Memorial day, motorcycle (sold), mulch and more

We had a fairly eventful Memorial Day three-day weekend this year. Nothing spectacular, but a lot that went on - both good and bad.

It started with the air conditioner puking out on Saturday morning. You may have read my post about that already. It all worked out.

Sunday was church, and I ended up having to offer the morning prayer. Not that I minded, but I have always struggled with holidays like this, Veterans Day, and the like. As a pacifist I don't want to glorify war in any way, but at the same time, I have a hard time believing most military personnel would be IN FAVOR OF wars either. Certainly I feel remorse over those who have lost their lives, yet there seems to be a large segment of the American church who believe not being overly patriotic is anti-Christian. Anyway, I based my prayer off Isaiah's "Wonderful Counselor, Almighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace." I'm sure people didn't like that I prayed for peace... but I think that's their problem.

Other than that... we ended up getting ice cream sundaes at The Stand, then we went to Two-EE's winery and inhaled a bottle of cabernet. Sunday evening we cooked delmonico steaks on the grill. Yumm.

Monday was a pretty full day of work... and money!

I SOLD THE MOTORCYCLE!! I'd pretty much forgotten that I put an ad on Facebook last year trying to sell the 2006 Kawasaki 500 Vulcan. A random guy sent me a FB message and asked if he could come look at it yesterday. I was like, "Sure!" He drive down from Sturgis, Michigan with what looked like his son, and by golly... he bought it! He gave me 16 $100 bills.

I can't remember if I paid $1600 or $1400 for it - I'm pretty sure it was one or the other. I bought a battery and a cover for it, and that's the extent of money I spent on it in the 5 years we owned it.

I felt kind of bad, because he rode it home. I told him several times it hasn't been ridden much, and the gas was likely very old... but he took off... and I had my money.

I am a little torn. On the one hand, I never did ride it much so it was silly to keep it in the garage. On the other hand, I always MEANT to ride it more. I also feel bad for the grandkids. I know Caleb, especially, liked sitting on it. I can still remember when I sold my other motorcycle when Isaac was about their age, and he cried and cried and cried. I felt terrible about that. But... I guess there's nothing I can do now (except start wishing I had a motorcycle again).

Other than that, we worked our butts off in the backyard on Memorial Day. We tore out a bush, put some mulch down, and planted a raised garden - all along the back side of the house.

We intended to replace the mulch and underlayment earlier in the year, but it's been so rainy we just never got around to it. As for the raised garden... I built it out of some old boards I had laying around. I think we used 8 bags of a dirt mix from Menards. We just planted a couple pepper plants, some grape tomatoes, radishes and carrots. We are not great gardeners, but it just seemed like something to do. We'll see.

So, all in all, we got a lot of work done, and made some extra space in the garage. I'm trying not to think about the motorcycle too much. What's done is done. Life goes on.

And now it's Tuesday...