My issue is that I just don't care about my mom and I want to cut off from her, but I don't think the situation is extreme enough to really justify a CO.
I have a little bit of BG here that accurately describes my mom's personality and our relationship:
http://community.babycenter.com/post/a45980959/am_i_being_a_pushover_or_a_good_guest_update_p
[My update on that post got deleted but, long story short, I did end up giving my mom a warning e-mail before Christmas that I wouldn't be attending church, DH and I stayed in a hotel, and no grief was given to us to our faces about the whole affair. My sister did tell me that my mom had been talking to everybody about it (which means, at a minimum, my sister, aunt, uncle, and grandma); I told her I was happy she wasn't saying anything to me and I didn't want to hear anything repeated.]
I'll try to keep this short but can fill in any background if needed. I have always been a scapegoat. I couldn't tell you exactly what my mom's deal is, but when I read descriptions it seems like she has elements of NPD, BPD, and histrionic personality disorder. She is lazy, self-centered, and bad with money. She doesn't plan for her own life but when things go wrong, it's someone else's fault, and someone else must make things right for her.
She had a very bad turn of events last summer that resulted in her simultaneously losing her husband, her job, and her home, all while being far away from any family. Turns out she has almost no assets to fall back on, despite working her entire adult life and owning a business for the past ten years. The little bit that she does have, which she should be using for necessities and to help get herself set up somewhere while job hunting, instead she is blowing on junk: too many Christmas presents, a one-way cross-country car rental, a last-minute visit to a hypochondriac sister.
She doesn't appear to be job hunting because she has an unrealistic idea of the kind of job she wants (her idea of her next job is something that is too awesome to actually exist). She has been living with family members for about five months now, and her stated plans for her own living situation (whenever she gets around to it) are also stupid and money-wasting -- so stupid that I think she only even says it to get a rise out of people, which is a pretty shitty way to treat the people who have generously been hosting her for months.
My siblings and I have always acknowledged to each other that she's crazy but no one is ever confrontational about her BSC. In part, I think this is because she loves getting into feuds with her siblings and holding literally decades-long grudges over bullshit, so we have kind of internalized that we don't want to give her the conflict that she is obviously craving. There are many things that occurred in the past that would have justified a CO but I ignored/rug-swept because I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of a fight. (Example would be shit-talking my DH, she sent me something in writing, I threw it away without reading it and told her that it was not up for discussion the next time she called.)
I think the reason I now feel like there needs to be some kind of action is that (1) her husband is no longer around to absorb her crazy, and (2) her latest bad behavior has just really brought home something I already knew, which is that she will never change.
As you can see from the sig I am newly pregnant. That is not the reason for my current feelings but it does complicate things - this will be her first grandkid and I am likely to be the only one of my siblings that has kids. I won't be telling her about it for another couple of months. I'm not really concerned that she'll try to move near me (she doesn't like the weather), but I suppose anything is possible.
Recently I did say something contrary to her - I told her that her last-minute trip to visit the hypochondriac sister was a huge waste of money - and I didn't hear from her at all during that trip so I thought maybe she was cutting me out of the communication loop. (She usually sends e-mails every few days; phone calls every 2-4 weeks probably.) I felt such relief! But since then the e-mails have returned, and she called a couple times and sent texts (I briefly responded to the texts but haven't returned the phone calls).
So, what do I do? We don't have a high level of contact and my sister's advice is of the "grin and bear it" variety - when we do occasionally talk, just let her go on and on about her terrible decisions, say "uh huh," rinse and repeat. My DH, who is extremely reasonable and has every reason to dislike my mom, also does not think that cutting off is appropriate. But I feel like, by listening to her lame excuses for her current situation, I'm almost consenting to her crazy ideas. I suppose I could tell her that I don't agree with what she's doing and I don't want to hear about it, but (1) I don't really know how to phrase that, (2) that would pretty much rule out all topics of conversation anyway, and (3) it's not my business in the first place (though that is the reason I don't want to hear about it from her).
TL/DR my mom is BSC but not personally confronting me in any way, what to do?
edited to fix weird formatting