Hangin' with Grammy Dot

While in Salisbury, I thought I'd take the opportunity to not only spend time with Andy and Nancy, but with Grammy Dot, too.

We went down to Ocean City Beach on Tuesday to soak up some rays, and I decided to stay the night and have a sleepover with Dot at her place.

Around 4:30pm, we took up our chairs, showered up, and put on our finest cruise-wear for dinner. We ate at a nearby restaurant called Jules. We had stopped by earlier in the day to check out the menu (Dot had a hankering for soft shell crabs) and though there weren't many patrons inside, decided it was still worth a try.

We each started with a salad, Dot got her soft shells which came with wasabi mashed potatoes, and I ordered rockfish (don't worry Corey, it's not on the list of bottom-feeding fish) over pesto gnocchi. Everything was divine, and the presentation was worth a picture-- see below.

We came home and changed into our sweats--I needed an even stretchier elastic waistband after that meal!--and watched Dot's regular evening tv program, Larry King Live, before hitting the hay.

The next morning, we woke up early and I treated the D.O.T. to a healthy breakfast at Dunkin Donuts. Why not, right? I played the pregnant card for my excuse, and Dot had physical therapy later that day so I knew she'd work it off-- no donut guilt for us!

We drove back to Salisbury to run a few errands before Dot had to be at Peninsula Regional Hospital for PT. She's always talking about how she does the exercise bike when she's there and how good it makes her feel, so I thought I would accompany her and see her in action.

We arrived early so that Dot could get herself all hooked up to her heartrate monitor, and I busied myself making friends with some of the people in her class. Walter was especially locquacious and within 5 minutes, I learned that he was in the military, had been to Hawaii and Paris and used to be a professional in the IT services industry.

Pat was another guy I got to know quite intimately. Pat wasn't in the class but comes and waits while his wife Margaret does therapy. I thought he would sit there with me and read the book he brought, but apparently a smile and a hello was considered an invitation for Pat to ignore his reading material and tell me all about himself.

"That's my wife over there," he says. "The one who's 6 feet tall. Can you believe how tall she is? She's here to work on her knee. When she was little, she had polio that badly damaged one of her legs. Doctors tell us that over time, the other leg had to work so hard to compensate for the polio leg that it got weakened. And she had to get a new knee in the good leg. So that's why she's here. We've been married fo 50 years."

"Congratulations."

"Yep, it's been a journey. We have 5 kids and 10 grandchildren, though one of my daughters... I don't much care for the father of her children. Can't seem to hold a job for more than 3 weeks. He recently got fired from being an electrician's apprentist (that's right, not apprentice, apprentist). He's so hard-headed. Doesn't want to listen, just wants to do things his way and it's not up to code. And then he wonders why he gets let go."

The things people tell you! He went on like that--unprompted, mind you-- for at least 10 minutes while the patients did their warm-up with Nurse Ruth. Nurse Ruth had them doing some pretty challenging moves--squats, tricep extensions, even moves to target the deltoids. Though, as Pat pointed out while we were observing, not everyone's technique is up to snuff.

Some people were really working-- getting down low in the squat and exhaling loudly. Others, mostly the women, just kinda stuck out their butts a little and counted that as their "squat." But the Dotster hung in there quite well. She did have to get a little extra attention from Nurse Ruth on one of the moves for the upper body, but I was very impressed nonetheless.

After the warm-up, Dot and the gang moved on to cardio. They pick 2 different machines and do 15minutes on each. Dot started on the bike and then tried out the rowing machine. She did a super job (though I think she only did about 10minutes on the bike...I had my eye on her).

I have to say that going to PT with Dot was the best free entertainment I'd had in a long time. People there were so funny--making jokes about how cold it was (it was in the 90s), complaining how they hate airports because they can't carry-on their pills in the pill organizer (they have to be in the original bottles). It was a riot.

Dot and I celebrated her successful completion of yet another PT session with what else but a big lunch out. Fries, too!

It was so nice to spend time with Dot and I was so happy she included me in her day!