Dear Garbage Collector,

Enclosed you will find copious amounts of chocolate.  Some would interpret this as a bribe.   I would never insult you with that word.  It is a gift.  

You see, I started renovating my kitchen about two days ago.  It feels like two months ago and I am afraid of what that means for the next “x” amount of weeks.  Renovating a kitchen seems to generate a lot of garbage.  Especially when your nice friends come over to help you pack up the old kitchen and they find a lot of things in your “pantry”.  Things that expired three years ago.  Food that likely would explode if you actually tried to open it.  Or maybe it would emit a toxic gas that would waft over the neighborhood, exposing innocent women and children to…oh never mind!  But if that toxic gas killed the construction site that has become my “neighbor”, well then that wouldn’t be all bad.

But I digress, Mr. (or Ms.?) Garbage Collector.  I am very contrite.  You see, destroying what we had, seems to have generated an extremely full garbage can this week.  So I thought I should go try to find the nice “tag” I bought from our municipality that, for a few dollars, allows me to dump more than my share on our neighborhood landfill.  I can’t find it.  Because me and my nice friends packed it.  It is in some box, likely the one on the bottom of the pile with the dog treats and elementary school “emergency contact forms” from 2011 that I also have not weeded out of my kitchen.  The magical blue tag that I could attach to my almost completely full garbage can, and allow me to pass “Go” without going to Jail is nowhere to be found…anytime soon.  Today was the only day I could possibly go and purchase a new one from the municipal hall except that the demolition of the kitchen’s plumbing caused a “pond” in the room underneath, two friends needed some help that mattered more than any of this, movers were coming for some kitchen parts I had sold or given away, and I just wasn’t able to do it.  And now it’s much past normal business hours and dark outside…

Mea Culpa.  So I am offering this chocolate with my full garbage can in the hopes that you might remember all the weeks I forgot that it was garbage day and there was no garbage to collect.  Or the time I left that really cute Xmas bow on the garbage can with the homemade cookies before the Holidays?  I promise not to do this again.  I promise to do a better job of recycling.  I promise to investigate composting even though black bears LOVE anything organic in my neighborhood (Including the lunch refuse from the workers at said construction site next door which “they” then spread all over our lawns…but again I digress).  I promise to order out less than I have in the last two days and actually buckle down and produce something homemade, nutritious, and from our non-existent kitchen.  Please, tomorrow, Ms./Mr. Garbage Collector, will you take my green bin which is too full?