Christmas 2020

Christmas 2020 was unlike any other. It wasn't like the year we were married, when we went on a great American road trip over the winter break. It wasn't like the year we left town on Christmas Day to visit Baltimore, and I had to take a bus back to Pittsburgh 48 hours later in order to work the New Year's shifts. It wasn't like the last two years, when I worked nights over Christmas at the children's hospital (ask me sometime why that was so great!). So what was it like?

Christmas this year was reading The Light of the World: A Beginner's Guide to Advent by Jewish New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine with Rosamunda on a quiet Sunday morning. It was our Adult Sunday School book in December. We could debate what "beginners" means, since everyone from the pastors on down learned something new every week, but I'm not complaining. She writes the kind of thoughtful, text- and history-based theological books that you can read and re-read.

I came home from working my first Christmas Eve as an attending to discover that Dear Husband had cooked Montgomery Inn* ribs and Brussels sprouts for dinner, set the table with our good Christmas table linens, AND put on a suit. (*This Cincinnati staple came with Graeter's ice cream from his parents.) The church service on Zoom was very nice and included videos of DH playing the organ for the carols.

Christmas Eve I brought in fresh bagels; and on Christmas Day one of the fellows shared homemade cinnamon rolls. The residency program provided a catered lunch, which I finally enjoyed in "my office," mostly warm, at 2pm, until one of the residents needed me to chaperone a gynecological exam.

Nevertheless, I was able to sneak off in the afternoon to take a walk through the snow in Frick Park with DH while there was still some daylight. It was Pittsburgh's snowiest Christmas on record!

When my 9 straight days of COVID jeopardy and Christmas coverage were over, we finally time to do the baking that was delayed by DH's isolation for not(?)-COVID earlier in the month. We used J.S.'s famous sugar cookie recipe to make reindeer, snowflakes, Christmas trees, candy canes, eighth notes, und unicorns. Most of the 69(!) cookies were packaged up as gifts for the church staff.

Finally, Christmas this year was visiting the 80-foot Duquesne Light Company Christmas tree at the Point. Dear Husband had heard that the state park department had decided to end the 30-year tradition due to concerns about preserving the area and it not fitting into their historical mission, so we figured we had better check it out. Then 9,200 people signed a petition asking them to reconsider, and the last that I heard is they will do something smaller going forward. I can understand why, as everyone who visits has to trek across the muddy grass to get to where the strands of lights and garland are staked into the ground. But it is quite a sight to see from various vantage points along the rivers. After taking some photos, we used a gift card to pick up tacos from täkō to eat for dinner while watching Saturday Night Live sketches.

2020 is practically in the rearview mirror, which means it must be time to write my annual rememberlutions post. Stay tuned...

I rehabbed my stethoscope!

It was time. My trusty hunter green Littman II stethoscope had seen me through 4 years of medical school and 4 years of residency. (Also 4 years of graduate school, mostly on a shelf.) I bought it from the scrub shop in Champaign with some money from a dear family friend. The sound wasn't as good as the Littman III, but it was pretty good. I had originally planned to treat myself to a pediatric stethoscope when I got to residency, but then I decided the one I had would do well enough. 

In its last year, one of the ear pieces split, so I wrapped it with tape, because you have no idea how painful cracked rubber is when the weight of a metal chest piece is hanging from your ear canals. A friend gave me a replacement ear piece, but that quickly split too. (I don't know whether that was from being thrown in my bookbag or chewed on by a toddler. Oops.)

When I realized the tubing was cracked (below), I decided it was time to replace it. My in-laws gave me the money for Christmas to replace the ear pieces and tubing. Alas, hunter green was no longer available, so I'm sporting a dark blue stethoscope these days. But only after using a utility knife to hack the old tubing off the chest piece--terror, thy name is taking a sharp implement to one's functional if aging stethoscope. Also, I cut myself twice trying to recover the bell. Thankfully, it all fit together at the end. The last two pictures are me trying to auscultate Rosamunda to check the sound. She was suspicious.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

The house is finally decorated for Christmas! We tend to wait until around St. Nicholas' Day (December 6), because Dear Husband likes to keep the tree up until at least Epiphany (January 6).

Again this year we picked out a pre-cut tree from the Trees for Veterans stand in Homewood, where the sales guy makes friendly banter. This time he talked me into accepting a garbage bag full of clippings, some florist's wire, and a large red bow. After we got the tree into its stand upstairs, I made a mess on the kitchen floor fashioning a homemade wreath, to which I added some swag from prior years.

I would show you the handmade vintage Christmas tree skirt to which I treated myself from eBay, but it's stuck somewhere around Columbus. It's red and white with cardinals on it.

Also not pictured: the lights we put up on our porch and that of the abandoned house next door, to make the neighborhood more festive.

Spotted on the mantel next to the grand piano: the pinecone chorister I made in Brownie Girl Scouts.

On the shelf above the shoe caddy: a felt nativity from Palestine, our wedding invitation in stained glass, and steel map cut-outs of Pittsburgh and Baltimore.

On the entertainment center in the dining room: the poinsettia from Third Presbyterian Church, the straw nativity from the Czech Republic, and wedding photos.

In one of the cubbies: the glass nativity S.H. gave me in 8th grade, D. and B.'s wedding photo at the Inner Harbor, and the Kitty Godzilla birthday car DH gave me 2 birthdays ago. When you press the button, it "roars" and rocks back and forth like it's terrorizing the city.

There was a lonely middle section of Advent/Christmas, when DH and I spent 10 days living and sleeping apart after he woke up with COVID symptoms one day. (This was my view from the air mattress in the front room.) We aren't sure whether he got it from Best Buy on Black Friday replacing his laptop or if I brought it home from the clinic, but he tested "negative" and I didn't develop clear symptoms (everyone's a hypochondriac by now, right?).