that I will need to have cut so that I can feed it into the stove as I sit beside it.

Perhaps I am not seeing the forest for the trees. I really need to be thankful that I have a warm stove and am able to cut wood to put in it.

I also should remember how fortunate I am to have the kinds of problems that I have instead of real problems, like worrying about getting mugged on the way to work. I hope the closest I get to that is someone passing me a cup of Joe. Well, it's all just one day at a time. Right now, I have a newspaper to help put out.

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