A portion of our Save The Date for the Arts Exhibition.
March 17, 2022
by Dr. Plastic Picker
Just about 30 minutes until I have to be at one of the dwindling number of middle management early monthly meetings I have to go to. I forget why I ever wanted to be at this particular meeting when I was younger? I think back then the personal dynamics of those older that were in charge was interesting to me, just like sitting in the high school cafeteria as you watch the different cliques walk by and place them in the social hierarchy. But this particular group has lost my interest and I’ve decided to move on to more interesting people and work.
But yesterday was almost too much for me. It was an epic day. Two years of slow work an coordination and ideas flowing back and forth between my office and Dr. AF. #WeBorrowTheEarthFromOurChildren is a reality. The Youth Arts Exhibition on Climate Change was made real, as the art work was displayed and the children artists came and KPBS came.
Dr. AF was interviewed. I was interviewed. Our teenage son who headed the poetry section, and two eloquent child climate #artivists spoke about their work. It could not have gone more perfectly. I’ve rewatched my interview and the other speakers, and the authenticity and the passion and the message that climate change is real and it’s a crisis that needs to be addressed now landed perfectly. I’ve talked so much about the intersection of climate and health, and those phrases came out easily and naturally. “Climate change is a pediatric public health crisis.” “Kids understanding so fundamentally what we adults make way too complicated.” “This is an existential crisis.” “Adults need to do more, the kids showed up.” We could not have orchestrated a better session. But the funny thing, is that it was not orchestrated at all. My email to the group being interviewed was as follows.
OMG. My frist boyfriend wasn’t Mr. Plastic Picker! It was this handsome Vietnamese boy.
March 11, 2022
by Dr. Plastic Picker
This is Dr. Plastic Picker at about 1 or 2 years of age. I could not believe it! San Diego is still a small town, and especially if you are Vietnamese – it’s a small community. A patient family I have had for over ten years, out of the blue said “our families know eachother from Vietnam! My mom has a picture of you from my brother’s birthday party.” And indeed dear readers, a picture was sent and it was me! I was so shocked! That’s me in clairemont at my first boyfriend’s birthday party. (kidding of course to his I’m sure beautiful wife). He clearly was distinguished back then, but neglected to give me cake or a share of his presents. I don’t remember the occassion but I do know my own emotions, and I am clearly upset that I was not the center of attention and I’m sure was not offered cake soon enough!
I thought Mr. Plastic Picker was my first boyfriend who I met at 18 and started dated at 19. I always told him that I waited for him, and that when my Crimson University Freshman Formal date leaned in for a kiss – I panicked! I didn’t want my first kiss to be from this particular Crimson University Vietnamese boy. He was nice but he wasn’t the one. As an immature 18 year old, I literally ran away from the poor boy who had so nicely taken me to a sushi restaurant and danced with me all night. But kisses are important, especially to young romantic 18 year old me.
Wow. Blog traffic really picked up. I always average about 400-500 readers a day, and sometimes it goes up to 1500. Now the recent traffic is about 600 a day. I wonder why? This blog is non-monetized and really about entertaining my community and nudging readers to take some environmental action. I know it might be dizzying the amount of environmental work I do. But if you know me in real life, this is how I’ve always been. I like to get things done and projects completed, and I’m generally an effective person. Now that I’ve found climate work, which is really endless – I’ve found my happy spot and do projects that bring me joy.
It’s 551am and I’m slowly getting back to a normal schedule. Getting up early and blogging and doing climate projects in the early morning are the healthiest for me. I had a very fun detour into Kdrama binge-watching land, but I turned it off yesterday and went to bed. It was a wonderful detour. But it’s back to trying to save this dear planet of ours.
There is so much to do, but it’s important to make it sustainable and make it joyful. One of the projects I’m working on is just answering questions for a blogpost that will go up on the AAP San Diego website for Women’s History Month. I was invited to submit my profile. I need to take this seriously and do it thoughtfully, because our local AAP has been an amazing force in helping me literally clean up our local area and move climate legislation locally and state-wide.
Good Saturday Morning Dear Readers!!! It’s Saturday morning and we are not physically where we thought we would be. I can’t tell you where we are, but we are well and alive and together as a family. Sometimes it’s important to be off the grid. Just know that your local litter-picking pediatrician continues to live a sustainable life and living my truth. I drank match green tea soy latte and walked along a beautiful part of nature with Mr. Plastic Picker. We walked hand in hand, sipping our matcha green tea soy latte, and talked about the world, our family and our love.
I also made some big decisions about my own life and leadership journey, and it was the earth that guided me. I am so gloriously happy and know I am on the right path, that I smiled and laughed with joy. A patient on Friday said, “Dr. Plastic Picker! You are glowing today. Something is different. Is it your hair?” It was not my hair, although I have switched over to a vegan hair dye. It was a decision I made about my leadership journey that felt so right, that I knew it was meant to be. Much like the moment I saw Mr. Plastic Picker is the basement at one of our college dorms doing laundry when I was a sophomore. He was a junior. I saw him and I thought to myself, “that is the father of my children.” And that is the truth. We married 5-6 years later as medical students.
It really helps me to blog every morning. My mind and imagination kind of just wanders in the morning. I actually got a full night of sleep after I finished by last new-favorite K-drama. Oh My Venus – is soooo cute. Male lead, super cute and super hot. I’ve started doing some arm- weights inspired by the show. Anyway, after a good night of sleep and getting up a bit on time to blog – I get to just explore things. I started one blogpost which was good, but decided to just trash it. And then I sent some climate-emails. Then I started making breakfast for the kids, and inspired by some side salad given to us by the HMO machinery, I made a leftover vegetables vegan omelette with besan (chickpea flour). It turned out really well.
All I did was cut up the left over vegetables, added some eggplant and a small carrot. I heated everything in a bit of canola oil in the frying pan. Then seasoned with a bit of onion powder. Besan flour is chickpea flour, and you have to mix it with water to the consistency desired. After the vegetables which is a food-waste project are cooked to desired texture, I just pour the besan flour mix into the pan and cook. It cooks like egg. The only caveat is that you have to make sure it cook it all, since uncooked besan flour has a odd flavor. The key I’ve found is to really mix it before you pour it in to make the “vegan omellette.” I added some truffle powder as well.
My daughter had it this morning already and she really loved it. She has discriminatory taste. Anyway, I started wandering as I always do – how much money did I save? i searched “vegan omellette san diego” which led by to Breakfast Republic website.
OMG the vegan omelet is $20!!! I just made my kids a $20-30 breakfast and averted methane! This place is actually pretty good. But because I’ve been wandering mentally around, I’ve realized that they have a huge push for reaching sustainability. I’m going to have our premed intern Hakim reach out to them and see if they can’t try to feed us for the AAP Youth Arts Exhibit. It’s great advertising for them since we definitely are bringing in their demographic.
That’s it! I’m looking for free food for our exhibit. Because I’m trying to save the earth by being FISE (financially independent to save the earth), and this whole thing is fun because I try to be financially savy about the whole thing.
Will let you know if they respond!
Left over veggies and some eggplant and carrots from the fridge.
Young Buddha Hands. Got the original tree at Costco.
Feburary 28, 2022
by Dr. Plastic Picker
I have to write a personal finance blogpost at least every 3 months, so that Crispy Doc doesn’t take me off his Physician Personal Finance Blogger Blogroll. https://www.crispydoc.com/physician-finance-bloggers/ Just dropped by his blogroll, and there are some really interesting new physician personal finance bloggers. There are a few new bloggers who are minimalist as well. I hadn’t stopped by this list in a while, so it’s fun to see what’s new on the blogsphere. But I’m still the only litter-picking physician personal finance blogger – YES I AM!
I had been thinking about the hypocrisy of personal finance blogging in general for years. There is so much about personal finance that is out of our control. The reason for debt can be the same as the reason a child is overweight, the systemic forces out there have created the scenarios that increase the chances that someone needs to take on debt or cannot earn enough. I’m changing my approach to childhood weight issues, by acknowledging with families what is out of their control that has pushed their children to gain weight. Skyrocketing housing prices that force families to work multiple jobs, and short change children’s activities. The built environment that has decresed active transport for the entire community. The fossil fuel industry and federal corn subsidies that have flooded our food industrial complex with cheap plastic to encase the food and cheap high-fructose-corn-syrup to make it taste sweet.
Just like it’s still important for me to talk about plant-based diets and evidence based changes families can make to address children’s weight. I will still address pillars of personal financial responsibility, but acknowledge that much is out of people’s control. I guess that is why the personal finance blog part of my writing is specifically aimed at physicians and young pediatricians who do not usually fall into the category of having suffered as many injustices as the rest of the world. Since there are others that read, please take that in mind.
The hypocrisy of my personal finance blogging is that I married a fellow physician who has a high earning potential. The hypocrisy is that I have the cultural upbringing and the demeanor to be able to co-exist harmoniously with my in-laws. The hypocrisy is that other than my own immediate children and myself, I don’t really have to provide for anyone else. All my strengths are still there. I’m financially oriented because my father was an accountant. I work essentailly full time when I could have been a stay-at-home parent (trust me, I tried!). I’m super frugal because for most of the first decade of my life, my parents bought very little extras as they built our family’s financial lives. We didn’t buy many material things, but we had so much wealth in our family’s traditions and affection.
That is it. I wanted to really show you the Buddha Hand fruit collage picture, and just some thoughts today about FIRE hypocrisy. The hypocrisy is true for other personal finance bloggers particularly physicians and those omnipresent male engineers as well. The idea that someone would ask a doctor for financial advice is hilarious. It’s like asking your accountant about your sinuses. Ask your doctor about your sinuses. Ask your accountant about your finances.
Hey, but everything on this blog is free and for entertainment purposes! I’m just trying to help save the earth, and on the side get to interact with some of the FIRE bloggers I had admired for over a decade. They know my name now, which I think has been a great side benefit of all this environmental action blogging with a personal finance twist!
9.99 Fruit Tart from Vons. That’s all we needed to make this weekend special for Mr. Plastic Picker.
I worked last night the staggered shift. 25 patients evenly spaced out in 20minute appointment slots. No longer the triple booked patients at 6pm and leaving at 930pm and overeating at night at 10pm. Pneumonias and bilateral ear infections. I had to order a fair number of antibiotic prescriptions yesterday. It almost felt normal, pre-COVID pandemic like. One of my work colleagues reminded me that I had come up with the idea of the “Happy Hour Shift” and indeed that was what started it all. Fixing a broken scheduling template that would garner so many complaints and predisposed doctors and nurses to make errors. There was no conceivable way to see three patients in the same appointment slot.
But people forget, and as life improves – they often forget what was the catalyst. Indeed, I had forgotten – but then this work friend who is not in our department, reminded me.
This change was good for me as well, and I fought for the sane scheduling system with my own family’s well-being in mind. It was a long day, but I had time to walk up to the #guerillagardening project at my “lunch” hour which was at 2pm. I walked and looked at the plants I had planted there almost 2 years ago.
Blooming now.
It’s all growing and thriving now. I had to put in effort at the beginning. But now, the natural rainfall and once or twice a month watering from saved bathwater from my own house – is enough. It took me courage to fight for those changes in the schedule. It took creativity. It took rationality and a mind that thinks clearly. There are some minds that are so chaotic that threatened to make all of our lives intolerable.
But rather than dwell on the those forces I had to counter, I focus on the growth I see. I focus on what is beautiful and what has worked. And this plant was the first one that proved to me that in the desolate area of the upper parking garage planters that had been abandoned for decades – something beautiful could grow.
#2 upcypcled reburbished planter stand from a chair I found in the alley
February 23, 2022
by Dr. Plastic Picker
Life is meandering. RG, our premed advocacy intern working on leaded aviation pollution, and I were supposed to make verbal comments at the EPA meeting last night. We both submitted written comments. It was nothing that was asked of us, just somewhere we thought we should be. But RG had to work last minute (all this environmental health work is volunteer) and I logged in once on my phone, and afterwards when I tried to log in again on my computer – the link did not work. Mr. Plastic Picker is a witness that I tried to log into the EPA “EPA’s Draft Strategy to Reduce Lead Exposure and Disparities in US Communities” and the it was unsuccessful. I really really tried. But since RG wasn’t there and part of advocacy is fun for me, if I get to do it with the premed interns, I didn’t really mind that much. Instead of being attached to the EPA meeting until 9pm, I ceased by Zoom logging in efforts at 710PM. And then I watched Kdramas! Well, the current show I just finished is more artsy so not really a drama. But I learned something that was very profound from the close-captioning translations. I love the Kdramas because I actually do have a decent grasp of Korean, and it’s this weird world where I’m learning all this Korean but I get to read too. Anyway, the translation was the best part of this show about a family of three women and the percussions of domestic violence.
Snowy Egret is Mr. Plastic Picker’s Spirit Animal.
February 21, 2022
by Dr. Plastic Picker
Self-awareness is so key. I mean true self-awareness, the deep kind that takes a lot of work and quiet. I was talking to a long-time patient-family that is facing difficult medical futures for their children. It’s the typical story these days, the kids are young and already on the road to severe metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes and fatty liver. We are considering gastric-bypass at the youngest age possible.
