On the Move: The Mayor of Melbourne Beach

Addicted to exercise, Wilma Schmitt, nicknamed “The Mayor” by her husband of almost 54 years, my mom rarely sits.  If you want to know why she has the body of someone half her age, keep reading. I tried hard to keep up, but kept reminding myself I was on vacation.

Five days a week she does an 8:05 am exercise class at the Fitness Center.  Zumba, Pilates, Yoga, Weights – she does whatever is on the docket.  Today was Pilates and then she zoomed home to put on her swim suit and take my Dad down to the pool for water aerobics at 9:30 am.    

I made plans to go Paddle Boarding with a neighbor at 8 am and because she secretly delights in waking people up early, she came in like a drill sergeant and woke me at 7:15 am (mind you I am still on Pacific time 3 hours behind).  It only takes me about 2 minutes to put on my suit and contacts, so this was about 40 minutes before my alarm!

I didn’t take any pictures Paddle Boarding but the water looked like this.  

After I went Paddle Boarding, a bucket list item, I hurried to the pool and lifted weights in the water with the crew.  I didn’t want to be “judged” as soft for skipping water aerobics, even though my arms were twitching from paddling.

After water aerobics, my mom and I went down to the beach to hunt for sea glass.  It was low tide so there were plenty of seashells.

As far as the sea glass goes, we did pretty well! 

We also found a number of sand dollars!  I have never seen sand dollars in Melbourne Beach. When I got home I soaked them in bleach water to clean them up. They shined up easy and were ready for a Pinterest project!

My mom talked to everyone on the beach.  She ran into some man she knew from yoga and talked to another woman about her dog, Charlie.  She also stopped to chat with this guy.  I told her later that their conversation looked like a drug deal.

She had me take pictures of a guy who had just caught a Snook.  It’s a type of fish that was hard to catch in the ocean (he said he had been trying for two days).  Don’t worry – he knew it wasn’t the season to catch it, so he put it back.  Information on the Snook.

The beach was gorgeous.  The water looked like sea glass as well! We stopped for a few selfies because the water was just heaven!

After a run to the grocery store, my mom started dinner and also began work on a strawberry pie for my Dad.  I snuck a ramekin of ice cream up to my room and chilled for a while. Seriously — my mom was wearing me out!

Before we ate, I showed my mom how Snap Chat works. She told me she thought people who used that “had too much time on their hands.”  But you have to admit, she did look pretty cute with those flowers in her hair. 

We ended the night with our second beach walk of the day, at sunset, which resulted in our fourth shower of the day.  We went out looking for sea turtles and saw some fresh tracks, but we were either too early or too late because we didn’t see any turtles.

She told me when we were walking home, “Don’t worry – we can do it again tomorrow.”  If she meant everything she had done in a single day, I decided I better go home and go straight to bed!