Note to self: Buy more milk. Make sure it’s fresh. Make sure that, when you check the date on the milk cartons, reach for the ones in the back, although you’ve never had the experience of finding newer milk toward the back of the refrigerated milk section, if there’s going to be newer milk, that’s where you’ll find it. If some grocery store guy gets in your face about taking all of those cartons of milk out to check for ultra-fresh milk potentially hidden in the back, don’t forget that you’re a paying customer, that you’re allowed to do whatever you want.

Note to self: It’s trash day tomorrow, so don’t forget to separate all of the cardboard from all of the plastics and cans. Even if you only have one pizza box. Remember that time last week? When you only had one pizza box? And you thought to yourself, well, it’s just one, I don’t have to waste a whole separate plastic recycling bag for just one pizza box? Yeah, well, don’t forget, that was against the rules, and you got a twenty-five dollar citation from the recycling guy. They don’t mess around.

Note to self: Just pay the twenty-five dollar citation. Seriously, just swallow it, get it out of your head, don’t make them send you second and third notices, all of those late fees that get tacked on. You forget it and all of the sudden you’re trying to get some other city service, a dog license, they’re like, “Hmm, it seems you have some outstanding citations.” Just consider yourself lucky, that it was only recycling, not a traffic ticket. You know what it costs if you mess around with alternate side? It’s like a hundred, a hundred fifty.

Note to self: Stop being such a baby about the plastic recycling bags. Yes, it’s a complete waste to use a whole bag for one pizza box, but you’ve got to let it go. It’s pennies per bag, all right? You get the bulk plastic bags at Costco, they’ll last you all year. Go ahead and use them, they get recycled along with the garbage, so you’re good, just stop being a baby.

Note to self: Just don’t engage with the sanitation people when they come to pick up the trash next week. All right, because sure, it’s harmless enough, fantasizing about how you’re going to get up really early next Wednesday, how you’ll wait until they come by your house. You’ll walk outside and start giving them the business about rules and citations. Do you want these guys messing around with your trash? Because that’s a good way to have your garbage all screwed up. And you don’t want it, for real, problems with the garbage crew, that’s just not nice. Don’t you want to be a nice person?

Note to self: Just apologize. You’re only human. Tell them you were off your medication. Make it seem like your life is totally unmanageable. Keeping swatting at imaginary flies the whole time that you’re making your case. And remember, no, you shouldn’t have kept that bag of live crabs outside on the curb for so long. What did you think would happen, that they’d attack the garbage people? What if they got pinched? What did we talk about before, remember that whole thing about being a nice person?

Note to self: Doesn’t that twenty-five dollar citation seem like not a huge deal anymore? I don’t know how you’re going to get out of this one. Is there some sort of a bankruptcy procedure but for civil infractions? Can you claim yourself as morally bankrupt? Because that’s what you are, man, what the hell’s wrong with you?

Note to self: Buy more milk. Just buy the half-gallon. You always buy the whole gallon, and it always spoils before you get to the end. Yeah, you might run out, but isn’t that better than wasting all of that milk? And you know you’re supposed to rinse it out before you put in out for recycling, right? Because it gets all gross and crusty. And maybe they’d let it pass, but not anymore, no, they’re going through your recycling every week, scrutinizing, they’re looking for something, anything. Just buy the half-gallon. Just stop being such a dick.