Today the Dragon Wins

"Today the Dragon Wins" offers information from Fantasy Author and Professional Editor Sandy Lender. You'll also find dragons, wizards, sorcerers, and other fantasy elements necessary for a fabulous story, if you know where to look...

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Sandy Lender is the editor of an international trade publication and the author of the fantasy novels Choices Meant for Gods and Choices Meant for Kings, available from ArcheBooks Publishing, and the series-supporting chapbook, What Choices We Made.

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Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The Balls are Sagging
Or…The Dragon might have to mulch the Christmas tree now

I waited until late in the season to get this year’s Christmas tree. I needed something short and skinny to fit in my pint-sized apartment and to keep my companion parrots from freaking out. While Petri, a 10-year-old Sun Conure, has been through this drill before, the newer flock members might have issues with a hunk of fresh-smelling nature suddenly standing half-dead in the livingroom.

When I entered the tree tent at the corner of Santa Barbara (seemed appropriate) and Golden Gate, there stood the perfect Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It was about three feet tall, skinny, more brown than green, and more patchy than full. I stared at it with pity. The song Percy the Puny Poinsettia began in my head.

“Percy the puny poinsettia
Hanging his blooms in dismay
If they had just kept him wettah
He’d be a houseplant today”

I stared at that poor little tree for a while, thinking of what a sad Christmas the $25 tree was going to have on a mulch pile if I didn’t take it home. The salesman told me I needed to get it into water pretty fast. I touched a branch. Many needles fell off between my fingers. “We’ll give you a good deal on it.”

To my great shame, I turned away from the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It was too much to bear. I found instead a 7-foot Frasier fir that was robust and unfit for my apartment. I stared at it until the salesman said, “we could chop it off at the top for you.” Now there was an idea. Butcher the poor tree further. With a sigh I went for the plan (and 50 percent off the price). I took home the cutest Christmas tree known to man. None of my pet birds were disturbed by it. They watched me decorate it as if watching an insane person eat jello with her hands…waiting for me to drool or drop the pretty baubles.

Now the baubles pull at the branches with their glassy weight and the tree mourns its once regal stature in a forest (or a tree farm). It will become mulch for someone’s garden and a part of me will feel guilty for contributing to its need to be dead. But I’m grateful for its sacrifice to bring such a gorgeous Christmasy glow to my livingroom!

“Some days, you just want the dragon to win.”
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2 Comments:

Blogger Laura M. Crawford said...

Only you could open a blog post with "The balls are sagging..." ROFLMAO!! Thanks for that!

Laura :)

8:25 PM  
Blogger Sandy Lender said...

I do what I can for cultural enrichment on the Web.

Sandy Lender
"Some days, you just want the dragon to win."

7:49 AM  

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