Category: Weird Things I’ve Found Litter Picking

October 17, 2020

by drplasticpicker

An Original Poem

Large black plastic shards of a collision

Corner of Law and Mission Blvd, #1 intersection of violent crime

Cleaned and turned over, the plastic a dull grey

Scratches like the markings of a shark or wounds from an encounter

Green Hindfoot is the deep green of a large durable piece

The rat’s foot burned in the beach blaze, the sand welded into the plastic – forever

Red bottle cap eyes

Hello, Dr. Plastic Picker I am your #plastic-rat, plastic creature of your nightmares

I will follow you around the garden wall, under the leaves of your mother-in-laws squash

No one believes you Dr. Plastic Picker. No one follows you Dr. Plastic Picker. Who are you to save the earth?

You made me Dr. Plastic Picker. Plastic Rat of your Nightmares.

August 3, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It was a nice weekend. I was on-call for Chief Boss of Pediatrics, as our real Chief Boss is on vacation. No one called me. Actually I did receive one call, and I answered it relatively quickly and emailed the new pediatrician the link to the workflow. I had emailed everyone prior to the weekend, “Hello Everyone! We are a well oiled peds admin team, and we play an excellent passing game and try not to drop the ball. We are each covering our areas while XXX is on vacation. This weekend if you need Peds Admin help I am on for all of us from 7/31 at 5pm to 8/3 8am. My strengths are staffing, HR issues, clinical questions for outpatient level care and keeping us in budget. I will try to be as helpful as I can regarding COVID workflows. As many of you know I’m not the best at looking to see if membership services approves certain things, but I can certainly try! So thank you for all you do and I hope people who are not working can try to rest this weekend.” Signed my real first name. I thought it was a nicely worded email, and not as sarcastic as they used to be. No one emailed. I also did not send any work emails this weekend, which I think is a good thing. As I was telling my high school friends when we met for a Zoom reunion, I am trying to set a good example.

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April 24, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Our crazy black puppy was barking at 3am and woke us up. She once woke us up to lead us to Mr. Plastic Picker’s mother who was febrile to 105, vomiting and looked really really bad. Grandfather was later diagnosed with urosepsis after a dramatic ambulance ride to our hospital. The crazy black puppy saved grandma’s life that day, so we take her barking seriously. But this morning’s 3am barking, I am not sure what that was about. She barks when there is going to be thunder, and when there are minor earthquakes we don’t notice. We discovered the backyard barking is due to the neighbors who regularly walk the back alley way. The frontyard barking is due to the racoon that lives in a neighbor’s palm tree. But at 3am, I am not sure. I think it may have been because Mr. Plastic Picker’s father was up early downstairs. I think she barks at any ghosts as well. Do you believe in ghosts? Nonetheless I am up, and it felt like the right time to blog.

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November 14, 2019

by drplasticpicker

It is 5am, and my body is awake and time for a bit of coffee and blogging. When the earth awakens and the sun begins to rise, I will head off on my morning walk. But before then I wanted to share with you how drplasticpicker gained attention from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography!

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November 9, 2019

by drplasticpicker.com

Ocean plastic picking has reminded me that time is not linear. Life is not linear. One of my favorite books growing up was Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. In this book I was first introduced to the idea of the tesserect. That the shortest distance between two points is not a line but a wrinkle in time or a tesserect. Indeed the actual mathetmatics is complicated, but the concept is an intriguing one.

As I wandered along the beach this morning, I do the opposite of tesseracting. I take a longer meandering path. Rather than taking the shortest path, I follow bright pieces of plastic up and down the beach. Going slowly from piece to piece, wandering wherever my subconscious takes me. I concentrate on those pieces of plastic, trying to find the small and large pieces thinking alternatively between the whales that might ingest the big pieces to the birds that prefer the bright small ones. Then once in a while, I look up and I find beauty.

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November 7, 2019

by drplasticpicker

Wandering along the beach is wonderful for the imagination. Children have the blank canvas of the surf and sand to create their fairytales. I then get to see the remnants of them on my walks. I make up stories in my imagination about who made these structures, and what stories and adventures occured within their walls.

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October 30, 2019

by drplasticpicker

It’s a scary time of year tomorrow! It’s scary for children’s teeth from the sugar, for their circadian rhythms due to staying up late trick-o-treating, and for the earth! Most Halloween candy comes wrapped in plastic, and many new Halloween costumes are made of plastic.  This is my attempt to reduce the plastic consumption this Halloween.  I have 5 things that are under my semi-control this Halloween. Those 5 things are: what kind of treats we are handing out, what my contribution to the office party will be, my costume, my middle-schooler’s costume, and my high school son’s costume.  This is so far how we have done.

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October 19, 2019

by drplasticpicker

I had a fitful night of sleep, racing thoughts about life and work and broken relationships. Since beginning this journey on ocean plastic picking, my sleep has been much better but life happens and sleep is a time to process things. Weekend mornings I have more time to wander along the beach, and mother nature seemed to be mirroring life. The sun was rising. The waves were fierce and powerful. Foaming waves crescendoing and crashing into its neighbor. The ocean expanding and contracting along the shore.

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