Back last night from my trip to the Jersey shore to visit a friend. We had a nice time but as usual, it was a very long ride. Since dad wanted to clean up a little at his house (the renters left a lot of trash, a spare tire in the yard, etc), we drove down together. He dropped me at K.'s house and he went on to his place.

On the way home we stopped at dad's attorney's office to see if he thought it worthwhile to pursue civil action against his evicted tenant, who stole about a dozen items, including a washing machine.

The attorney concluded that since the tenant doesn't appear to have any assets, it would be pointless to spend the money to pursue the matter, but we have 6 years to file a civil suit if, for instance, my dad learns she suddenly has money. Yeah, we could garnish her wages, at maybe $50 a month, not really worth it.

The attorney agreed the theft was very "in your face," since she took so many things, but it just wasn't worth it for dad to pursue. You have to choose your battles.

So now dad has decided to sell the house, as 3 of his kids including me have been urging him to do.

Today we scheduled to have the local constable come next week to execute a lockout. My dad had skipped this step thinking it wasn't necessary since he has an alarm system on the house if she tried to come back, but that's not really the point. It provides legal protection for my dad and the attorney said he really needs to do it.

After that phone call, we settled on 3 realtors we found online and I scheduled for all 3 of them to come look at the house, so they can do a CMA, on the same day dad is down there to do the lockout.

I'm not really looking forward to immersing myself in all this, after having sold my mother's condo, but of dad's 4 kids, I'm the only one not working. It's quite a bit harder doing it from a distance since I'm in CT and the house is in Jersey and I'm trying to minimize the number of times my dad drives down there.

His 2 sons are in Jersey (about 1.5 hours north of Dad's house), so if there's an opportunity, I'm going to ask them to help out with specific tasks if something comes up they can handle more easily than I.

I suppose it's better we try to dispose of the house now while dad is still alive becus I don't even know if he has named any of us as executor of his estate, and that is the person who would have to do all this if he wasn't around.

I haven't decided whether to go with dad when he goes down to meet them all. He hasn't asked me to, but I do feel better doing the driving. And I really have nothing going on that day anyway.

He plans to leave very early that morning since the meeting with constable is at 11 am and it's a 3-hr drive. To avoid leaving during peak rush hour, he plans to leave earlier, I'm guessing around 6 am.

While he dealt with the constable and realtors, I'm sure there would be things for me to do, cleaning or decluttering the garage, for one.

Then, instead of spending another overnight (and leaving Luther on his own again), we could have a leisurely dinner down there around 6 and hit the road for return trip home at 7 pm, after the worst of rush hour, getting us home around 10 pm. It would be driving in the dark, which is not my preference, but it would get us home sooner.

Tomorrow I scheduled with a local hospital for both me and dad to go for free skin cancer checks.