{"id":94198,"date":"2025-12-19T14:45:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T14:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/94198\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T14:45:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T14:45:18","slug":"dear-santa-can-you-give-texas-a-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/94198\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Santa, Can You Give Texas a Break?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Santa,<\/p>\n

Howdy from Texas, big man. Hope things are well up at the North Pole, where I assume the ice hasn\u2019t melted, the power grid<\/a> works, and y\u2019all haven\u2019t deported<\/a> any elves.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m writing because I have a few tiny Christmas wishes for next year. Nothing huge. Just small, achievable miracles on par with, say, turning water into Lone Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n

First, I\u2019d like a Texas Legislature that can go one full session without inventing a new culture war<\/a>. I know that\u2019s asking you to violate several known laws of physics, but you\u2019ve pulled off harder stuff (after all, you hit like a billion houses in one night).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also, I\u2019d like a summer that doesn\u2019t feel like I\u2019m being slow-roasted in a giant cast-iron skillet. Maybe just a tiny break, a day where the sun isn\u2019t personally offended by the idea of human survival. I\u2019m not picky. I\u2019ll take an afternoon where my steering wheel isn\u2019t hotter than Satan\u2019s Yeti tumbler.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Remember\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh, and could you give us a mosquito population that chills out a little? I\u2019m not asking you to wipe them out entirely, but maybe just knock them down to \u201cannoying\u201d instead of \u201carmed militia.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d also love a Texas road system that doesn\u2019t treat every drive like Rainbow Road in Mario Kart. And if you could have TxDOT stop announcing a brand-new I-35 improvement plan every six months like it\u2019s a new Beyonc\u00e9 album<\/a> drop, that\u2019d be great. Maybe you can make the traffic better without doing any construction?<\/p>\n

While you\u2019re up there tinkering, could you also send us a cold front that lasts more than 11 minutes? The kind where everyone runs outside in hoodies \u2014 we\u2019re not even asking for jacket weather! \u2014 yelling \u201cFINALLY\u201d instead of watching it vanish like its rent is due.<\/p>\n

On a more personal note, I\u2019d like H-E-B to open even more stores<\/a>, ideally one inside my current H-E-B<\/a>. Or maybe just a dedicated checkout lane for people buying nothing but tortillas, Topo Chico, and that weird salsa that looks like it was brewed in a witch\u2019s cauldron. You make miracles happen, so feel free to go wild.<\/p>\n

Also, if you could have ERCOT behave like a power grid and not a nervous raccoon in a lightning storm, that\u2019d be lovely. I\u2019d like to go one winter without wondering if my pipes are about to reenact \u201cFrozen\u201d (and not the fun sing-along parts).<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Just\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

And, Santa, if you\u2019ve got any magic left, maybe you could do something about Texas wildlife acting like they pay property taxes now. I\u2019m tired of rats digging holes in walls, raccoons treating my porch like a Buc-ee\u2019s restroom, and coyotes walking through neighborhoods like they\u2019re checking Zillow listings. A little boundary-setting would be great.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve still got bandwidth after all that, I\u2019d appreciate a year where the wildest thing about Texas is the wildlife<\/a>, like an armadillo waddling through a Whataburger parking lot, instead of everything happening at the Capitol, the border, and whatever fresh nonsense someone posts on Nextdoor.<\/p>\n

Thanks for listening, big guy. I\u2019ll leave out some cookies (Texas-shaped, natch) plus a Dr Pepper<\/a> and a kolache for the road. If the reindeer want their own kolaches, you know where the Czech Stop is.<\/p>\n

Yours in Lone Star survival, <\/p>\n

Brian<\/p>\n

PS: Oh, and if you could deliver a functioning Texas high-speed rail system<\/a>, that\u2019d be awesome. The trains don\u2019t even have to go fast. Just faster than I-35 at 5 p.m.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"The\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dear Santa, Howdy from Texas, big man. Hope things are well up at the North Pole, where I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[132,7748,1972,33974,6289,6290,6291,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-94198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-austin","tag-christmas","tag-holidays","tag-santa","tag-tb1","tag-tb2","tag-tb3","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}