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I apologised and said I agree it probably wasn't a good idea
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Next time,
stop right here.
The apology accepted blame. Your explanations, though, are
defensive and
self-justifying. They reject blame; they say that you were right or reasonable to do what you did.
Thus, you gave her a
mixed message. You say that you were wrong and are sorry, but then again you say that what you did was justifiable--and so she can reasonably conclude that you are not sorry.
This, I believe, is a main reason that she is angry with you right now.
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I'm now completely at a loss, as I'd give anything to know why that phone call was such a big deal
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There are two reasons.
1. She told you why. She said that you should not have called her at work. Maybe calling at work is not such a big deal to you, but it evidently is a big deal to her. Why can you not accept that?
2. You
invalidate her when you do not accept what she says and start to defend calling her at work.
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She responded by saying that was just me putting my bs on her (I have no idea what she meant by that)
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Your reason for calling her at work was a purely personal reason: it looked at the situation purely from your own perspective. You were going away and so you decided to call at work. Did you assess whether or not she wanted to hear from you at work? In other words, do you think that she would have cared if she heard this message from you at home, a few days later? This is what she means, I believe, by saying it was your bs that you put on her. Clearly she did not feel that your news justified a call at work. The way she sees it, you wanted to call and so you called, without giving any, or enough, consideration to what she wanted.
In these posts what I am hearing from you is a strong desire to have your justifications understood and accepted by her. This approach, as I said above, is
invalidating. What this approach amounts to saying is that she is wrong to be upset because there are good reasons for what you did. But relationships are not courts of law. You might well win the battle of who was more right or more reasonable and yet still lose the woman. That is the course that you are on right now.
Another option might be to simply admit that you were wrong, and humbly apologise,
and leave it at that.
In other words,
Never miss a good chance to shut up. (Will Rogers)