Leave a not-snide message after the tone

In a voice mail, my mother said, "I don't understand why you're unable," i.e. why I was unable to come to the phone, as I said in my outgoing message.

My mother leaves this message quite often, as long-time blog readers will know. It's generally annoying in its own right, but even more so because she tends to leave it and variations ('where could you possibly be?') at times when it's perfectly understandable that I would be unable to come to the phone... like on a Friday or Saturday night, or anytime, really. I mean, I could be, maybe, busy... I could be doing laundry or cooking. Just leave a $%^&ing message without a snide remark about why can't I come to the phone.

Had I picked up, she would have likely said, "what are you doing up?" or if it had been a different time, "what are you doing sitting around the house?"

Last night's message fits into a second pattern, too: my mom knows I get up early, knows therefore I try to go to bed early, yet insists on calling me pretty late. This is particularly amusing when she wants a response that night (but hasn't bothered to call until 10pm on a weeknight), or when it spirals (I get up too early to call her in the morning, don't call from work, don't call while driving, have a bunch of errands to do, etc. and she whips herself into a frenzy of why I haven't called her, until I do, not quite as late as she called me the night before. She doesn't have my work number, because she is not capable of respecting "I can't talk now, this is a bad time."

I won't call her now, at 3:40 AM (too hot to sleep), but I'll let you know what happens when I call tonight.