In the confusion called ‘Moving,’ death struck.

Brothers Mike and Dave have worked for us ever since we moved into River House. Now they’re working for us at our new home, which doesn’t really have a name yet. They’ve been staining and installing special baseboard and are about to move on to our custom closets. And our custom towel racks. If we look good, decoratively speaking, it’s because of them.

Except Dave and his Linda must attend a funeral this coming Monday and work will stop. Their nominal grandson died yesterday of H1N1. He was ten. At first, when the child was hospitalized he seemed to improve. Yet suddenly, yesterday, he took a turn for the worst. In a matter of hours, he wasn’t breathing on his own. And, in the end, even breathing with a ventilator didn’t stop the child’s decline. It was left to the mother to make the final decision.

Who knows what Grandpa Dave was doing at that very moment? I only know he was working in the new condo and received various calls on his cellphone. Then he alerted us to a possible change in his availability. Both Earl and I were saddened, even though we don’t know the extended family at all. It’s just that no parents (or grandparents, for that matter) should have to bury their children.

Even though we’re on a deadline to be out of our old house, this takes priority. So what if the closets don’t get done on time? In the grand scheme of things people are far more important than custom closets or baseboards or towel racks.

Yesterday, two men came to install our European shower door and another man came to install our window treatments. What they had in common was that they were all representatives of local businesses eager to satisfy their customers. They did a wonderful job.

Today, Comcast was scheduled to install our cable boxes so that our new televisions could be hooked up. In addition, AT&T was scheduled to turn on our new phone lines. What these companies have in common is their bigness and their lack of interest in satisfying this customer.

Comcast, at least, showed up but couldn’t complete the installation because there was some missing wiring. It means that we will live in our new home a week without connections to the Internet or television until the wiring can be installed and the rest of the job finished. Nobody was even apologetic about it.

As for AT&T, which stands for Always Tacky and Tardy, nobody showed and nobody even called to say why. I waited five hours, hours I should have been at work. If I didn’t have so much on my plate I would have handled this tardiness immediately, but I was juggling a variety of other circus balls during that time.

Never fear, however. I will be on the phone tomorrow morning expressing my displeasure. Not that I expect it to do much good, since AT&T has a lock on land line phone service in this area and can be as lackadaisical as it wants.

I am reminded of the pecking order in the medical profession. While it’s unspoken, it suggests that the closer the medical specialty is to healing the heart or brain, the more those physicians tend to view their roles as omnipotent. Frequently, they treat their patients accordingly. But as the specialties become more and more removed in distance to vital organs and life-threatening issues, those physicians are correspondingly more down-to-earth and communicative.

Given this analogy, Comcast and Always Tacky and Tardy view themselves as heart surgeons, while the shower door installers and the window coverings installer might be only foot doctors or dermatologists. I wonder if the FCC would be interested in this comparison.

It was a day of calm and rush. In the morning I visited Ruth, my crocheting friend, and we quietly chatted and crocheted for a small hour. I think I crocheted more than she did, as my pattern is easier and hers takes concentration that is diminished when conversation interrupts. No matter. We’re not on a time schedule, so if Ruth wants to talk, we talk.

After that, I went to the new home to await various deliveries. Since I’m supposed to work on Tuesday afternoons I took my computer and did the best I could, given we’re not hooked to the Internet yet. But I managed to finish first quarter budgets, prep this week’s payroll, and have my weekly conversation with the general manager at the warehouse. All this in-between the noises of electric saws and nail guns and hand drills. It was somewhat chaotic.

The calm and rush – they compliment each other. They’re yin and yang in a more moderate sense. Just as I enjoyed sitting and crocheting in Ruth’s room, I also enjoyed the hustle and bustle of workers in our new home.

At 10 AM this morning we finally closed on our new home. If you count from the time we signed the original reservation until this morning, it took thirty-nine months. This is longer than the gestation period for elephants (22 months) and even longer than that of the Alpine salamander (36 months). But at last, the new home was delivered (pun intended), and we are the proud “parents.”

This morning I felt somewhat anti-climactic about it. I had lived with this project for so long that the idea it had almost come to fruition was hard to grasp. Or enjoy. But — to advance the pregnancy comparison — once the labor of it was over I began to feel really excited. By afternoon, it sank in and Earl loaded his car with the first items to make the trek from St. Joseph to Benton Harbor. It’s not a long trek, but then when you’re moving it doesn’t matter if it’s across town or across the nation. The same amount of effort is involved.

We’ll continue to live in the old house another week. But tonight is the last Monday we’ll ever sleep there. Tomorrow is the last Tuesday; Wednesday is the last Wednesday, etc. And while we’re counting down “lasts,” I’m also retreating emotionally.

When I first moved into our River House I was sure I would never leave. No home that I’ve had – and I’ve had many – was so special. It wasn’t just the surroundings but also the events that occurred here. And that our various family members seemed to be in good places in their own lives. This isn’t to say that there weren’t struggles, but none of them were of the sort that broke the spirit. Then there were Earl’s flowers. And the sunsets. And the river. It felt like halcyon days for the almost ten years we’ve lived here.

Maybe that’s why Earl and I didn’t notice we were getting older and didn’t want the responsibility of a large house and an even larger lot filled with trees and flowers and work. Maybe that’s why, in 2006, we casually put a reservation in on a new condo project and told the builder we were in no hurry. And, now, maybe that’s why I’m ready to leave River House and move to a smaller home.

Halcyon days don’t always last forever, but when they’re gone there are still sweet memories. We’re taking all of them with us.

Last night we turned our clocks back as the United States ended Daylight Savings Time for 2009. So today I went around the house and reconfigured all the times. “Use your cellphone to make them correct,” Earl suggested, “since it has the most accurate time.” I did.

I relish that extra hour we get in the fall, and my only problem is how to spend it. Should I change all the clocks before I retire and guarantee myself an extra hour’s sleep? Or should I wait until morning and give myself an extra hour of productivity or fun?

I do it differently every year, but this time I chose to put the clocks back in the morning. Which means I’ll be early to the health club, and hopefully many others will have forgotten. This, in turn, means I’ll get a lap lane to myself in the swimming pool.

Thoughts while I wait for oatmeal cookies to bake . . .

It’s Halloween, and the weather is certain scary. But then it usually is. Maybe we should move Halloween to the end of September.

The cookies are not for the Trick or Treaters. They’re for Earl. It all started when he bought some oatmeal cookies that promised to help people lose weight. I was skeptical. So I offered to make oatmeal cookies from the recipe my Mother used when I was growing up. Earl had a taste test. Mine won. But they are not guaranteed to help anybody lose weight. And, after all, isn’t that an oxymoron when you’re discussing something composed primarily of sugar, butter, and raisins?

I went swimming this morning for the first time all week, since I haven’t found a place to swim when I’m in New York. Unless you consider the drenching downpour I experienced for two days this past week.

I had my seven-and-a-half foot pew cut down to a little over five feet to make it fit in our new home. The person who did it did a wonderful job, and I look at the pew with renewed pleasure. Earl picked up the pew cushion today, which also had to be cut down. It all started when I found the pew in an antique shop in 1997; the lady sold it to me for a song because there hadn’t been a lot of takers for the longer-than-usual-for-a-home pew. But the purchase price was the least of it; since then, I’ve spent four times that amount in repair, upholstery, reduction, and re-upholstery. And I don’t regret one penny.

The University of Notre Dame plays football in prime time television tonight. Earl will be watching, and I’ll probably still be making oatmeal raisin cookies. That’s the way it is when you only have one good cookie sheet, and it should cool down between batches.

Spending the day at the main Fred Flare location is always a mixed bag for me. I usually start the morning thinking that I’d love to move to New York and be a full time part of the business. But by day’s end, I’m thinking that I have the best job of all waiting for me back in Michigan.

It’s mostly about the work environment. At Home Office, I work alone unless my assistant Emma is there. Which isn’t very often. I work at my own pace. And I work in silence. My most frequent means of communication is email, since I have to touch base with our warehouse, our retail store, and Emma in the Dominican Republic on a most regular basis.

At the warehouse, also dubbed World Headquarters, I work with 15-20 other people all running around packing orders, talking on the phone, and answering the doorbell. The pace is quicker. It’s also accompanied by popular music all day long. And while email is still an important form of communication, although the person you want to talk with is in the cubicle next to you, there is considerable human interaction. There’s laughter and teasing and general hilarity at a moment’s notice.

Maybe that’s what I like most: this sense of actually belonging to the Fred Flare family, this participation in the day-to-day ups and downs. I’ve often said I work in a vacuum, since much of my job is behind the scenes, dealing with bank accounts and credit cards and vendor contracts. It’s the ‘boring’ stuff nobody else wants to do. And I find it’s easier to do in my usual environment.

At the same time . . . I miss the fun.

The plumbing problem is solved, according to my trusty observer and fellow condo owner Earl. He was eager to report that this morning found him at the condo in the company of the plumber, the electrician, the flooring guy, and the painter all working to close next Monday, November 2.

The plumber had found the leak and stopped it. The electrician was adding final touches in the way of sconces and the light over the shower. The flooring guy was laying the hardwood in the kitchen and grouting the entry and bathroom. And the painter was making sure he had all the appropriate walls covered.

“It looks good,” Earl said in our regular morning telephone meeting. “I think we’re going to close on time.” I smiled. The truth is, in my world things usually happen on time, partly because I’m a micro-manager and partly because I try to charm people into compliance. I’m not bragging about either characteristic, especially since I haven’t been there this week to ‘supervise.’ Instead, Earl has been the point man. It just shows that we make a great team.

When it rains it pours. I’m in New York on business one week from the day we’re supposed to close on our new home, and Earl calls with concern in his voice. I sense it immediately.

“There’s a plumbing problem,” he says. “The builder went into the condo this morning and found water all over the place. It means they can’t lay the wood flooring because it will warp unless the water problem is solved. It means they can’t install the appliances in the kitchen until the flooring is installed.” It means . . . it means.

This is why I originally built a fudge factor of eleven days into my plans to move. This is why I’m saying let’s wait 24-48 hours before we get panicky. After all, maybe the leak is minor – not like the $3000 leak we had in another condo several years back – and can be repaired without upsetting the other installations. In this case, then, there’s no real damage done. And, if the damage is major, then this is why the added eleven days are there. ‘Fudge’ is a weak word for what those days can actually mean.