Mood swings

Another example of the inability to get settled into one mood here:

This afternoon, my supervisor told me that there was a letter for me on his desk. I went in to get it and noticed that the envelope wasn't (and hadn't ever been) sealed. Slightly miffed, I picked it up and then noticed that my name and address weren't in the see-through plastic window on the envelope. In other words, someone had clearly taken the letter out of the envelope, looked at it and put it back in again (the wrong way around). This really gave me the shits - it's one thing for people to pull my groceries out of my shopping bag and look at the price labels (seriously, this is what happens) but opening my mail takes privacy invasion to the next level.

I stormed out and found my supervisor, demanding to know who had opened my mail and why. Infuriatingly, he didn't understand why I had a problem. He just patiently pointed out that the fault lay with the phone company for not sealing their envelopes properly. I agreed that, yes, this was an issue but I still wanted to know why this was perceived to be an open invitation to read my mail. This time, he said the finger of blame should be pointed to the postal workers since they must have removed it. I tried to explain that this couldn't be the case, because the way the letter had been put back in the envelope meant that the name and address couldn't be seen - so this must have happened after delivery, otherwise they wouldn't have known where or who to deliver it to.

I have no doubt that it was someone at my work who opened the letter, and I'm pretty sure which person it would have been. It really really really gets on my nerves how little respect for privacy there seems to be here - which I don't know is widespread or if people feel somehow entitled to go through my things because they are "looking after" me.

So feeling like my head was going to explode with fury, I headed into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. The cook, Moriam, had rearranged lots of the furniture in one corner and gone through all the cupboards to clean and tidy everything. I asked her why she'd done this, wondering if there was a specific reason or just a spring clean.

Her response? She wanted to rearrange everything so there was more room for me to prepare my meals at the table because she knows I struggle a bit with doing it on the floor. (She'd laughed at me taking "knee stretch" breaks the night before when using a floor grinding stone to make some home-made peanut butter.) Also, a vegetable peeler that I'd bought (for about 40 cents) had gone missing which was giving her considerable stress since she's the one who washes the dishes and felt personally responsible. Which I guess she may have been, but it really didn't worry me and I'd already gone and bought a new one.

See what I mean? With one person being fucking annoying one minute and then someone else being so delightful and thoughtful the next, it's impossible to stay in a bad mood for too long. (Conversely, it also means that good moods are often nipped in the bud!)