Dear Santa

Here’s what this academic hopes to find under the tree next week:

• A ball gag and the judgment to use it – on myself – so that I stop being the mouthiest person in the room (every room), because it only makes meetings last longer. Actually, Santa? I’ll take a dozen. 
• A family broker: someone to set reasonable expectations and work out schedules and assuage hurt feelings and plan a menu that suits the four-year-old and the 64-year-old.
• Justice. Go big, Santa.
• Hey, Santa, can you make it so that the very first day of this semester break lasts forever, so that I can dwell at the delicious beginning of a fabulous utopia where I sleep when I’m tired and read what I like and eat nothing but the most delectable food? Stop time, just for a day or so at the beginning.
• A clone.
• Could you please send the filing fairies to my office? If you have leftover fairy power, maybe some could be put to work on these writing projects, which I know are here … somewhere. Also a grading fairy, if you don’t mind. 
• A date with Lisbeth Salander.
• Oh, a new federal administration. Liberal, New Democrat, Bloq Quebecois, Green, Marijuana Party, coalition – I don’t care! But this Harper crap has Got To Go.
• Vanishing email. Or maybe just a new, supersecret email address.
• A quick resolution to the sexual assault charges against Julian Assange. 
• A ban on the verb “enhance.”
• Less winter, more sun, and an old-fashioned wife for my partner and me, to make doctor’s appointments and pick up cat food and keep track of the housekeys and get a hot meal on the table. You can call him/her “an assistant” if you want, but please write back and let me know you’re clear on the concept. Also a yard butch and a basement boy. I promise, Santa, I’ve been super good this year!
  

  Oops! How did this Alexander McQueen dress get on the list?