Mom loves micromanaging and daydreaming, and doesn't know how to communicate through the internet

All those previous flags went 100% nowhere. What surprised me more is that she passed the subject 1 theory test for driving and then... nothing. I witnessed her practicing driving—she couldn't even adjust the seat, steering wheel, or mirrors, yet she was practicing reverse parking.

Of course, even more absurd is that she used to say every day that from now on she wanted to communicate properly, then turned around and had an affair with a guy almost 20 years younger—a deadbeat with a wife and daughter—for a whole year. In the end, she got scammed out of the family assets by him, and she still said she treated him like her own son. (Of course, my dad isn't exactly a saint either—he actually said that if they went and adopted a child together, he'd forgive her and they'd go on with their lives.)

I'm getting off track. When she calls, aside from the rare occasions when she has something important to say, every time she asks me about and talks about trivial things (stuff she bought from livestreams, various situations with relatives in China, whether I have school military training, whether I have evening self-study, whether I come home for lunch, going to buy mooncakes for Mid-Autumn Festival, etc.). Although she relishes talking about all this, I couldn't care less (or some of what she says I can't understand at all), because I just feel that talking about things with zero overlap with the other person's life is a waste of time. So when she calls, I always ask if there's anything important, and if not, I hang up—and then I get essays written or sent to me. But on the other hand, I guess parents wanting to see their kids is only natural. After all, we've been apart since middle school and haven't lived together for 10 years, so if there's a mismatch in topics, is that really their fault? Thinking about it carefully, it seems like aside from money, we have nothing in common.