Silly me, forgetting to carry a notepad

I have come to understand that my mother is not going to ask whether it's a good time to talk, but I do wish that she would ask whether I'm in a position to listen attentively to what she's saying and/or take notes before she starts describing the substance of her latest complaint in great detail. Instead, she launches into a complicated explanation the minute I say "hello" and fully expects that I process whatever she is saying into a letter.

On Friday afternoon she'd sent me a short paragraph complaining to her old phone company that their failure to turn off her phone service when she'd asked them to resulted in interference with her new phone service. I quickly re-wrote it for her and hit 'send.'

That evening, I headed out to meet my friend Marcela, who'd just returned from over a month in Ecuador. I had informed her of the self-imposed shopping-and-restaurant ban; she was supportive, but still invited me to drink water in her presence while she shopped and dined. It was about 8:30 PM [on a Friday night] when I was half-way to the metro and my mother called, and immediately launched into her phone service drama. She continued onto her dissatisfaction with my revision of her letter.

"What was that paragraph you sent? Was that about some other situation?"
"It was a revision of your letter."
"I didn't understand what you wrote-- what does it have to do with anything?"
"I wrote exactly what you wrote, only politely and in correct English."
"Well, it doesn't make sense to me..."

She goes on in detail about what happened, about how every time they called they told her to write and when she wrote they said the issue could only be resolved by phone. Legitimate complaints, and I'm not one to judge another person for going on about the mundane. Here's what I will say: does my mom not realize that I don't sit around with a notepad handy, waiting for her instructions? I am often on the go... it wouldn't hurt to ask me where I am or what I'm doing before expecting me to drop everything and take notes, if not out of considerateness, than out of pragmatism.

About five minutes into the phone service details, I get to the metro. A commuter train goes by and then there's an announcement.

"WHAT is that noise? Where ARE you?"
"At the metro?"
"Why are they talking?"
"They make announcements. About elevator outages and such."
"Anyway, so I was trying to explain to them that they were supposed to disconnect the phone line...WHY is it so noisy?"

Does she expect me to apologize for being at the metro, or perhaps for the metro for making announcements while she's talking to me?

"It's noisy because they're making announcements."
"Can you even hear me?"
"I can, but my train is here and I'll lose signal in a minute or so."
"Well, call me when you get home."
"I don't know what time I'll get home, and I'll most likely want to go to bed immediately."
"Well how are you going to know what to write?"
"Send me an e-mail with the details!"
"I DID send you an e-mail with the details!"

I was happy to have a distraction from the phone/letter issue. I called Marcela when I got to the mall, but she was in the middle of a transaction and said she'd call me back in a minute. In the meantime I kept walking, and she did call a minute later and ask where I was. I realized that I had been magnetically, instinctively drawn to Banana Republic. I thought about the beginning of a Lewis Black show-- perhaps Black on Broadway, when he's on his way up to the performance and someone asks, "how are you?" and he grumbles, "how the f* do you think I am?" Marcela's "where are you," an innocent and natural question, was almost met with, "where the f* do you think I am?" I'm in one of my natural habitats, the sale rack at Banana. Not because I was irritated at all... it just came into my head. I did just say, "Banana Republic."

Anyway, we walked around talked while she had dinner, it was a good night. I got home around 11pm and dutifully called my mother and asked if I needed to get letter-writing instructions that minute. She said she'd wait on the phone technicians tomorrow, but started getting into the whole story again. I interrupted with, "I know..." and regurgitated part of it so that she'd see that I actually heard her the first time. Her response, in a semi-accusatory tone: "Well, you were in such a hurry, I couldn't tell if you'd taken in anything that I said." Her tone is difficult to convey, but by my reading, it was one of, "well, you weren't exactly sitting by your phone with a notepad!" as if that's what she expects when she calls and proceeds to elaborate on the complaint-inspiring situation in great detail. We said goodnight; we were both satisfied to leave it at that.