I've been friends with this woman, I'll call her Y, for over ten years. We used to work together. She now works abroad in an intense humanitarian role whereas I have a young family and based here. Y has always been out of contact during her work periods and we would usually meet up at mine when she is home, as her home base (parents etc.) is only a few hours' drive away and she can stay over here. Sometimes we visited her at her home base instead. In summer she was home and mentioned she was organizing a get together at her home base in autumn and I was invited; it would be with folk we both worked with years ago - 2 of them also still close friends of mine and the others not folk I have kept up with, but Y has. I then texted Y in the run up to autumn and she gave me dates for the meet up (a month away) and told me the posh restaurant scheduled for the meet up. As I am on a tight budget with young family I sold a concert ticket to save up for the posh restaurant and sent a text to the friend asking if the meal would be appropriate for my children to come to as well or not, should I arrange childcare? Never heard back. Tried to text and call a few times and only got hold of Y the day before the scheduled reunion. She didn't sound happy to hear from me and said the restaurant plan had changed as one of the party was travel sick and didn't like the driving in the hills, so they would all do what she preferred. She said nothing to do with whether or not I brought my children, they would be welcome, but the restaurant was not going ahead - we could meet them all the following day if I rang in then to see what they were doing. So my children and I made the 3 hour drive to her area the following day, I rang and we met everyone for a walk along the coast. By then they had booked a restaurant for the evening but my friend didn't explicitly invite me, said it was fully booked out now, and rather than have a difficult conversation in front of all the others I simply suggested we would head off after the walk and friend agreed. Her parting words to me though after what seemed an extremely lukewarm reception and made me feel i maybe hadn't been actually invited (though I was, initially) were that she couldn't wait to catch up properly with me at Xmas. Fast forward to November, I texted friend abroad and said could we please arrange Xmas meet up in advance as I wouldn't have much time off and sure she would be busy too. She promised to get back to me once she had spoken to family and said she would "fit in with my plans". No further text though until she got in touch Xmas eve and said she was home and would love to meet up. The 3 dates I then suggested she said she was unavailable, due to travel to see others, other friends etc. I could have managed another date - she was offering to drive down to us to save us any travel - but by this point was just frustrated at the lack of advance planning as I do have other things on and the final available date wasn't ideal. So I sent a polite but blunt message explaining I had not been happy that in autumn initially I had been invited to the restaurant meet-up and actually moved my budget around to go to that, then that hadn't happened, we hadn't joined friends in the restaurant...and now I'd got in touch mid-Nov to try to make a Xmas plan but here we were Xmas Eve trying to arrange it and it didn't look possible. I said I would need more advance notice in future. Friend replied, strangely as when we left in the autumn when she said she couldn't wait to see me at Xmas, by saying she had bought presents for me and my children and would drive down and drop them to my house next week (it's a 3 hour drive) even though we couldn't meet up. This seemed like an excessive gesture to be honest given the length of the drive and/or a weird threat that she would "visit anyway" on her own terms... I politely asked she leave presents in at the village store as they take our mail if we're away and she replied "OK - and sorry if I caused any stress". I can't really make head or tail of the mixed messages...I've always felt my friend's head must be in another space when she is abroad doing intense humanitarian work and therefore try not to put ANY pressure on her abroad, even to arrange stuff, but it's also clear she HAS been making detailed arrangements with others from abroad whereas I feel the plans with me are an afterthought. A mutual friend says she is a "hopeless communicator"/"never checks her phone". When we meet up we chat well and have a lot in common (politics, wine, shared stories etc.) but I feel this Xmas is the final straw. That said I feel anxious I may now lose the friendship and also I've a niggling worry her total haphazard-niss is because she has a form of depression - she has had before and lost her sister very suddenly around a year ago. Then I feel bad and feel I should just overlook her total inability to plan ahead with me, but this time I felt I had to be honest as the sad thing was, we could have met up easily had we arranged it back in mid-Nov. And I really felt nothing less than excluded at the autumn bash when everyone else was accommodated at the changed venue restaurant, except me.Trying not to agonize but a friend of over a decade is precious - right? How can I make this work? Or is it a no-hoper?