We have four cars and three drivers in our household. Our 2006 Honda Odyssey Touring Edition Minivan has less than 80,000 miles on it. We don’t really have a need for it anymore. Owning this extra car takes up mental headspace. We pay the insurance. We pay the DMV fee. My father-in-law has to think about driving it once in a while so the battery does not die. I keep on offering the minivan to others to borrow, as it’s an asset that has definite value. It’s a wonderful car. It’s just we don’t need it but we own it.
Things I get to see while plogging. When one road is closed, just find another path.
September 2, 2020
by drplasticpicker
I am overdue to write this month’s Plastic Picking totals post https://drplasticpicker.com/plastic-picking-round-up/ and August’s Secondary Environmental Net Positives. I have a reasonable goal of 20 bags a month. This month I hit closer to 35 due to some big items left at several beach bonfires. I think I’ve salvaged over 100 items that were recycled or going to the GoodWill. There was a pair of gray vintage shoes that were still in a shoebox. I found reusable masks that are now regifted to other friends or upcycled as a office display on our daughter’s colorful and sparkly Build a Bear. I laundered them all twice. But I will write those post later this week because today is Wednesday (Hump Day) and I think everyone needs a bit of hope today!
Extra Crunchy Skippy Super Chunk. Ingredients Roasted Peanuts, Sugar, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (Cottonseed, Soybean, and Rapeseed Oi) to prevent separation, salt. <1> Recyclable plastic, but who really recycles it? Does municipal recycling actually do it? But what has bothered me for decades since I learned that Palm Oil is the cause of so much deforestration in Indonesia is the orangatangs. Orangatangs live in the rainforest where Palm Oil Plantations are proliferating. Palm Oil is in 50% of all consumer products in the grocery store. I’m not sure why, but our peanut butter is what has always bothered me the most.
But then I learned to make peanut butter! Here is my post where I talked mostly about my own personal finance plans but also how easy it was to make peanut butter. https://drplasticpicker.com/the-road-to-fise-so-easy-homemade-peanut-butter/ I know this is being cross-published in our clinic BOTAY newsletter, but remember this is Dr. Plastic Picker’s blog so I can talk about myself as much as I want. Indeed this is the 300th post on my blog where I mostly talked about myself (and the earth).
FISE stands for Financial Independence Save the Earth. I coined this phrase on New Year’s Eve 2019 https://drplasticpicker.com/fise-financial-indepedence-and-save-the-earth/. Since then I’ve written almost twenty blogs with this term. Maybe if I blog about it enough, it will become mainstream. Did you know that I am technically a Physician Personal Finance Blogger? I am included on Crispy Doc’s blogroll and the requirement is to have at least one new blog regarding personal finance every 3 months https://drplasticpicker.com/the-road-to-fise-financial-independence-to-save-the-earth/. This is an easy requirement for me. Since I am the daughter of an accountant and Financially Independent myself, I think of the world in terms of fiscal responsibility and dollars and cents. It’s just how I am wired.
Bag #272, Item #1003. I didn’t even realize I had gone over that threshold.
August 30, 2020
by drplasticpicker
Today is Dr. Plastic Picker’s birthday today! I feel like celebrating more than my real birthday. The day I came into the world, it was really my mom doing all the work. Dr. Plastic Picker’s birthday was my creation. Since I have been keeping track and declared that I am “Fighting Ocean Plastic Pollution One Piece of Plastic At a Time,” I have picked up 272 bags of ocean bound trash and salvagaed 1003 items.
I did not realize what a big deal last night’s climate win was. Solana Beach, a small northern coastal city, passed unanimously a Climate Emegency Declaration yesterday. The Solana Beach’s Climate Action Committee lead Dr. Mary Yang had been working on this with the city council members for months and maybe years. They had reached out to us as healthcare professionals to give comment. Yesterday, I called in with as one of four members of our Public Health Advisory Council for Climate Action Campaigns and gave public testiomy as a pediatrician.
Beautiful Trash Art piece by Emmy. Her mom is one of our fantastic nurses. Upcycled colorful medicine vial caps.
August 26, 2020
by drplasticpicker
This Wednesday kind of crept up on me. Since we went on a short trip to Palm Springs and returned on Monday, Tuesday seemed like Monday and Wednesday seemed like Tuesday. But the reality is that it is Wednesday. I realized that yesterday and knowing I needed to write this Hopeful Wednesday post lifted my spirits. My spirit is generally good these days, but the California Wildfires and the annoyance of the RNC nominating convention that I’m trying to actively ignore depresses my spirits a bit. But then one of our pediatric nurses sent this image to me of an upcycled trash art piece “Rainbow Fish” that she completed with her daughter. It is indeed beautiful and trash art gives me hope. Because through Trash Art, I have learned to look at the world a little bit differently.
I wanted to blog about my “new to me” sewing machine.
August 25, 2020
by drplasticpicker
I really wanted to blog about my “new to me” sewing machine. My sister handed it down to me last Christmas. We had a magical family vacation up in Park City, Utah where we were able to be together for a long time. Especially now that our home state and Utah are being scorched by wildfires and I haven’t seen my sister since Christmas, it was a magical snowy memory https://drplasticpicker.com/how-did-our-greener-christmas-go-10-ways-we-changed/. We snow-shoed through Utah’s Aspen forest, and I learned how Aspen forest are one living organism connected through their roots. The forest talked to me that day.
I take these pictures from the back without them knowing all the time.
August 24, 2020
by drplasticpicker
It’s our last morning here in Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Forest to mark our small escape from the COVID-19 quarantine. It has been six months and we went for a short 3-day 2-night reprieve to renew ourselves yet at the same time trying to keep safe with social distancing, masked and plenty of hand washing. The desert was pretty empty – Mr. Plastic Picker and I agreed that we unlikely caught COVID-19 here.
We are lucky in life. Upgraded by Hilton to the Presidential Suite due to a minor mixup. Mr. Plastic Picker tipped the nice woman who brought us extra bedding generously.
August 23, 2020
by drplasticpicker
We are settled in our first night of a short likely two night stay in Palm Springs. Like most of the world, travel plans the last six months due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic had to be changed. It was the first time in six months we have left the confines of our Southern California county. I felt slightly embarassed about needing to leave, but mentally I felt the entire family spiralling into irritability. Pre COVID-19, we had planned on visiting my sister in Northern Virginia. Our traveling compared to our same-income cohorts in the US is very limited and we spend considerably less just hearing what my friends tell me anecdotally. We usually visit family in New York and Virginia and then stay with them a few nights and drive a few nights somewhere else. We usually take one western US domestic trip as well and maybe every other year one big international trip. But even that amount of traveling is not sustainable for the world. I’ve always bought carbon offsets the last five years, but even that – does it even make a difference?
In front of the Hilton.
But we are here now in Palm Springs, an easy 2.5 hour drive from our hom We drove our trusty Prius that gets 50 MPG. I never truly appreciated this area growing up. Being from Coastal Southern California, I wanted trees and history. I preferred Yosemite, San Francisco, and the East Coast. This is probably why I lived in Boston for 15 years. But with age comes wisdom. And I’ve come to love Palm Springs.
