Luckily, my week improved somewhat last week. I couldn’t have taken many more days like the one I last wrote about.

I still managed to endure several continuing calamities as I found plenty of useful activities to undertake, like putting up a new door on my bedroom and working on a place I own.

My bedroom has two entrances, one of which has lacked a door since I moved in about a year ago. Since the door was an odd size — about 29.5 inches by 71 inches — I had a hard time locating one that would fit.

After some intense measuring, I found out that the door was out of square. In other words, part of the door opening was greater than the standard 30 inches, while other parts were less.

I opted for destructive tools to remedy the situation, a stick of stove wood and a big hammer, noisy and effective. Even after the pounding, I still had to trim a few odd pieces of the door frame, which I accomplished with my pocket knife.

Once the opening was roughly 30 inches everywhere, I started on my door, which I pirated from the laundry room. It was originally one of

two sliding doors on my laundry room double closet, but I removed them one day after they fell from their track for the 30th time while I was attempting to find a bottle of varnish. After reaching maximum frustration, I started removing the doors and the light bulb popped on in my mind. I somehow had one of those eureka moments when the missing door came to mind.

I had already called the really big hardware store, which told me that I would need to pay between $60 and $120 for a door made to fit. I liked my way better.

While the door was the right width, it did have a few problems. For instance, it had no door knob, had never been fitted for hinges, had rollers on top and were too tall. However, a chisel, a handsaw, a screwdriver, some wood glue and a pocket knife later, everything was just perfect.

While cutting out the indentions for the hinge, I found my wood chisel inadequate for carving the rectangular recess evenly.

So, I instead opted to cut the end of my thumb off. Well, not exactly. I had just finished smoothing out one of the hinge openings when I hurriedly started to close my lock-blade knife.

The knife, a fine piece of Chinese workmanship which set me back $2.99 at a convenience store, has a locking mechanism in the center that fails regularly. The mechanism is so placed as to put your thumb in harm’s way when you are closing the blade one-handed. I had recently taken the liberty of sharpening it, much to my chagrin as I jumped around and held my bleeding thumb while citing the “Pledge of Allegiance” and other such patriotic doctrines.

I grabbed a rag and rushed to the bathroom, sure I would need to go to the hospital due to blood loss. I doused the cut with alcohol, which led into a stirring rendition of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the bathroom, but the agony, like so many other things, soon passed. After carefully inspecting the wound, I found wasn’t really that bad; the end of my thumb had an accumulation of protective callus that had been severed and was left hanging, but the wound itself wasn’t much more than a V-shaped cut across the width of my thumb. So I broke out the super glue and stuck it back together. I have been using super glue on wounds since I read that it was invented in the Vietnam era for sealing wounds. Besides, anything’s an improvement over the hillbilly bandage I usually use when I’m working — duct tape and paper towels. After finishing cutting out the indentions on the door frame and the door for the hinges, I used my handsaw to cut the door off to the proper height and mounted it in place.

Finally, I measured and marked for the door handle and latch. After finishing up that job, which lastly required me to whittle on a raised spot on the door frame, I headed to the place in Virginia to set to working there.

I changed the locks on the front and back door there, since the old ones were suspect and had been around for years. Painting two rooms, cleaning some hard tile, replacing wall trim, fixing bathroom fixtures and a cabinet and spackling holes in the sheetrock also were on the agenda.

By the end of the day, the tile was clean, one room was spackled and painted, most of the bathroom work was done and the trim was cut and partially painted. I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. There is one benefit to not getting it all done — I don’t have to worry about what I’ll do next weekend.

I have come to the conclusion that I am one of those people who feels most alive when most occupied. Maybe it makes me feel important or useful. All I know is, the harder I work, the better I feel. It was refreshing to get back at it after a few weeks of relative lull. In the end, the feeling of accomplishment is worth as much to me as the tangible, visual confirmation of the work.

It was nice to get some things done, but the more I do, the more I find that needs doing. I suppose it never ends.

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