September 8, 2022

by Dr. Plastic Picker

Now I’m realizing why in part the Iced Matcha Tea Soy Latte yesterday was so amazing, it has three scoops of matcha powder! That is a lot of matcha powder. Usually for my home hot version, I use one or 1/2 scoop and its mostly water and maybe 1 oz of soy milk. But oh wasn’t it wonderful yesterday. I’ll never forget that iced drink I had yesterday at the Starbucks at Vons located in PB. It was >90 degrees and my two tall teen children and I walked into the ultra-air conditioned grocery store. I left our oldest who at 17yo is well equipped with $20 in cash to buy three drinks for us. I wandered with our daughter 14yo to get more soy milk as I had run out of the organic soy milk I use for my morning drink. We stood there next to the freezer section and it was so blessedly COLD especially during the now almost week long heat wave in San Diego. I’ll never forget that contrast and that moment, the feeling of relief and cool air as we were looking for my soy milk amongst the other plant-based milks. And then after we paid for two items, meeting my son and he handed me unexpectedly iced matcha soy latte instead of my usual hot brew. He took it upon himself to get me the iced version, and it was the first time I had ever had the iced version and it was simply daebak!

And the whole day was daebak. I had not been on the computer system for four days, as it was the long holiday weekend and I took Tuesday off as the kids started school. I spent most of the long weekend working on our taxes and going through finances with a fine tooth comb. I’m the CFO of our family. It’s important for me to go through the details of all the charges and to stem any waste in our budget, so most of the weekend the children and Mr. Plastic Picker suffered from my constant, “what is this $14.99? $49.99!!! Another $1.99!!!” And even with all the nagging, we are amazingly consistent as a family and our savings rate is 52% year after year. And a large proportion of that is our 15 year refinanced mortgage at 2.75% and two private school tuitions for the children. Our high savings rate is mostly why when I say we are financially independent to save the earth, that I’m being honest. I could not work and we’d be fine. Mr. Plastic Picker was always the highest earner anyway, and we could easily within three years downsize our entire family to one of our smaller but very nice rental properties and drop our living cost to very little.

But there is no need because I find these every day moments extraordinarily daebak! Here is what I found on google looking up Korean slang words that I hear all the time watching Kdramas.

Was it just the iced matcha green soy latte that was so extraordinary? No. It was more. It was the homemade chocolate banana bread I gave my office neighbor, and he is usually so grumpy but was very appreciative yesterday of both the banana bread and my sending an email reminding everyone to finish applying for their MOC credit for an educational module I had done. It was picking up both children at 330pm and being able to make pick up and chatting with them about their day and settling into the new high school routine. It was how crispy the snap peas and carrots were yesterday at dinner, as we are trying to eat more carrots and snap peas thanks to our daughter. It was my morning jog when I jogged for about a mile and a half, and found a discarded jacket and a large empty glass bottle of champagne. I dropped off the discarded jacket in front of Goodwill, and then found a recycling bin for the glass bottle of champagne. It was noticing my heart rate getting into a good >120 beats per minute during my jog, and also during the first high intensity workout I have ever done with my daughter last night. Having my heart rate up is good for my heart, and I did it while strength training and having my most favorite human being in the world gently remind me that I can strengthen my core at the same time.

There were so many beautiful moments yesterday. There were extraordinary moments in what should have been an ordinary day. What a gift it was. I’ll never forget yesterday and I can now through the gift of blogging, return back and remember yesterday whenever I read my old blogpost. Grateful for all of it, dear readers.