I met this Mum (I'll call her L) at school about 18months ago. She's a single Mum and has been signed off from work on sick leave for the last 7 weeks. We're fairly good friends I suppose. She classes me as her "best friend" but I'm not sure I see her as the same, really just because of her recent behaviour.
This happened a couple of weeks ago but kind of explains the type of thing I mean. My DDs hamster (called Shiver) escaped one Friday, around 7am. I'd never had to find/capture an escaped one before, and had no idea what to do/where a hamster might hide. L rang up at 8.30am and wanted to come for coffee, so we arranged for her to arrive at 1.45pm. I spent the day, sitting in a near-silent house, listening for any sounds and really hoping that we'd see Shiver again (I'm quite attached to her too!) 5 minutes before L was due to arrive, DH found Shiver upstairs in his room (he uses it as an office). I then spent the next 45minutes trying to catch her but every time I came close to catching hold of her, she shot off behind all the stuff DH has (never realised hamsters could move so fast!) DH explained to L what I was doing but after 40 minutes, L left. Virtually as L walked out the door, I managed to get hold of Shiver and got her back into the cage. I tried to ring L on her mobile to apologise and explain, but she was driving so couldn't answer. When I got back from picking up DDs at 4pm, L had sent some text messages from her mobile to our home phone, saying how "very upset" she was because she'd had a wasted journey (10 miles round trip), that I should have rung and told her that we'd found Shiver but that I was having trouble trying to catch her. She complained that I hadn't said "hello" to her or come downstairs to see her (No I hadn't, but I was concentrating on trying to catch said hamster!) I rang her and pointed out that she was already on her way from her house when we found the hamster, so I wouldn't have been able to contact her. I also said that DH had explained that I was having trouble getting hold of Shiver.
This all had me in tears (pathetic I know, but it was also time of the month, which didn't help), which she interpreted as me not wanting to lose our friendship. In truth, I couldn't have cared less because I was just so tired and p!ssed off with it all!
The latest thing is that we've been trying to arrange going Christmas shopping. We've agreed that it would be nice to get it done while she's signed off sick and without children. But she keeps cancelling because she gets very tired (due to the illness she's had). I want to emphasise that it's OK, I've no problem if she's tired, I'm not desperate to go shopping. But last night she rang at 5pm. After a bit of a moan that she wasn't able to see her normal doctor to see if she could go back to work, we arranged to go shopping tomorrow morning. 1 1/2 hours later, I got a text message saying that she'd told me the day before (Tuesday) that she was too tired to go shopping (no, she hadn't said anything), as if it was my fault for trying to arrange something and for her agreeing to it.
I try to understand that being a single-parent is hard work and she does describe herself as "a worrier", but everytime she has a really hard time at work, or imagines some slight that I've done, she kind of "takes off and runs with it", so that I'm made to feel like everything is my fault. I don't want to appear like a heartless b!tch but I get fed up of trying to cheer her up (like with the Crimble shopping), and then being made to feel like it's all my fault when she then decides she doesn't want to do it hours later. Or that I can't make the world revolve around her/solve her problems because I have to concentrate on DDs/my family/catching hamsters etc. She does apologise afterwards, but I guess I'm finding it hard work trying to explain every little thing I do so that she doesn't take things the "wrong way".
I'd be grateful for any help or advice.