From the internet. Discord from My Little Pony. This is your enemy.
June 2, 2020
by drplasticpicker
It’s 617AM and this morning I will pick up my 200th bag of ocean bound plastic. I started this journey 10 months ago and the world today is a stark place. I began gathering the 200th bag yesterday and filled it with some mostly paper litter, but will need to finish it this morning. Dr. Plastic Picker is ambitious. For my 200th bag I chose a large kitchen garbage bag. I think everyone on Instagram will really like a big bag for the 200th one.
As I’ve mentioned to you, my patients in clinic and my own children, I do a lot of thinking when I’m picking up plastic. I started litter picking and ocean beach cleaning after emotional exhaustion from my work which is doctoring children. But nature healed me and the simple act of cleaning up our neighborhood helped me. When I pick up trash, I let my mind wander and I often think of you – my patients and my own children. Dr. Plastic Picker has been a pediatrician and a mother for too long. I found that rather than trying to escape work worries, I was able to think more clearly about all the forces that hurt children. And as a doctor, I naturally want to fight against those forces. One of those forces is Big Oil and Big Plastic that is trying to flood the environment with plastic waste.
Vegan in dinner last night. A third of a slice of cheese snuck in, so vegetarian but almost vegan.
June 1, 2020
by drplasticpicker
The country is hurting so much right now. I posted about #blacklivesmatter to be on record that I support racial equality and equal representation. I had friends who had reminded us on social media that silence equals consent for the status quo. As someone who is trying to influence people to decrease their plastic use, I know that this is true. But I did not physcially go protest. We stayed home. Like everyone else, I worry about the increased spread of COVID-19. with the mass demonstrations. But the truth is, this was going to happen because COVID-19 presents a real danger as does institutional racism. People had had enough. How much racist rhetoric and brutality can people take? I will go to work today and I am sure it will come up in clinic.
I just posted on my personal facebook page what I thought was a moving post about #blacklivesmatter. For the record Dr. Plastic Picker supports racial equality and equal representation for underrepresented minorities. I won’t post it here because I try to focus this blog on plastic and the environment. But when I reorganized the categories yesterday and tried to give them snazier names like changing “Interviews” to “Pediatrician & Eco-Warrior (Interviews),” I realized I have written a lot blogposts. One of the Secondary Net Career Positives from picking up now 198 bags of plastic and writing almost 200 blogposts is I am able to communicate my thoughts more effectively at work. I had to write a few longer pieces for work recently, and it was easy to write and those pieces flowed nicely. This is a very important skill.
Another Secondary Net Health Positive (I love being able to coin my own random phrases here), is that we have been eating more plant based, vegan, vegetarian meals and the entire family is healthier. The blog started off after I became frustrated paying weight watchers $29.99 a month. I had lost weight but I felt horrible. I would rush to Vons to buy a rotissiere chicken and put so much salt on it because it was 0 points on weight watchers. I do not even like meat that much, but following that program made me obsess over food like I’ve never done before. I realized something was wrong and I had to rethink wellness. Now I concentrate on picking up bags of plastic either #litterpicking or #beachcleanups and reducing the plastic packaging in our food. Trying to eat more sustainable has led us to a more #vegan #vegetarian diet. Above is yesterday’s simple dinner, which was Beyond Meat, store-brand pasta, and fresh tomatoes from our garden. It doesn’t look that special but it was delicious, easy to make and filling. We ate at about 3pm yesterday, and in the evening I snacked on some left overs and chia seed pudding https://drplasticpicker.com/five-high-fiber-plastic-free-breakfast-ideas-for-toddlers/. I feel so much better and Mr. Plastic Picker has noticed. LOL.
But let us get back to this series’ category and away from my random tangents. Here are the Secondary Environmental Net Positives for May 2020. I have really come to love this series because it prompts me to make small changes for the environment. I knew I wanted to get to fifteen changes for the post, so I finished lining the kitchen shelves yesterday with reused plastic coated science poster on asthma that had been sitting in my office for five years! Now my office is cleaner and I’ve protected our nice custom built shelves from the spices and sauces.
It is the last day of May and I think I’ve come to the natural conclusion of my time with Trip and T’pol in Star Trek Enterprise. I wrote a blogpost close to my heart regarding how being immersed in their romance helped me get through the last three months of COVID-19 quarantine https://drplasticpicker.com/the-star-trek-enterprise-romance-of-tpol-and-trip-im-going-to-give-them-the-ending-they-deserve/. I watched some of the fan montage videos and read more fanfiction that was on-line yesterday. I rewatched some of the key scenes from the first three seasons, and rewatched my favorite scene several times yesterday. The series helped me get through the last three months but at some point it is time to end this chapter. Sometimes the second or third time around you are experiencing just echos of the intense first moments, feelings.
Is this why people have extramarital affairs, sometimes without reasons continue to have many many children, or ask to change offices again? Are we always trying to recapture that intense first moment?
I am bag 196 today of ocean bound plastic gathered https://drplasticpicker.com/plastic-picking-round-up/. There is an entire litter picking/beach clean up Instagram world, about 800 that I am connected with, who “follow” each other. One of the beach cleaners just north of me found a set of dentures, and it was on her bucket list of things to find. Another person in LA mentioned that I was so close to 200. It’s an off-kilter group which I’ve come to enjoy being part of.
My happy place.I love love our house in Northern Virginia. Really nice pavers.
May 27, 2020
by drplasticpicker
It is almost the end of May and the third calendar month that we have been #shelteringinplace and #stay(ing)home. I talked to my sister yesterday and as a nonmedical person she gets frustrated that her neighbors are slowly breaking down those physical barriers, and may increase the spread of COVID-19. A friend traveling to a vacation area. Families now meeting in the backyard. While she holds the line because she has to make sure some important people remain protected. I’m the older sister who is a pediatrician, and I advised her to do what she knows is right. The world will do what it is doing, and we can’t stop the world from going what is it going through – but we should not accelerate it.
CNN and the major news outlets do not stress me out as much anymore. What is happening now in California is what we expected. We closed down early, and our rate of infections was slow. But now sandwhiched between the crazies in Orange County that are going to beaches without masks and our less medically equipped Southern neighbor Tijuana, of course our community will see an uptick in cases. We had thought through various prediction models and I think the Pediatric Infecitous Disease head had said also during one of the weekly lectures, that we should expect things to peak mid June. So here we are, rising slowly and peaking but slowly. We are not the travesty of New York City. But then people will get together like they did undoubtably like this last Memorial Day weekend, and there will be another peak. The second wave will come, and we are all just playing our bit parts.
It has been three years since I transitioned to physician middle management. This weekend was our three year anniversary of our six year term. I texted our group congratulations and reminded them that three years is a long time to do anything. Each of us have earned almost a bachelors degree worth of physician leadership, and another three years to go. Six years would be equivalent to a doctorate. At the three year mark in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I can honestly say I would never have traded this leadership experience for anything. It has been a challenging three years, and we’ve had adventure after adventure – but it’s forced me to grow professionally and personally. Sometimes painfully but always worthwhile. I have accomplished and been part of projects I never thought possible, and have been pushed out of my comfort zone and forced to grow as a sentient emphathic person.
One of the happiest moments of my life yesterday. I laughed so joyously. Mr. Plasitc Picker loves me and understands me.
May 23, 2020
by drplasticpicker
I’m not sure how you have been dealing with the COVID-19 quarantine, but I have been watching Star Trek. I mean A LOT of Star Trek. I grew up watching reruns of the original Star Trek. Spock, the Vulcan Science Officer, spoke to me. Even then, the action scenes were corny and the alien world settings unrealistic – but the storylines and the pseudophilosophical delvings into space and time and logic, touched something in my teenage heart. Then Star Trek the Next Generation ran 1987-1994, right during my middle school and high school years, I watched that too. I became a big fan of Captain Jean Luc Picard and his Shakepearan take on a Starship Captain. But there was not a great Vulcan on the show, so I have always been more of an Original Star Trek fan and of course Spock.
I strained my hip flexors on Saturday morning. It was a semi-embarassing injury because the mechanism was relatively benign. I was getting ready for a quick plastic picking session at the beach, and was trying to leave early to avoid the COVID-19 crowds. But I sat down too quickly onto the hard concrete step and strained my left hip flexors. A weekend of rest and motrin helped, but it is still somewhat achy on the left. I’m not sure if I will need to use a cane today.
Wouldn’t that be the greatest irony? I’ve talked about sacrifice and being ready to jump into the COVID-19 fray. I’ve posted pictures on my personal facebook with me looking serious in an N95 and facemask and full PPE, and then I get sidelined due to a middle-aged musculoskeletal injury. Mr. Plastic Picker strained his back around the same time. At least we are injured together, and it actually keeps us more home-bound and less likely to get COVID-19. There is always a bright side of things. I am making us seem more middle-aged then we really are! Part of the character I create, but based on reality of course. Mr. Plastic Picker and I are thinking of starting a home yoga program together. I remember buying a DVD years ago from Costco, so will try to find it.
But it is Wednesday, and I was not sure if I would have any items for a Hopeful Wednesday post. I had thought I had skipped an entire month because hope has been rare these days. But looking back on the blogroll, I actually did write a Hopeful Wednesday post two weeks ago https://drplasticpicker.com/5-6-2020-five-reasons-to-be-hopeful-this-wednesday/. That was very reassuring. I am generally a happy person and it would worry me if I was feeling that hopeless for more than two weeks.
Dr. Plastic Picker is similar to other pediatricians. We tend to be a more liberal minded democratic leaning demographic. We tend to vote for children-centric issues, which means more funding for education and more funding for social services. I do believe in the social determinants of health, and that large structural inequities need to be addressed. And of course Dr. Plastic Picker thinks Big Oil and Big Plastic need to be reined in to prevent the plastic pollution assault on our oceans.
But I also believe in free will and responsibility. I was raised in a very different definitely more conservative Republican leaning family and community. I remember going off to Boston for college, and a close family friend had predicted that moving to Cambridge would change my political leanings which it did. I became more liberal. But in Cambridge, being a Democrat in local politics was actually the most conservative option and there were actually communist on the ballot which I found very disturbing.
Chia Seed/Oatmeal Pudding. Low sugar and can be a breakfast! Cooking and photo credit by Daughter Plastic Picker (age 12).
May 21, 2020
by drplasticpicker (with daughter Plastic Picker’s help)
Parents are cooking more meals for their children during COVID-19 quarantine. We have continued to do well child visits for kids that require vaccines, and several parents in my practice asked me for breakfast ideas. I think the combination of more inactivity due to quarantine and more screen time, has worsened the pediatric constipation crisis and widenened the pediatric fiber deficit. In addition, when we are scared to browse through the grocery store – I think parents are falling back on more processed foods and that as you know leads to Taste-Bud Dysfunctionhttps://drplasticpicker.com/taste-bud-dysfunction-lets-dial-down-the-salt-and-sugar-in-snacks/.
