March 28, 2022

by Dr. Plastic Picker

I thought this little friend I met this weekend was a Surfbird, but she’s actually a Black Turnstone. I’ll remember this past weekend for many reasons including a rare Black Turnstone that I don’t often see on the stretch of Marine Protected Area that I clean frequently. I’m at bag 655 abouts and I think I’ve made a dent. I think the world has made a dent. @drplasticpicker is above 1800 followers now and this blog continues to average between 400-1000 views a day. Who, I’m not really sure? But I have to believe that those that are following the adventures of Dr. Plastic Picker are also bending the arc of history toward a sustainable world.

It was such a lovely weekend that had climate projects mixed in, but mostly just being together as a family and trying to live lightly on the earth. I finally learned the power of mopping!!! Not sure how the world was fooled to think that Swifters were a good thing. We catch our shower water in a big found tub, and then I try to make sure that I use the clean water mindfully. Mostly I bring it down the stairs (safely) in watering cans so my mother-in-law can water our front and back garden. We never actually turn on the hoses outside because we are vigilant about saving our shower water. Here is a picture of the back garden that exists because we sold our extra car.

Our son’s best friend had to take a picture of “nature” for his photography course, and he stopped by for a brief time to the garden. And we gave him a watering can filled with water from the rainbarrels and I think I heard from my son, that our grandparents were included in some “nature” shots. They are the pinnacle of what a naturalist is!

We went to the hear the Mainly Mozart concert on Saturday, since in total for being a dual MD HMO couple we received four tickets from the firm. Mostly it was a beautiful view and venue, and we got to see our doctor friends freed from the confines of the HMO walls. It was a beautiful event and I told Mr. Plastic Picker that likely the HMO firm needs to spend money of these things to make deductions and whatnot, and it stays local to our city. I’m organizing an event for our HMO that costs $0. I wonder how much the lovely concert event cost?

Mixed in during the weekend, I worked on some climate projects that were fun. I finished making a promotional flyer for a wellness event in the wetlands. I thought I was pretty clever with the phrase in our internal emails “get your wet reads on the wetlands” and we are bringing HMO radiology, Girl Scouts and the San Diego Audubon Society togther. Organizing it was amazingly much easier than I thought. It naturally came together, as the date that worked for the radiologists was already a date that Kendall Frost Reserve was open. The bigwig from the UCSD Natural Reserve Heather Henter even said that she would come. Our daughter is actually doing an offshoot of this for her Girl Scout Silver Award with her best friend, and a local Girl Scout Troop wanted to participate so the 8th grade Cadette Scouts will lead a little program for two Brownie Scout Troops.

My brother and roommate stopped by for dinner on Friday, and we laughed and were together as a family. I had to retreat early due to my age upstairs that night, but I heard laughter as the young people and my teenagers played a new board game. The laughter and fun is something that is so important in life.

And I’ll mostly remember this weekend because I really had a good mopping session on our natural stone floors and will never buy swifter single-use products again.