Lost art of conversation

How does one forget how to hold a conversation?

Between the ages of 12 and 18, I spent literally hours on the phone after being in school all day. I'd call one friend after another. I'd sit in the front hall or in the back room office or in my bedroom and just blabber on about who knows what from the time I got home until the time we ate dinner and as soon as dinner & homework were done, I was back on the phone again until 9, when Dad hollered for me to get off the phone.

Now, 10 years later, when I try to have a conversation with people, I often find myself at a loss for things to say. I never have anything interesting to bring up and I have a difficult time coming up with responses to whatever story someone else is telling me. This problem seems to be accentuated when it comes to phone conversations. I always feel like a lame ass when I'm talking with someone and then there's this long pause.

I just don't know what to talk about. My life is completely uninteresting. Every day, it's the same damn thing, for the most part. I wake up, shower, and go to work. Once I'm at the office, I spend maybe 80% of the time working. The other 20% is spent doing my makeup before everyone else gets there or catching up on the blogs that I'm following while I eat my lunch or getting sucked into Facebook quizzes for that last hour of the day. Okay...Maybe it's more like 75/25. As soon as I hit that magic 8-hour mark, I pack up all my shit and drive home. Some days I hit the bank or the grocery store on the way home...ooooh...Exciting. When I get home, I make dinner, sometimes I do a little cleaning, I sit in front of my computer and then between 10 & 10:30, I go to bed. I turn on the Food Network and set the timer to turn off the tv in an hour. I drift off to sleep listening to Alton Brown or Mark Summers go on about one thing or another. And then five hours later, I start all over again.

What in the hell do I have to converse about? How the grass in my front yard is a total failure? (It is, btw. Hubby fertilized and seeded and I dunno what pattern he was going in, but it looks ridiculous. And it's so effing LONG! The man needs to get his shit together and mow the damn thing! I would totally take it over because I'm pretty sure I could do better, but then I would seriously be responsible for everything in this house. And fuck that. You can be in charge of one little postage-sized yard, ya doofus! /rant) But really, who the hell cares about that??? I guess that's really my problem because obviously when I have something to talk about, I can beat that horse til there's nothing left. But when I have nothing to say and no response to the other side of a conversation, I say nothing. I totally force the other person to carry the conversation. Which, is so completely backward from how I used to be. I think when I was younger, I had the opposite problem - I monopolized conversations.

How do I fix this problem? Other than going out and buying a life? Because I really don't think that I can do that. How do I try to hold up my end of the conversation? What do I talk about, when my life is as dull as it is?? Someone! Anyone! Help me out here!

PS. I'm having a better day today, if you couldn't tell. I'm trying not to wallow in the uncertainty of the whole Opa situation. He's beat cancer before, granted he's older now, but my negativity isn't going to help. I have to stay positive. I have to be hopeful that it's going to be okay, no matter what the outcome. So, I've only teared up a couple times today. Quite the improvement from yesterday.