Good shabbos

I hate these Friday evening handoffs. Leaves me alone and family-less when I should be cooking dinner and pulling challah out of the oven for five. I am getting ready to pull challah out the oven, but it's just for me. I've never baked it just for me, but my NO wanted me to have the little loaf he braided at the enrichment day today. He argued that it made the most sense for me to keep it because his brother didn't contribute to making a loaf and it was really too small for them all to share. That could sound like a cast off, here take this challah, it's not good enough for us kind of attitude, but that's not what it felt like at all. It felt like he was reaching out to me. There were all these unspoken words. Perhaps I just imagined them, but I could swear he was silently saying, "You should have this challah Mom. I don't want you to have to go without challah for Shabbat just because we're not with you."

God I hate this. Not even the smell of it baking up all delicious in the oven makes this grief any easier.
And what exactly am I grieving? I'm so unimpressed with him at this point, I don't want him back. I guess I'm just grieving a long list of things. A cohesive family. Or the idea of a cohesive family. Companionship. Dreams for the future.

But on a happier note. The boys were good this afternoon!!!!!!!!! They each did a couple small chores (putting away their clothes and bringing garbage and recycling bins back in from the street) without a battle. NO made a cool braided duct tape whip for his Indian Jones Halloween costume. The MC didn't ever devolve into crazy can't listen tornado mode. And the LO was easy and happy. It may have only been a couple of hours and we weren't really trying to accomplish much, big ill take it as a victory!
And my challah's done. And then I'm going to go pick up the keys to my parents' new house. (They'll get here tomorrow. We'll see what it will be like having them live in town but not actually with us. I predict positives and negatives of course.) and then to synagogue.