The clocks have changed and it has turned decidedly chilly.

I had a couple of days out in the hills last week, one really bracing walk in the Eildons with a wind that was almost strong enough to wipe not only the expression off your face but possibly your eyebrows as well, and another absolutely gorgeous day in Glencoe that did a lot to lift my spirits.

The clocks have changed and it has turned decidedly chilly. I’m warding off the effects of winter with my hot water bottle and my light box (see my early diary entries if you want to know what my light box is or where I got it).

I am regretting the decision to put a brighter energy efficient bulb in the living room though, as it is just making it glaringly obvious quite how untidy my house has got. I can almost convince myself it is untidy for a good reason, as the DIY has been taking precedence over cleaning recently. At least I have not just been sitting wallowing in a pit of filth (as my mum likes to refer to my flat).

I would like to think I have been getting a lot of DIY done but it’s all relative, I have just been getting a lot of DIY done for me. I have now, mostly repaired the big hole I made in my kitchen wall, laid a new hearth, painted my bathroom, resealed my bath and my shower has been fitted (I watched it happen- not quite the same as doing DIY yourself really, but I did still get a certain vicarious sense of virtue and I dabbed about with some bits of grout for effect).

I would, of course, have saved myself a lot of time if I had not made a big hole in my kitchen wall in the first place. It started out as quite a moderately sized hole, left by the removal of an old fireplace, and gradually got bigger when it turned out that that fireplace had in fact been built inside what used to be a much larger fireplace, apparently by someone with similar DIY skills to my own.

Still, it has been a learning experience, I know now several things: that fireplaces made of concrete are surprisingly heavy if you pull them on top of yourself or if you have to carry them piece by piece from a 3rd floor flat to ground level; that if you pull a badly laid brick out of the bottom of a badly laid wall, you now have a tower of wobbly bricks that even my two year old nephew would be ashamed of building and the start of a pretty big hole in the wall; that it is impossible to plaster or lay mortar without it going everywhere and without my cats trying to lick it, walk in it or generally in some way tamperfere: They too have been gaining vicarious DIY points by watching me avidly.

I also know a lot more than I used to about mixing and laying mortar, about building stud partitions, about plaster board, about plumbing in showers and about what it is possible to fit in my car. So, all in all, I’m feeling pretty good about it.

However, I really will have to finish the current DIY jobs off and then clean my house before the state of it really starts to depress me. Either that or fit a dimmer on the living room light switch.

Week commencing 30/10/06

Medication: None.
Exercise: 6.5 – climbed a few hills most enjoyable
Alcohol: 1 – still pretty much off the booze.
Anxiety: Fine, much better than last week
Anxiety Level (0-10): 0
Number of Panic Attacks: 0
Severity of Panic Attack (0-5): NA
Depression: Fine
Depression Level (0-5): 0
Mania: Fine
Mania Level (0-5): 1- still not sleeping brilliantly but other than that fine.

Summary

A good week.