Earlier this evening whilst I had been relaxing, I heard the sound that always fills me with dread. The sound that alerts me to the fact that my mother is phoning my landline. 
To be honest, I'm not quite sure why my mother bothers phoning my landline, as it is rare that I feel able to answer phone calls from her, or to return her calls when she leaves messages on my answer machine requesting I call her back. Put simply, I find my mother to be an energy vampire.
She (my mother) had left a message asking if she could come to my house (this evening). She had something she wanted to print off before tomorrow, and as her printer no longer works, she had wanted to use mine. It wasn't an unreasonable request, even though I felt less than thrilled by the prospect of her inflicting her presence on me for goodness knows how long.
As I made my way upstairs to tell my son to brace himself for a visit from his gran, he burst out of his bedroom and said, "I know! She's just tried to phone me too.".
My son is tasked with phoning my mother back. First he tries her landline, which goes straight through to her answer machine. He then tries her mobile, which she answers. My mother says, "It's okay, I decided to pop up the road to see if they could do it." As my mother is in a hurry to end the conversation, my son assumes that one of my mother's neighbours has agreed to help her out.
Considering that it is dark outside, and also rather damp and cold, surely it would have made more sense for my mother to have approached her neighbours first! The walk from my mother's house to mine takes her a long time, on account of her pace of walking being considerably slowed by an arthritic knee. In addition to my mother's arthritic knee causing her pain when she walks, it also leaves her feeling physically exhausted.
Although I am relieved that my mother now won't be appearing on my doorstep this evening, I am still feeling somewhat wound up. Neither my son or I would ever dream of telling my mother about the effect she has on us, as to do so would be downright cruel and heartless.
There are various community-based things my mother gets herself involved with, but one of the (many) things that frustrates me is that she will often agree to do things that she knows she cannot do, either because she doesn't know how, or because she doesn't have access to the things she needs. The result is that she will then put pressure on my son or myself to come to her rescue, often at a moment's notice.