January 4, 2021

by drplasticpicker

I had baked 4 potatoes and 2 sweet potatoes last night. The house was cold and Mr. Plastic Picker was bringing home some Rubios. We mostly try to cook at home but some days are harder than others, and when my tween daughter becomes irritated at me – I tend to give in and just order out. Over the holiday we only ordered out 3 times over two weeks. That is pretty good. Last night was one of those nights. Our kids are doing very well, and I’m inordinately proud of them. I do realize the irony of it all. I used to think I was pretty hot stuff when I was younger, Crimson University grad and all. Now in my mid 40s I was annoying my tween who is an ex-preemie, who literally was trying to read excerpts of her Ghandi book as I was watching a romance movie on Amazon Prime. Earlier in the evening she was annoyed at me because we went jogging together and I couldn’t keep up, and after about 12 minutes asked if I could walk and pick up trash and she could finish running (she runs cross country). And then the Girl Scout project that we’ve been organizing together, she spent a good amount of time organizing it for the troop and is going to present a beautiful program today. Whereas I just cut out some slides from my previous Climate Change and Clean Air talk to the UCSD PRIME HEq program, and recorded what I thought was a half-hearted talk on Pediatric Health and Clean Air.

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January 3, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I spent the last week decluttering the house. Well, not actually decluttering but rearranging and trying to find more space. It all started when my younger brother had a leather office chair almost new that he passed down to me, and a shoe rack. I showed the picture of the chair to the kids, and they both wanted the chair. So began, this round robin of shifting furniture and decluttering to find out where that chair fit into our lives.

The chair ended up in my room, because the back is a bit too extended for the kids’ comfort. For now with a large body pillow draped behind it, it’s the perfect ergonomic position for me. My chair ended up in my daughter’s room, as she had always liked my office chair. Then her chair ended up in the game room built-in office space, and that chair ended up back in our master bedroom where I was trying to create a reading nook/yoga space. Then I realized that the large fancy leather Costco Euro-Lounger in our bedroom reading area should go into the Game Room. The bunnies were permanently moved from the Game Room onto the adjacent balcony that has a weatherized hutch. They have a huge space out there, and I have no guilt about permanently moving the two thriving bunnies outside.

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January 2, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Congrats, Dr! Your website was quite popular this year! You had 7,981 visitors!

Your best month was December with 1,299 visitors!

Total Visitors

7,981

Total Sessions

9,703

Your Top 5 Pages

Pageviews

1.Dr. Plastic Picker – A Personal Plastic-Picking Blog: Fighting Ocean Plastic Pollution One Piece At a Time9,845

2. The Star Trek Enterprise Romance of T’Pol and Trip: I’m going to give them the ending they deserve – Dr. Plastic Picker3,313

3. Pediatric Advice – Dr. Plastic Picker784

4. Who is Dr. Plastic Picker? – Dr. Plastic Picker592

5. Dr. Plastic Picker – Page 2 – A Personal Plastic-Picking Blog: Fighting Ocean Plastic Pollution One Piece At a Time480

Pageviews

Your Top 5 Referrals

Pageviews

1.m.facebook.com

2.retireby40.org

3. l.instagram.com

Congratulations to me!!! Almost 8,000 people know the name Dr. Plastic Picker and spent about 2 minutes on this blog scrolling through on average 5 blog post. Most of those were here looking for Star Trek Fan Fiction! LOL. The top outsider referrering webstie was retireby40, probably because his website is the only one I consistently read. It’s Joe, and I like Joe. I get some traffic from other FIRE blogs when I comment and read them. Again with this blog is quality over quantity, since we are non-monetized. The traffic is mostly from facebook which I honestly know are mostly my friends, families and patients.

January 1, 20202

by drplasticpicker

To the financially confused or spiritually financially seeking internet. I really have no clue what people read on this blog. In general, there is a good amount of traffic. A lot of it seems to be directed to my Star Trek Fan Fiction post of Trip and T’Pol from the Star Trek Enterprise, and the other hot post is one I wrote about Living Will and Trusts.

As I have explained before, I trust very few people with my money. I trust myself. We have a family member as our accountant. We have a very good trust and estates attorney. Otherwise, I have been our household’s financial CFO since 2009. This coincided with both Mr. Plastic Picker and I having attending level jobs with attending level salaries. The combination of my taking over at CFO, and finally making MD attending incomes contributed to that year being the year we started growing our financial muscle. For us financial independence has never really been about retiring early, it has to do with intellectual and professional freedom.

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December 31, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It’s been a tough month. For the most part our family was able to find joy in being together and grateful to be in good health over the holidays. But the last few days with my arm sore from the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and being fatigued kind of wore me down more than I expected. But the bright side of things is that I’ve started picking up litter around the HMO parking lot, and there is so much litter that it’s very quick to fill a bag. It’s oddly satisfying as I don’t have to walk as far. This gives me more time at home to focus on other things. I’ve committed to picking up 20 bags a month, and this month I finished early and I’m really proud. I’m going to end the month totals today.

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December 30, 2020

by drplasticpicker

The news just keeps on getting better and better. The COVID-19 UK strain is in our area and was identified in a young 30 year old who did not travel. Maybe that is why it’s so bad in Southern California right now? The side effects of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine are wearing off. I’m a pretty tough cookie and this is the first time in my life that I’ve had side effects. I take it to mean that the vaccine is working. My deltoid is still sore, still fatigied and a bit of a headache. I avoided the tylenol and motrin, and just drinking coffee at 530pm because I just woke up from a late afternoon nap and coffee cures everything right?

There is certainly hope now that the vaccine is being deployed to front-line workers, and plans to roll out more. But if this pandemic has taught me anything, is that no one knows nothing. We are in for a bumpy ride. A lot of people are sick, are stressed, are worried. They are sick and stressed about having COVID, about having had COVID, about where they are in line for the vaccine. Everyone is still worried, and it’s been 10 months of this worry and it is wearing on people. I just texted some friends just to check up on how they are doing. Everyone has a different dramatic tale unfolding in their lives.

I have to confess something. After I got my Moderna COVID-19 vaccine but while still wearing facemask and faceshield, I had to hold a baby in clinic to help the mother. The baby already had covid. I had to hold the baby because I was doing a procedure. But I can tell you, I held onto that baby for a few more seconds than I should have. That baby felt so good in my arms.

The light seems so far away right now. The darkness comes quickly now by 5pm. It’s cold even in Southern California. Although we need the rain, it’s damp and it’s seeping into our souls. There is hope as people on the front-lines are mentally preparing for their turn to get to the vaccine, but I can tell you as someone who got in 24hours before most people in our department – it is emotional. The months of suppressed emotion kind of bubbles up. Be ready for it. And be ready for the waning of the side effects and waning of the euphoria, and we are still in the middle of the pandemic facing the world that we share.

Just some thoughts at the end of the day that has been off for me due to being fatigued from the vaccine. Just some thoughts as I’m virtually sending hugs to some friends who are going through their tough times. At the least the HMO parking lot will be cleaner when this is all done.

December 30, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I got my COVID-19 Moderna vaccine yesterday on the 30th of December in the year of our lord 2020. My mantra in life is to be honest and I was honestly happy and I posted on my facebook page just personal one about my happiness and the requisite picture. It was a happy day because the four people I had worried about the most got it in the first group about probably a week before the rest of the department.

It was interesting that some people said congratulations. I’m not sure what they meant but it was in a positive way. But why do we congratulate those who have received the COVID-19 vaccine in the first wave? Is it for some reason they are more deserving? Or did they do something special to get the vaccine first? Someone posted outside of our department that they are grateful to be one of the first 2 million to get the vaccine? I absolutely did nothing to deserve to get the vaccine yesterday. I texted and sent messages to advocate for four MDs and their corresponding nurses to get the vaccine in a timely manner as befitted their risky work situations. I made no mention of myself. I heard nothing from upper management after my messages as Assistant Boss on behalf of those four people, but I know that my messages were part of a cacophany of messages they were receiving. This drama is playing out all over the country. The roll out has been interesting, but really we are just part of a large system and all of us are trying to make sure we are recognized and acknowledged as part of the system. But the slow wheels of the big machine are moving and everyone will get vaccinated lickety-split.

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December 29, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I’m just living my life. Living my blog life. LOL. I’ve been up since about 5am and had my first cup of coffee already. I’m naturally an early riser. Yesterday when I left clinic, I was already decently caught up on my charts and patient results. I will of course log in again today and clean things up. But this morning, I went through my actual personal inbox and attended to much of life things. Finished more board questions, and still have 10 more to do but I have 2 more days. Did a question on HIV testing, and remembered when we all were worried about an HIV pandemic in the early 2000s and it ended up being a COVID-19 and a plastic pandemic instead that threatens our common annihilation. This makes sense why we weren’t taking as much environmental action, because we thought HIV was going to wipe out the population. Who knew it would be plastic instead?

Thought about the upcoming Girl Scout meetings that is an Environmental Journey, and sent emails already to some women professionals who will be on a career panel, and I have a meeting set up to talk to our student Co-Founder of San Diego Pediatricians for Clean Air later today. After we finish doing this youth education module for my daughter’s actual Girl Scout Troop, I’ll reach out to our council and make SDPCA available to speak to other troops if they need a professional speaker. Youth education is very important.

I was riding a high after the San Diego Pediatricians for Clean Air website went live. https://sdpediatriciansforcleanair.com/ But I know myself that everytime something really good happens and a goal has been accomplished, I have this transient unease that is the down after the high. I kind of was ready for it, and modulated it as my emotions were coming down yesterday. I was probably a bit irritable afterwards as my daughter and I spoke about the upcoming Girl Scout meetings. But after watching a few mindless innocent Amazon prime Christmas romance movies and sleeping last night, and then just having freedom to think and let my wind wander this morning – everything is better. Wow, the quiet does so much for one’s brain and spirit.

What Grew? What Didn’t? I thought it was a catchy title given the pretty picture. Girl Scout Troop. My own children. The children in our Children’s Art Council from the AAP. Our three premedical interns, Our one graduate student intern. Other MDs who are part of the two committees, AAP-CA3 Climate Change and Health and San Diego Pediatricians for Clean Air. Dr. Plastic Picker website. SDPCA’s new website. Succulents in my makeshift container garden doing great. The parsley that got bug ridden because I watered it at night. The composter that I’m still learning how to master. I think it’s working but sometimes a mushroom pops up in there, and I need to add more kitchen scraps. What Grew? What Didn’t? I think it’s all kind of growing. All the seeds and little movements toward a greener world. I’m not too worried. It seems to be all kind of growing and isn’t that what a healthy ecosystem is, growth and decay, trial and error. My environmentalism is not orderly but than again neither is nature.

December 28, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Someone I love very much after a socially distanced and masked walk as I walked mostly 12 feet behind. The older I get, the more I realize I am so much like him. I did some yoga last night trying to center myself.

This blog is a mishmosh of trash art, cooking, climate activism, self-reflection and personal finance blogging. It’s a jumbled mess because that is what my real life is, a jumbled beautiful mess or people, committees and tangential things I think about in the early mornings as I blog. I think mostly I come to the blog to clear my mind by putting my often jumbled thoughts into prose, and somehow it makes the world make more sense.

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December 27, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Okay. I wasn’t sure what to blog about today or whether to blog at all. I enjoy the process of writing and it helps to order my brain. I edited a few of my past blogpost. Thanks for having patience with my grammatical errors. I reread old posts often and correct things as I go along. I was going to write a treatise about why one shouldn’t pay for financial advice, as I’ve never paid for financial advice. I would usually ask the person trying to give me financial advice, “What is your savings rate? What is your networth? If it’s better than mine, than maybe I’ll consider it.” Well, to be honest – I never said those EXACT words but I did say the essence of them. But I figured that blogpost was not kind and might alienate people, and honestly if people want to give other people money to give them advice about money – it’s actually not any of my business. It’s actually a carbon-free transaction assuming neither party starts flying everywhere around the world with their new found savings. But that was probably the reason they were in financial distress in the first place right? Hyperconsumption of prepackaged experiences. Hyperconsumption of things. Hyperconsumption of plastic experiences. Don’t even get me started on the wastefulness of the entire plastic surgery and beauty industry which is personified by the Kardashians.

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