talking (or not) to my mother

My mum just rang to talk to me. As usual, I said barely 10 words and as usual, she didn't seem to notice (or at least pretended she didn't notice). I always feel surly and uncooperative when I talk to her because she always has long stories to tell about her (boy?)friend and all the drama going on in his life, followed by all the drama in her life. Then when she asks about what I've been doing she'll interrupt (often immediately following the question) with stories of some other random person she's run into lately. It's not like I have anything much to say, but it feels like she isn't really interested anyway. What makes it worse is that I *know* she really does want to hear about what I've been doing and I'm sure she's hurt by the fact that I have nothing to tell her so I always get off the phone feeling incredibly mean.
I just hate the phone in general, though. A friend who's away for 10 weeks called this morning too and kept apologising because he assumed the fact that I had nothing to say meant I was bored with what he was saying... I didn't call a friend in another city last time I went home because I was too scared of the phone and I still feel bad because she probably thought I just didnt' want to talk to her. It doesn't help that I haven't emailed in months, either. I've been trying to think of a way to apologise without either exposing my enormous mental health issues or just seeming like I don't care at all.
These are all reasons why being a hermit sounds fairly appealing...

oh, and now another friend from home is online and wanting to chat. I wish I'd thought to set my status to away, because I have absolutely nothing to say. How do people talk so much? I don't get it. I really don't get why some people seem to want to talk to me, either. Don't they notice that I have nothing to say? Do they just like me because I listen and don't interrupt their stories? That's my theory on why my mother claims I'm "interesting", anyway.