Screening

I keep screening the phone and not picking up. Thank God for caller-id stuff. It's saving me the hassle of having to talk to my mother in law. And I hate talking to her because it'll be a rant and a rave of what a sorry state she's in, and how she cannot stand her husband of almost 50 years. And she wants me to sympathize. I don't. She married him in less than a year on the pretext that she wanted children when still young. Serves her right. She doesn't even bother who she's hurting with her words. So now she made the wrong choice 50 years ago... then she should either up and leave or shut up and lump it. The same woman is always in a sorry state, she always has to insist she's very poor, she forgets that I've seen all the antiques in there and that it doesn't take a genius to figure out that anybody having a 5 bedroomed house cannot be poor. She also has a bad effect on me, she makes me angry. I do not smile at her over the phone (if that is a thing that could exist), many times I've sent her f***ing. But she pretends she hasn't heard anything. I've told her plenty of times that once a parent, always a parent, but that she never hears also. And she angers me in a way few can. So I've stopped answering the phone. Before I used to think that perhaps she might need help, I mean she's no youngster. Now, I don't care, I think of myself first. Because after hearing her voice, it's me who needs help in the form of either going there and shaking her hard, or needing anger management classes. So she can sit by the phone in her transparent nightie and try and call. I will not pick up. If she needs help then she can call 911 or whatever that translates to in Malta. Although it's a good think she hasn't discovered that yet. I pity the people taking her call. She really could call just to tell them about her minestra gone bad, or about her husband's bazwa. She would be able even to call them for Catholic confession. Nothing surprises me about this woman. And yet she goes about life singing praises about her very good daughter in law. The same daughter in law who tells her a 'mur hudu f'*******' quite often. Crafty woman. I'd be going round singing praises to a mother in law who took all responsibility too. She's even gone to mental health professionals just to talk about me and says I'm a saint. The woman blabs too much and is a criminal danger once she has a phone in her hand. She will blab about everything, including her kid's private parts. Really. she's told me about the size of her son's (not my boyfriend's) privates. No kidding. She's even told me about her 78 year old husband's badgering for sex. It's disgusting. She wants to tell me if she's constipated and she wants to tell me how the doctor relieved her. I never tell her anything, and yet she still manages to go on the bloody Radju Maria on the pretext of praying for her daughter in law who is suffering from this and that. Incredible. I want to kill her, but I'm not doing time for such an idiot. I will not even tolerate her. On the very odd moments that I do pick up because the sun is glaring at my phone screen and I've not seen the number very well, she'll ask me why I don't ever go there. And I tell her why. It's because I don't want to go 500 years back in time. It's because I'm done with her need for attention. She can go and find it elsewhere. I do not need to know about her son's privates, or her daughter's strange breasts. I've better things to do. And hey I'm classy. So, I screen.