We're back to this

Mom, rambling as we're tidying the kitchen:

Your problem is that you have more intellect than warmth or empathy, and that makes it difficult for you to relate to other people. You're quite harsh when people don't do things exactly as you think they should. Are you listening to me? 

If you're thinking of pots and kettles and whose cow should shut up, I am too, and not for the first time this morning. Mom has been continuing to draw me in to her usually-vicarious personal dramas, telling me about how someone or another (in the latest case, one of dad's best friends from childhood; a year ago, it was her own childhood friend--Nina's dad) is dead to her. She doesn't seem to recall that a year ago, I was dead to her; even if she did, she wouldn't deduce from that that I'm less than sympathetic to her versions of events. She's always mad at someone for something--for some perceived or exaggerated slight--and that's her choice, but the regularity of it all makes her an unreliable narrator. Maybe dad's friend was arrogant toward a friend of hers (whom mom admits is annoying). It's hard to say. But mom does love to take sides and turn her chosen side into a saint--into the innocent that can do no wrong--and the other side into a shameless offender. Even that aside, it's kind of shamelessly amazing for mom to go on critiquing someone else for being insensitive.