Alison O. Bender

Happy holidays from my crew!

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, happy New Year, happy everything! Hope the season was wonderful and this year is better than last. My own resolutions—writing more and beating deadlines—are already taking a hit as Nora’s daycare caught fire New Year’s Day (just a small one) and is now closed as they assess damage and review the building’s electrical system. Believe it or not, a toddler who has stopped napping is not great for productivity. Anyway, here’s hoping that this gets resolved quickly and the New Year starts to step it up!

As I mentioned in my last post on October 23, baby could be arriving at any minute. That was literally true, as baby Audrey was born just a few hours later! She’s healthy, happy and beautiful, and we feel pretty lucky to have added such an awesome little girl to our family. Anyway, on a little freelancing hiatus for the moment, but I’m sure I’ll be back to it soon enough. Turns out that newborns sleep a lot, so Audrey’s giving me plenty of free time. My toddler, on the other hand, seems to have a different agenda…

Well, I’m a little bummed out: It looks like I won’t be able to make any of the TQ Home Award tours lined up for this year. The first tour was scheduled for yesterday in Truckee. Between the snowstorm that came through on Sunday night, being now based in Reno and no longer having a car with snow tires, it didn’t make a lot of sense to fight the storm and head up the hill. There’s a big tour on Thursday (Martis Camp, which means there will be some unbelievable building projects!), but my mom and sister get into town so it’s probably bad form to ditch them to tour houses. That and, with baby Bender due any minute now, I really shouldn’t be too far from my hospital! I guess I’ll just live vicariously through the other panelists… On another note, although I’m not ready for winter quite yet, how beautiful is the combination of golden aspens with snow-covered peaks?

Last night, I went with my friend Pam to hear author Tim O’Brien speak at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village. I’m ashamed to admit that I hadn’t read the book that he was talking about, The Things They Carried, but after his talk I’m dying to go out and get it! The Things They Carried was inspired by his service in Vietnam, a war that he was opposed to, and has been named by the New York Times as one of the 20 best books of the last quarter century and was a finalist for the Pulitzer. He’s a great speaker—his talk didn’t focus on the blood and the bullets, but the other, seemingly smaller atrocities of war. For example, he told a story about how his company was marching through some small Vietnamese village and, at the center, there was a well where an elderly, blind Vietnamese man was pulling out buckets to give showers to the GIs. He’d been helping bath the troops for about two hours when, at the same time, a delivery came in, filled with cold beers and sodas and milks. For no reason at all, one of the men, a kid named Tom, took his milk carton and threw it at the old man, hitting him right in the face. The villagers all went quiet, and stared, and after a minute or two, the old man resumed giving showers. Tim O’Brien stressed that that had stuck with him for four decades because of his own compliance, by not saying “hey, that’s wrong.” And he continued that, while war is often about killing the enemy, acts like that also serve to do nothing more than make enemies.

It was a very powerful talk and, as I gather from the reviews, an amazingly powerful book. The title, by the way, refers to the things GIs brought with them from home—a cross, a book, a photo of a girlfriend. I’m very excited to pick up my copy of The Things They Carried, and kudos to Sierra Nevada College and the Writers in the Woods series for bringing in such a renowned author.

It’s slowly but steadily changing from summer to fall here in the Sierra! This is my favorite season: Watching the aspens change colors, sipping hot apple cider, baking pumpkin bread and, this year, getting ready for Second Baby Bender to arrive in October. I’m still doing some editing with TQ, but I’ve had a nice little break between my other projects, which is great because there is a lot of work to get done around the house before SBB arrives. Now if only my toddler was better at operating the miter saw or the nail gun…