Walking Along Side Someone Taking A Stroll Down Memory Lane (Downtown Phx)

I cant help but sit here on my picnic table looking at the sunset in my back yard thinking about today and how it has been very meaningful. If you recall this mornings blog, i wrote about how  bad I've been feeling lately. well today has totally changed me. This morning i sat down with my grandmother(the angel that she is) and i talked to her about everything and how its been affecting me lately. she listened to me and sad " Hailey, girl, you need to start thinking about yourself and how you are going to prepare for your life ahead of you." she said. " you are an amazing person and yet you've seemed to let people swallow you up and take away who you are inside." she told me soverignly. " have you noticed that everywhere you go people have their own space whether it be a work desk, a school chair, a bedroom etc. ?" she asked me. " you need to make your own little personal space and start appreciating yourself more. let yourself be Hailey." Those words i will never forget. She got up and told me we were "going somewhere." Now, when an adult says those words, normally a child would figure he/she was in trouble, but something in her voice sounded determined. she asked me to put on my "walking shoes", so i knew this was going to be a long journey. Either that or she thought i needed a hellish amount of  cardio. we got into the car(ironic right) and headed off. she never told me where we were going so i was half excited and half scared. we pulled up at a place called La pinata. ( id type the little ~ line above the "n" but I'm not sure how. *laughs*)turns out it was an old Mexican restaurant that my grandmother was taken to for a date a few odd years back by her fiance of the time. she had decided to take me there to kind of show me her life events and how she enjoyed them. she had told me it was a tradition & that her and my uncle would go every so often. let me tell you, the salsa was phenomenal!
After we had been seated we somehow came about a conversation about a relationship she had been in and what it was to her. I listened and thought about it as she spoke, often asking questions about how she lived and how she began her big life and what was going on at that time in her relationship.
i was a little saddened by the " wow, how things have changed since then" tone in her voice. but every so often i would catch an arm of a smile making its way across her face as she talked about her high school days and going to the state fair with her fiance and all the fun things they shared together as they grew up. she talked about being in a band and making music with her fiance and his friends and how much fun that was. She was getting a point to me about how you can have fun and be yourself at the same time. i took it to heart and cherished her tales of sweet things. after we ate she took me to Enchanto Park, a place i remember going to as a kid with my mother and grandma when times often got too stressful.
 we walked the whole park and she talked about how important it was to be myself and make time to fine tune myself as well. she explained how i needed to focus on what means the most to me and how i could achieve great things in my future like a job i might want, a house i might like and a car i would love to drive. ( i love cars! *smiles*  ) the thing i like the most about my grandma is she is and always has been here for me through thick and thin. whenever i needed her ( and even when i didn't), i could/can always count on her being there.
i love talking to her because she really has a way of hitting home and really getting through to me important things without being biased. i love her for that. Having said that, she secretly decided that she was going to buy tickets and make me ride the carousel at the Enchanto Park. *i swear shes got a mean streak in there somewhere* (Laughs really hard.) lol can you imagine a sixteen year old riding a kiddy horse on a carousel full of 3 year olds? ha-ha the fathers were all talking amongst themselves and laughing at me. well at least i could make someone smile through my humiliation. In a weird way I'm glad she made me do it because it kinda brought the whole " have fun and stop worrying about what people think of you" factor back to life. I have always been an independent, strong, creative and freaky person to begin with but sometimes i need the little ego booster to remind me every once in a while to be proud of it.
it was funny afterwards because my grandma decided she wanted to go on the train before the place had closed up for the day. so here she was getting herself into this little train seat just waiting for me to sit down. she made me laugh while she cracked jokes about how the train was lop sided after she sat down( which it wasn't). we laughed about how she used to take my uncle there and they'd always have to stop the rides for him because he'd always get scared and try to crawl out the sides.  lol. let me remind you, her and i kinda have a crude sense of humor. *grins*. we got off the ride laughing and we headed for the car. we took off  driving through central phx. we went down Roosevelt, and Van Buren, and McKinley as she told me about all the different things she did and how she was going about her life then as a newly wed.we stopped by old apartments she lived in and we drove through neighborhoods as we looked at houses with vines and such. she showed me all the haunted houses she knew of around there. he-he we saw a cross dresser as we drove down Van Buren. it was quite a sight to see. He was really working some high heels and skinny jeans, man! I thought proudly of him though. i always have the upmost respect for people like that because, like myself, they aren't afraid to show who they really are.
After all that we went to Dairy Queen and got ourselves ice cream as a nice treat for all the walking we did today. To end a perfect day, we came home and i thanked her while  hugging her and i gave her a kiss on her forehead and let her know just how much she means to me and how she turned my whole day around just by spending it with me. i have to say that I really loved today and all the experiences i got to have. it is by far the most meaningful day of my life...especially because i shared it with my best friend, my grandma.

- Me