Not Much to Show

I've been doing some research on icons. Although I'm not dredging up the information I wanted to find, there is one thing that I've discovered. I could never be Orthodox. The more I read about the icons and what individual ones are all about, the more I see how much I need the Lutheran perspective on how we are simultaneously saint and sinner, and how God's word of forgiveness declares us to be what we are not and begins to make us into what God would have us to be.

I really need to get around to sewing a bridesmaid's dress. I keep finding other things to do first. But pretty soon I'm going to run out of time. Better get started.

We did almost no housecleaning this week.

I sure did like the old WordPerfect programs. But the last few updates have made it more and more like Word. So I am trying to learn to make Word work for me as well as WordPerfect. I used to use Word when it didn't matter much, and haul out WordPerfect when I needed a more complex word-processing task. Boy, Word is a lot less intuitive, a lot harder to adjust, and a lot harder to find answers for in its "help desk." But I have made a great deal of headway on finding its shortcuts and solving problems. Still have a long way to go.

I stopped at one of those big, busy areas of town for shopping today, at a store I seldom visit. There is SO much cool stuff in stores that I don't even know about. Things that could make life simpler. But I don't know it exists, and I somehow manage without. But boy, oh boy, the yummy smells in those parts of town, where there are coffee shops and bakeries and restaurants galore. Mmmmm. I wonder how fat I'd be if I had the money to indulge in all those treats, because I don't think I have the self-discipline to deny myself those things with the tempting aromas.

I learned to prune apple trees today from somebody who actually knows how to do it. Up till now, I've been faking it with my pruning. I did find out that fruit trees and other trees need to be pruned quite differently. Oops . Sometimes I pruned fruit trees/vines as if they were decorative trees or shade trees, while I pruned non-fruit trees as if they were fruit trees. Well, I suppose my trees will grow back to cover over my mistakes, and I can do better with my pruning in the future, shaping the trees in the direction that I wanted but didn't know how to achieve. It always shocks me how naked and near-dead a properly pruned tree looks before spring growth erupts.