I DID IT, ALL BY MYSELF!

Most of the things that I do, I do by myself
and I'm fine with that.
Just because I'm alone doesn't mean that I'm lonely.
I wish there were more things that I could do where I could take one of my dogs along.
Blue draws a crowd and Nora goes crazy on strangers and there's really not a lot of places that allow dogs.
But if I have to do something NEW, I like to have someone with me.
Maybe my sister or my nieces or one of my friends.
Last Fall I went to the Metal Recycling Center with my sister and then another time she went with me.
I really thought that I was paying attention as to what to do and remembered the procedure, the steps of scrapping metal.
So this morning I loaded up my van with every little piece of metal I could find.
The weather had decided to climb up to the high 50's.
With a touch of Spring in the air, I was revved up to start the Spring Cleaning Process.
So off I went.

I felt nervous but I was sure that I remembered what to do.
I drove up and went inside and the woman at the counter asked me which vehicle was mine.
I told her and she said she didn't have record of it driving through and I said it was still parked out front.
A guy waiting behind me started to tell me to drive out and around to the scale.
The woman said that they had to get the weight of my van unless I needed to go to the other special metal drop off area.
Did I have special metal?
I shrugged and said I had some rebar and an old bike and a couple of old dehumidifiers and...
She sent a guy out to look at my stuff and he told me to drive on over to the scale where my van would be weighed and then he'd meet me around back.
So I got in my van and started to drive to the scale when someone HONKED at me.

There was a truck on the scale and I needed to wait.
So I waited and when it drove off the scale I started up and someone honked twice at me.

I turned around and saw that there was a line of trucks waiting that I wasn't aware of.
So I backed up off to the side and let the trucks go.
Then it was my turn.
I slowly drove and drove and then I heard a voice calling out of the intercom to STOP and back up.
I did.
The woman's voice nicely told me to stay there while she got the weight and when she flashed the green light, I could go ahead.
I waited for the green light and then drove around to the back where men were hurling stuff out of their trucks onto a pile.

A worker came and looked in my van and threw a couple of things on the pile and then left me to continue.
OK....this is metal stuff, I don't have the strength to hurl it.
I pulled some of my scrap out and carried it to the edge of the pile and tossed it.
Some guy was aggressively flinging things out and I just keep gently tossing.
I looked out at the mound of stuff.
There must be something wrong with me but it made me kinda sad, seeing the old bikes and things piled up like that.

Then I got back in my van and drove up the scale.
I hesitated and then I heard the woman's voice again.
"Pull up a little further"
I inched forward and then I realized there was another intercom on that side of the scale too.
The woman told me to always pull up level with the intercom speaker so that if she had a question, I could hear her.
Then she got the weight again and I drove around and went back inside.
I hate being the new kid.
I felt so dumb but she was very pleasant and said "See, that wasn't too hard."
She asked for my drivers license and then gave me $37.00!

I drove home with a rush of adrenaline.
I had done it all by myself.
I went to the library and then stopped at the grocery store and came home feeling happy.
I looked around and liked that there was an empty space here and there.
I started cleaning and moving stuff around again.
Hmmm. I wonder if I have some more metal that I could get rid of?