It’s 6:09 am on Sunday. I don’t question sometimes good fortune. And someone asked to take my Sunday extra shift. I was supposed to work today and now I don’t have to work. I’m grateful to that particular pediatrician. So yesterday the little one who is almost 17 took her first SAT attempt, and today we are going to shop for junior prom dresses. Just me and her, or is it she and me? Sometimes I need to work on my grammar.
But it’s been quiet on the blog of late, and for that I apologize. I’ve been living in the real and other (Instagram) virtual world trying to work on climate and environmental health projects. It gets overwhelming at times, working with so many students. They are amazing for sure, but it can get overwhelming. But the truth is that I go to sleep at night, having tried as hard as I can, and it seems to work out in the morning after my mind has cleared and others have done what they are supposed to do. I have a presentation I need to work on for the National AAP Climate Advocate Program but it’s just a 10 minute talk and easy for me to put together. I’ll do it later. I just wanted to blog this morning.
I can’t believe she finished her SAT! (for now). We were talking, Mr. Plastic Picker and myself and the little one, what score would be the benchmark to say that she is done, versus retake it one more time for a better super score. My standards are lower, and Mr. Plastic Picker and our daughter have higher standards. But it was mostly fun the three of us to sit there and chat about it. We realize this is the fun stage in life, and I want to enjoy every single moment of it. I don’t want to know her score from yesterday, although she felt that she did well, because knowing the score means it’s two weeks from now. I don’t want to know what her final GPA will be for applications, because I am enjoying the uncertainty and the drama and the riding the highs and lows with her.
So today, I will sit and enjoy the uncertainty of it. Because it reminds me that she is still very much 16 and not yet 17, and she’s sleeping upstairs in her room – safe and very much our high school daughter still. I never thought it would be this wonderful having her. When she was born, I promised her a wonderful life. I never realized how much love she would give me in return. She notices me and fundamentally loves me. I have never felt as loved as I do by my daughter, and I have been lucky to have been loved and cherished by many in my family and my husband. It’s overwhelming sometimes.
But she is growing up! I’m not preventing her growth! She is focused on her junior prom dress and wants to talk colors and styles and cuts. I’ve never been particularly into those things, but being her mother – I’m all for it. So I’ll take her shopping and it we’ll enjoy the day together just the two of us. Grandmother is well on her way to recovery after her peripheral bypass surgery. Grandfather is happy and comfortable in our shared home, and the two of them had another granddaughter visit with her friends and say goodbye yesterday as she jetted off back to college. That granddaughter will be seeing her cousin (my son) up at Berkeley to connect and catch up as cousins. Mr. Plastic Picker will be working, because that is what he does and he chooses to do for now. And the girls in our family, we’ll go shopping.
She was absolutely beautiful yesterday getting ready for her exam with her hair in a bun, being fussed over in just the right amount in the morning. And she’s the main character in my narrative. And I think sharing our story has made others realize they have a main character is theirs as well, and the more love and care you pour forth into that child and in their generation and into saving the earth for them – you will be returned so much more than you ever imagined.
She’s selling cookies! We have the last 30 boxes to go to reach goal!
February 26, 2025
by Dr. Plastic Picker
I was thinking of calling this post “Kimbap, Exploded” but that will be the next post. Or the blogpost that never got written. It exploded in the microwave by the way, because of the circumstances that led to us have extra store prepared kimchi that we were worried about the edibility of the said kimbap.
But instead I want to write this morning’s short blogpost about something definitive I told my daughter last night. She has been having some anxiety dreams about college, and where to apply early. Some of it is that it’s crunch time with the ending of the trimester, SATs coming up, big decisions regarding club leadership positions, and the outside projects that she is working on. She has dreams too like any other child, and has been in the real grind – forgoing the normal teen social scene to study and do her work. It’s not really a sacrifice for her, because she actually likes studying and doesn’t do well with loud noises and over stimulation. She also has a very active imagination and happier in her clubs that deal with books than dancing. Every child is different and there is a place and journey for each of them, especially if you go to prep school. But in her world, she is stressed because all the juniors are worried about college and talking about college – and where to apply early next year.
I told her that until the day before those applications need to be submitted, she can change her mind. We have 8 months left until the day she decides and another year before the final decisions for schools comes around. It’s going to be a beautiful exhilarating time for her and for our family. We are so inordinately proud of her.
But the difference with her is that she’s the kid that wasn’t supposed to make it. She’s the preemie that beat the odds, and having been loved so dearly by her community and especially by her family – she has become the beautiful talented and interesting person that she is.
And I told her last night “Go for it. If you don’t dream now, when will you dream! If you really want to apply there early, don’t worry about mommy and daddy’s Harvard alumni status and that you are quadruple legacy. Go for the school you want. Mommy doesn’t want you to have any regrets. Harvard is just a place.” And with that I encouraged by almost 17 year old and gave her the freedom to consider applying to Yale early, which is her dream school. The baby that one high risk ob-gyns encouraged me to terminate. The baby that was born and intubated and whisked away at a little over 2 lbs to the NICU. The baby who was gavaged my breastmilk that I diligently pumped out 60 oz a day because I wanted her to have the best shot. The baby that had asthma, pneumonia, otitis media, emergent ear tubes, and mastoiditis. The child that I purposely did not let test out of spanish and math because I was worried about stressing her out, but now is one of the top students in her class and absolutely has the numbers and the resume.
Apply to Yale Early baby girl! Mommy and Daddy say go for it! Harvard is just a place and you are a miracle child. If you don’t dream, how can I? And we are a family of dreamers. You’ll land where you are meant to be. And our family, we keep on shooting for the stars.
I was going to 100% spill the beans! But I decided the averting climatic disaster and the love story within a love story goes on! So I DID NOT SPILL THE BEANS in “Confessions of a Pediatric Plastic Picker”! If you don’t know about the beans, then you probably don’t know me in real life because I’m constantly yapping about it. I honestly think everyone in clinic does not want to hear the beans anymore, but different ending possible scenarios still amuse me.
But instead, I am still going to give my talk at UC San Diego School of Medicine today with my good friend and collaborator Dr. Luis Castellanos. I am delivering my fourth talk at the medical school, and this yearly lecture really centers me and gives me direction for the year. Mostly I need to meet his medical students and interest them, and recruit them to help with H3SD San Diego’s Heat and Human Health Summit. I’m 50 slides into the talk and it’s way too long already. But I still have hours left to work on it. I’m having the hydrogen blending team call into from Orange County and UC Berkeley, and they will be presenting on their project.
It’s going to be a really long day in general today. My mother-in-law is recovering form major bypass surgery and I have a sick day to help with her care. I also have a lot of climate emailing to do and organizing. Our daughter is busy with her life, and was a bit overstrung last night. I hope the artists talk she is giving tonight at the Harvard Club of San Diego goes well? I’m not sure if that is the right decision, but it’s an opportunity and it’s important to take risks to grow. Failing is okay. Failing is an opportunity to grow. But it’s hard to explain that to a 16 year old girl.
Okay. I just wanted to type some stuff on the blog behind diving back to my power point to make it more coherent. I hope this short note finds everyone well.
It’s 5:48am and I’m sitting with my mother-in-law in the kitchen. I’ve been her daughter-in-law now over 20 years. She’s weak but feeling better. She was just discharged from the HMO hospital after having minor surgery and will have major surgery soon. She’s well over 80 and if you know me in real life, I’ve shared some of the details. But we are all together under one roof and for now we are safe. There are wildfires raging in Los Angeles, and many of us in the climate advocacy space are of the “I told you so” or at least I am. Not to the unfortunate victims of the fossil-fuel driven wildfires, but to the general world. Someone asked me at work “why do you think these fires happened” and I said “fossil fuels and climate change.” I said the same thing to the HMO social media person that I met yesterday and hugged. We filmed some segments that will air soon, hopefully to reach our patients and prepare them if the wildfires spread further south where we are.
But for now, we are together and safe. My daughter will be up soon in about an hour. I forgot she asked me to wake her earlier so she can shower this morning. She’s a junior in high school and too pretty for her own good, but studious and focused on her exams and getting ready to apply to college next year. My son is sleeping in his bed and in his room, that has a Cal flagged hanging proudly over the doorway. He’s headed back to Berkeley in a few days time, but that is a lifetime from now. I have this afternoon with him, and I’ll soak in those hours and bathe in his attention. I love him very much and shared him with his grandmother when he was little, and now I get him to myself for the afternoon.
Loving something fully is sharing. It took me so long to realize that. If you love someone fully and in a healthy way, they will come back to you. That is why I pour so much love into this work on protecting the climate for our children. Because it will come back. It will always come back.
And I found this picture from this long journey of mine. And I forgot on that night when I decided to love another family, that I was there too. I know it will come back to me. It’s already helped save so many lives. When I think about how many, it’s overwhelming. How can you not believe in fate when that happens? And that is true for so many of you that I’ve met on this journey. We have been trying to save current lives and future lives.
And in the end, I’m a doctor and a pediatrician. And that is fundamentally who I am.
I’m sitting here its 9:06am and last night I worked the late staggered shift, happily wandered over to to the office party and lived my dream of making an Instagram Reel to the current in kpop song apata by Rose and Bruno Mars. It was so much fun! Our son helped me edit the reel so that it was in sync with the song.
And this morning, I just forwarded an email to some climate friends in San Diego. It’s from a good college friend who I was technically her premedical advisor. We are friends from the Harvard Vietnamese Association. I had explained to my good friend how simple and impactful the heat summit idea was. That it was really to get folks together in a neutral place to discuss hyper-local projects that need to be done to address extreme heat and health, in particular wildfire risks. And she is talented and connected and she’s done it. She sent the email that likely took a while to mentally prepare and process, and it’s succinct and well composed. And then all I did was loop in 3 premedical students from UC Berkeley (including my son) who participated in our H3SD summit in San Diego, and they will help her.
It’s funny now when things are truly dire and something you love dearly is threatened, you run toward those you trust the most. That we are true friends and linked through our heritage, training and world view – is not surprising.
But it’s actually happening. Their team is on their way. I’ll be popping in during their meetings as well. But I’m grateful today to have a good friend like Dr. Quyen-Tuyen Nguyen. She has children too. My daughter has a yellow blanket that she dearly loves and that blanket, was gifted to our family almost 20 years ago by Dr. Quyen-Tuyen Nguyen. It’s funny how life works out.
It’s 5:46am and it’s been months since I’ve been in the routine that rewired my brain and life. Getting up early in the morning to blog in the quiet of the kitchen and then taking a walk or jog to the beach to pick up some plastic. But it’s the morning again, and I’m sleeping again through the night. Some of my sleep disruption was that I had been binge-watching Kdramas for the last 2 years. Some of it is that I have been doing so much climate work and clinical work. And some of it is a little bit of perimenopause. But today I feel good, and it’s dark and my mother-in-law just wandered into the kitchen. She is well and healthy, excepting some diabetes that requires more medicines and a toe that we are watching to make sure heals properly (she was in the emergency room over the weekend due to her toe).
I’m working today the staggered shift, so 1030-730. It’s a shift that I helped create years ago when I was in middle management but likely not many people in our department remember that. A lot of the women got together and had what looked like fun, but it’s hard to tell form social media the truth. But there were smiles and I genuinely think they likely did enjoy each other’s company. I didn’t go because I did not want to go. I don’t judge anymore, and my job is not to judge them and I think they don’t judge me as well. My dad used to tell me in the midst of my burnout, that it’s okay just to show up and do your job. When you aren’t the boss or the owner and a worker bee (as doctors are these days), it’s okay just to show up to do work. I didn’t hear that in the midst of being Assistant Boss, because there was so much indirect work nonsense that I was tasked to do. But now I realize that it’s 100% true. I just show up to do my actual work, and everything (the office parties, the committees that none of us get paid to do, the extra projects, the dishes in the lunchroom) else is really all volunteer. There is a shortage of pediatricians in the country now and they have problems finding and hiring qualified doctors, so it’s also supply and demand. So it’s okay to just show up and do your job job.
And this helped me end 2024 is a beautiful way. Having that mental load lifted, and being able to say no to certain things – allowed me to say yes to my family and to the community work that I actually care about. I worked most of the actual christmas holiday week including the entire holiday, and then had most of this last week off. And during this last break when we were just at home, our family squeezed in so much living and togetherness during that time.
My daughter and I stopped by a dear friend’s house, whose wife finished her 3rd round of chemotherapy. We dropped off some Dr. Plague plushies which for some reason made me so happy, and we happily gave them to their family and just chatted trying not to get too close (as we were a little bit sick) but we desperately wanted to be together with them. It was the actual Christmas Day and it was the most beautiful part of the holiday time. I’ll never forget the looks of love between my dear cardiologist friend and his wife. The jokes and banter about young adults in our family and real estate, and the mixed in jokes about climate people we know. The love and concern between my daughter and my friend’s wife (who is my friend as well and my sister’s friend) is so very real. My daughter feels like a daughter in that house, and our families know each other going back twenty years. Their sons we worry about too. And their dog is so adorably big and lovable and misbehaved.
We wandered to Clairemont more than we should have. We ate at Arely’s and had soupy quiche and matcha oat latte that is likely one of the best in San Diego. We saw HMO people and climate people, and we ran into a couple that are teachers to my children and also former patient family to me. Also another connection that is real and authentic that goes back over 15 years, and my daughter was chatting with her AP US history teacher and did remind me we had to go because she needed to finish an actual assignment for his class. We could have stayed and chatted for hours. In the same theatre about a few weeks prior, we saw one of her school friends that was home for college and the two girls rushed and hugged each other so very tight. I could appreciate the hug because my daughter tells me the stories of her life, and the girls had traveled with school a year ago to Argentina and seen so many amazing things. But as her mother sitting in what we consider our little neighborhood movie theatre, I will remember that rush of the girls running toward each other and how tight those hugs were. We were seeing Wicked and the movie was so very good.
Our son saw Wicked as well, or was it my sister and her children. But through the course of the two weeks, I called family more and chatted and stayed connected. One niece on one side had surgery. Another niece on another side is waiting to hear from graduate schools. Always at the center is everyone on both sides asking how my mother-in-law and father-in-law are doing, and they are actually doing very well albeit the toe that we are watching carefully.
We had more meals together than I can remember, and made new recipes at home together. The dinner last night at Stone Brewery was so absurdly delicious that I wonder if it was actually delicious or was it that we were just happy? We were the four of us at Liberty Station. My son and husband watching a movie at the Lot, and my daughter and I wandering around the area for 3 hours just walking and talking and finding small adventures (and we did find matcha). We bickered a bit and my son scared us with the plot line of the vampire movie the boys watched which the girls did not, but mostly we loved each other and were just together fundamentally.
We saw the Nutcracker earlier in the holiday break, and it was the first and only time we’ve seen in during their childhoods. It’s been something I’ve been wanting to do forever, and a patient handed me the card/advertisement. And we finally made it. We dressed up in our fancy clothes and tried to take fancy pictures, and Mr. Plastic Picker had low expectations for the actual production. But the four of us universally adored the ballet and amazed that we were able to make it. Did we have dinner afterwards? I think we did. We went to a fancy Italian restaurant in our own neighborhood, and the last time we had eaten there was the Christmas before last.
My son has started bike riding, and during these last two weeks we bought him his first bike and his first car. Both events were completely unplanned. We don’t buy things we don’t need these days, but he did want a bike and we are both doctors who work too much overtime and spend too little – so we were fancy and bought him his first bike at REI. And that night, we decided the four of us to make an adventure of it when we bought him his bike. He ordered the bike with his father, and my daughter and I wondered over to the other section and looked around at the absurdly expensive outdoor clothing we didn’t need. We remembered the last time we were at REI when she was into indoor climbing, and we talked a bit about a boy that we know that climbs sometimes and saw her once. But mostly we just wandered around together. And then we saw our boys, Mr. Plastic Picker and my son, at the front of the store and they were both so handsome and dear and we were again together. We decided to go to dinner and headed to the Convoy area. There we saw the sign for the first time together, and it looked smaller than I expected. We ate at a place called Steamy Piggy and both boys and girls disagreed about the quality of the food, but we agreed that the best part of the night was seeing three college boys that are high school friends of my son. We sat there as the boys caught up and dropped more F bombs than is appropriate in front of a pediatrician, but mostly I remember how happy the four 19-year-olds were to see each other.
San Diego is home for us. And this holiday we wandered around our home, from one district to another. I even made it to Convoy again and had a two hour coffee with an HMO friend who is leaving the HMO to start at UCSD. We gossiped more than we should have about work, and mostly I noticed her and know more about her life. We laughed so much and drew our lives together, and the parts of our community closer together.
That’s how I ended 2024, and began 2025. Life is truly beautiful. I’m grateful that I got to remember some of those moments with you on this blog.
This old picture popped up and it’s Dr. Sabrina Perrino and I many years ago. This was about 4 years before we founded San Diego Pediatricians for Clean Air, and before I went into middle management and then exited after 5 years to devote my extracurricular time to climate and health advocacy. It was during Halloween obviously, and at that point I was already thrifting as the Harry Potter gown was from the Goodwill store. We had just moved to Pacific Beach I think?
I had such a wonderful planned vacation day off yesterday with our daughter. I picked her up from her prep school, and she was hard at work on her ceramics art but living in her little bubble of a prep school world. I toured her school’s ceramics studio for a bit, and looked at her shelf filled with half done projects and looked at her largest project that she is trying to finish. I took more pictures than I needed. And we had a wonderful rest of the evening getting matcha oat latte at Starbucks, buying Christmas gifts for dear friends, and wandering around another Christmas fair and had a semi-fancy dinner at a now favorite spot in Mission Valley.
I used to feel so guilty sending her to private school. A lot of doctors do this now, as it’s hard to take care of others if one is not sure your own are taken care of and the public school system in some areas is still a mess. We really need to pay teachers more. I’m okay living with those contradictions, living in my social world and at peace with our social circle – but knowing that my parenting world doesn’t define me. When we started San Diego Pediatricians for Clean Air, I never thought is would lead to opening up my heart so wide for all these premedical students and patients and fellow physicians. In the end, I think the reason we are able to do what we are able to do, is because we are all friends and working toward the same goal – trying to ensure a livable planet for all our patients and our children. Many of us are mothers as well.
It’s the beginning of the Christmas Season/Holiday coverage season, and I am indeed working every day next week – but I’m actually okay with it. I’m okay with it because everything seems manageable these days because I’m happy. So many others have joined Dr. Sabrina Perrino and myself on this journey. And all of your life stories are intertwined with mine. And I’m grateful to know each and every one of you. Even the ones I’ve been intermittently feuding with on different committees for various reasons. I honestly care about you too.
Our son is coming home soon, but one day late from college due to the dense fog that is blanketing San Diego. 1.8 million other travelers were also affected. Our daughter officially started her SAT studying and trying to hit that magic number which is honestly just a number. And I’m still a pediatrician and so happy to practice, and it’s very much because we founded San Diego Pediatricians for Clean Air. Trying to save the world, sometimes you inadvertently save yourself. Happy Holidays/Happy New Years to everyone and sending you social media hugs which from this pediatrician are very much real.
My memories of my journey through climate and health and environmental health advocacy is intertwined with trying to spend more time with our daughter. Yesterday was the rare afternoon I had off with her. The previous afternoons I was at a podcast interview at the Conrad Prebys talking about the Tijuana Sewage Crisis. And the other afternoon I was working, and the other afternoon/evening I was on a panel discussion on social justice and environmental health advocacy at UCSD School of Medicine. The previous week I was very sick with likely rotavirus. So it is important to emphasize that yesterday afternoon was my rare afternoon I had to spend with her.
I had picked her up on time after school and she had a good day at school. She was brimming with those little stories that need to be heard. The quizzes that went well, those assignments that did not. The friends that noticed her eyelashes, and the boys that notice too much. And the exciting little tidbits of news and gossip about junior and seniors that she wants to share with me. Who is applying where early decision? Who is going out with who, and what kind of dates would be fun to have? Showing me her sketches for her next project. Sharing bits and pieces of back and forth about family. She always wants to hear about my work gossip and going-ons.
But yesterday during what was mostly a happy afternoon driving down our usual route, with a quick detour to buy a birthday gift and get a snack and a quick walk at Hazard Center – became this overwhelming sense of doom and foreboding because I needed to call into Irvine City Council meeting as there was a surprise last minute meeting called as the new Irvine City Council was trying to pull Irvine from OC Power Authority. In the end the city council meeting and making comments took 5 hours. During those 5 hours, we finished our walk and our snack. We finished buying presents for her friend’s birthday and two secret santa gifts for my work friends. We even picked up dry cleaning. We got home, and I was able to make a relatively health dinner and I finished my virtual testimony after waiting 3 hours. I even finished all my charts and did lab results and charting while listening in on the meeting.
But what I want to tell Mayor Larry and who I will remember, a fellow Vietnamese-American, Councilmember James Mai – is that you completely ruined my afternoon with my daughter. You ruined what should have been a happy rare free afternoon and evening, because you successfully tried to start the process of removing Irvine City from OC Power Authority. Your focus and complete meanness and negative energy and negativity, and your complete inability to listen to the overwhelming community comments/support of OCPA was disheartening. And yes I remember especially every single Vietnamese-American individual in that council chamber room that voted and worked AGAINST CHILDREN and AGAINST CLIMATE. I identify with you. I see your faces and your names, and I feel akin to you. And that hurt the most. I hope I never meet any of you socially and you never ask for my help. I’ll probably help if it’s the right thing to do, but I’ll always remember when YOU DID THE WRONG THING and I never have to like you.
This is my emotional journey as a climate and health physician and as a mother. Mostly yesterday was a wonderful day, but it was also a godawfully bad day and I can’t believe there were Vietnamese-American politicians involved with this. You are not part of my tribe anymore because you have caused harm to all children including Vietnamese ones.
It’s the 2nd day after Thanksgiving/Indigenous Foods Day and we are fired up in our house! For various reasons and seeing how money flows through our society, I am realizing more and more that this model of how our advocacy group is doing work is 100% my right path. San Diego Pediatricians for Clean Air never formed a non-profit because we don’t have any money flowing through our organization. We are all volunteer advocates in this beautiful organic sustainable group that is just working together at this moment in time, trying to do what is right for the climate and children. Not having monetary strings attached to this work is truly liberating. What we’ve been about to do with a $20 website, and just caring together – has been remarkable. I’m still a pediatrician, working on the front-lines and get paid for my clinical duties.
Others are working too, and I totally get it. Everyone is doing their part. But it’s empowering to know that I am where I am supposed to be. Our family is where we are supposed to be. And our daughter is where she is supposed to be (currently sleeping in her room recovering from surgery). That sense of rightness and peace is empowering. I just finished all my charts, and I have the 2025 year of climate work mapped out in my mind.
I am half through our November newsletter and will get that out today. Lots of updates for our amazing students, pediatricians and other public health friends. Public Health Advisory Council (OC) is going well, and a subgroup led by a very brilliant premedical student is taking on the gas companies to help block hydrogen blending at the UC Irvine campus and hopefully in the country. We have gathered the A team, including local OC pediatricians, nationally renown pediatric environmental health specialty experts, locally trusted high school students, and the most important part – a smart and motivated premedical student to lead the project from our side. Paired with our collaboration with Climate Actions Campaign, this is a recipe for success. I am so excited about this project! If you see me in real life, ask me about it!
The San Diego Heat and Human Health Summit 2025 is coming along well, and will be in it’s 3rd year this summer. The people that need to be there will be there. Likely some of the people who were the inspiration for H3SD and filled me with so much joy and love, will not be there. But that is okay. Wherever they are meant to end up, they will end up. I know in my heart, that it’s okay to love as long as that love is true and sincere and not selfish. And for them, my love was childlike and innocent and dream-like. But climate work does that to folks. It’s so filled with purpose and meaning, that it fills you up with these real emotions because we are doing real work. The heat summit will happen in District 8 (Western US minus California) as well. I just texted my good friend from college and we are well on our way. It’s still the holiday weekend so I won’t send any emails. Just texted her and yes District 9 Heat and Human Health are 100% going to happen! And I have three premedical students who need a project anyway and this will be their project. I just sent an instagram message to one of them.
And the little one. She’s about to get up soon. We’ve been off this week and she is healing from her wisdom teeth extractions. She’s been swollen and the healing has been harder than expected. But she was so adorable and darning her old jeans while swollen from her surgery. Perhaps that is what happens to dreams and wishes that I had for her. They get torn and tattered by circumstance, and events and feelings beyond your control. But I and she chose to mend them. We chose beauty and healing, and to stay on our path. Others would have chosen a whole new set of jeans and just thrown out the old. But we try to be sustainable in our choices here, including relationships. But I can’t and don’t want to control the world and folks feelings. Everything has to be a choice. And I choose to go with my heart and to work with those that bring me joy, and putting children and climate at the center – this usually leads me in the right direction.
I can’t wait to see what our group is going to accomplish this year. And I can’t wait to see how more awesome our little one becomes. She’s growing up to be a wonderful girl, for those that care to take notice.
I think at some point when I was chatting with my sister, I realized that we aren’t a normal family. We have a lot of accomplished adults in their mid to late 40s that care about our country and society, and actually taking responsibility for things. It’s a heavy load, but I realize that it’s us that keep us going. I look at my brother-in-law (which I don’t share too much on Instagram because of the anti-military rhetoric) is a naval hero, and I admire him and it keeps me going knowing how much he cares and works on behalf of what he thinks is right. When you are in that milieu, it pushes one further in your goals and ambitions and responsibilities. It’s a heavy load but we keep on going on, and supporting each other and playing our roles.
Just meandering thoughts as we head into the holiday weekend. The election results were crazy and the world is a bit off-kilter these days. But I’m strangely okay. I just know what role I’m supposed to play in this timeline and I’m playing it. I find life vastly amusing for the little stories that are happening just locally in the climate space. When there is hardship, there is also vast opportunities. So I’m moving forward with our premedical team and we are going to make lemons into lemonade.
We are getting involved in the UC Irvine Hydrogen blending project, pretty much trying to help stop it. It’s just a wonky subject that is perfect for this brilliant premedical student that I am working with. So we’ve reviewed the information. I just submitted my own personal comments, and will be working with our student on this project. It’s the prefect project because it’s so wonky, so important and it entails the skillset I’m the best at – which is making NOISE! Oh, Dr. Plastic Picker can make tons of NOISE about this. Resolutions, op-eds, blogposts, webinars. There are a lot of ways to work on this! Yeah!!! Where there is a motivated premedical student and also a just cause, that is the secret sauce to a great project!
We are also moving forth with H3SD 2025 and the chief of urology has already jumped in as a new piece, and bringing a group urologists for social responsibility. I didn’t even know they existed but they exist and that is wonderful and they are coming! We are working with AAP District 8 and helping to make a District 8 (which is the whole western US minus California) heat and human health summit in May and I’ve gotten the initial green light to bring along our HMO to co-brand and help. I just Instagram messaged a contact (which is also a Harvard connection) from HMO Oregon and I think this should be relatively easy to get involved with to move the climate work forward.
So lots to do. But realizing that some of all of this is that we went to top notch schools and that branding and networking does help. It’s hard to admit that to our daughter who is in the middle of junior year. She’s doing really well and I’m proud of her. I still fundamentally remember that she is an ex 28 week preemie, and seeing her aim for a top Ivy League is humbling – when I’m just grateful that she is alive and every day I get to be her mother. But I am also not stopping her from reaching for her dreams. So this thanksgiving break we are mostly just resting and resetting after her finishing the trimester. Her brother will be coming home as well soon from his sophomore year of college and I’ve been deep cleaning his room and excited he’ll be sleeping in a room relatively free of dust and gross things in the carpet. That is my climate activists life! I’m still manifesting many things and there are so many possibilities about how this whole drama is going to end. But I believe in happy endings for everyone!
