Yesterday was my birthday and my mother called at 7.50am, when I was in the middle of having a lovely morning with DP and DD in bed, opening presents and cards before having to go to work. She called to say happy birthday, or at least that was the cover story. Conversation went vaguely like this:
DM: Happy Birthday, wanted to catch you before work, how are you?
Me: Thank you, I'm fine, how are you?
DM then spends 20 minutes telling me how crap everything in her life is right now - health (in minute detail), work, finances, the ever-deteriorating relationships with everyone around her (spot the common denominator mother!)....suffice to say everything is terrible, she has nothing good to say about anything.
Finally she says: ...but anyway, I don't want to spoil your birthday.
Given the fact that DP got DD to keep singing Happy Birthday really loudly to try to remind her of the purpose of her call, but she obviously missed the subtle hints, AIBU to think she could have just bottled up all her misery for 48 hours and then called me on Monday to regail me with all her tales of woe? It's not like any of this was a new development, it will all be exactly the same next week (as it was last week when I spoke to her). Or would that make me a bad daughter and do serious long-lasting damage to her mental health (on top of everything else)?