Mothers' Day Shenanigans

This post is for childless women, so that we may vent. Women with children may want to give it and the comments (especially the comments) a miss. Mothers' Day is perhaps the most difficult day of the year for women who are childless-not-by-choice. Naturally, it is also difficult for mothers with nogoodnik children who never call or send flowers (or, more sadly, have died), but the mommy bloggers will probably have something helpful to say about that.


Tomorrow is dear Mothers' fine Day all in the morning betime
And I a maid at your window to be your valentine....

Er, no. But it is Mothers' Day in some countries in the world tomorrow, including Canada and the USA, and so there may be liturgical shenanigans at Mass. I have tried to spark a worldwide movement of childless women over 25 sobbing aloud and rending our garments when priests direct our more fortunate sisters to stand and receive our applause, but as far as I know, this has not stopped the priestly practice.

However, I am hearing more and more about priests' acknowledgement of childless women as spiritual mothers, and my mother contacted me on Skype to read me such a pastorally sensitive paragraph in her parish bulletin. Sadly, there was a terrible blooper about our dead mothers and grandmothers living forever in our memories, but I don't think this is necessarily a violation of the Nicene Creed, do you?

Anyhow, I forgot all about Mothers' Day because in the UK it was weeks ago, and it was both a shock and a relief when ye olde neighbourhoode flowershoppe in Toronto sent me an email saying my order had been completed. I had totally forgotten about it, so it's a good thing I ordered in advance.

You, however, if living in a country featuring Mother's Day tomorrow, may not have this luxury of forgetting, so this is my annual post to agree that being childless-not-by-choice sucks. Being overcome with terror that you may never have children also sucks. Being told (over the phone) that you will never become a physical mother is really, really terrible.  However, here I am still alive and counting my blessings. I have married-mothers-of-children friends who worry so much about what Modern Society will do to their children that they go grey or wrinkle before my very eyes. Let's face it: when it comes to crosses, being childless at in your mid-forties in a western country is not the worst one.

Mothers are important to society, and heaven knows how many times I have said "Whoever has the most children wins". Seriously, I almost had a meltdown last night every time this season's winner of Masterchef put herself down for being a stay-at-home mother of four. She said winning Masterchef was the most important thing she has ever done, and I almost rolled about the floor, frothing at the mouth. Every one of those four children is (or will be) a British voter, the inheritor and potential traditor  (i.e. hander-oner) of the great English history, heritage and language.

So mothers--super-important if not as important as contemplative nuns, whose prayers have kept total nuclear annihilation at bay. (That's my explanation for our mysterious continued survival despite the collective evil and stupidity of countless politicians.)  Contemplative nuns are a kind of spiritual mother, but so are all women, really. There are physical mothers who are quite obviously spiritual mothers to girls and boys who are not their own children.

Also, there are aunts.

Being an aunt, I am very pro-aunt. However, I am not merely an aunt to my siblings' children; I am an AUNTIE. An auntie is a woman who is a child's parents' (especially his/her mother's) friend. They say you cannot choose your relations, and this is true. However, you can choose your friends and that includes your friends' children. Nobody expects (or should expect) you to give gifts to children not-your-flesh-and-blood, but you can if you want to (and the parents don't mind), and occasionally I do. Whereas I always hope the child enjoys the gift, thinking it out, buying it and wrapping it up always give great pleasure to me.

This is one of the bright spots in childlessness. When you have no children of your own, you have more energy for the children of your friends and relations, who, if they like or love you, will be delighted that you share their interest in and good opinion of their progeny. Obviously you do not sulk if you don't get a thank-you note because almost nobody writes thank-you notes, except perhaps on Facebook. Needless to say, the thank-you not is not the point. You get your reward in advance through the high of hearing the cash-register go cash-ing! or through the fun you had making the present or imaging the child's joy.

Of course, I am lucky that I live far away, so I am never disappointed by a child's reaction, should it not be joy. Children can be brutal. When I was 14 or so, I was summoned to babysit a little girl, and her face fell when she saw me. "I thought you would look like a fairy princess," she said. Notice how that stuck in my memory. (As a matter of record, I did look like a fairy princess when I was about 10, so there.)

Besides children-children, there are teenagers to talk to, or influence, or mentor, or also to give presents, if their parents are okay with that. Teenagers are very interesting, and often very interested, and enjoy testing you and your ideas. I do not know many teenagers currently, but no doubt I will know more if I become a Girl Guide Captain, as is being plotted by women more strong-minded than me. Then there are university-age women, who should be introduced to other people (boys) their age and invited to parties with other people (boys) their age, and young brides, to whom can give tea, cake and a shoulder to weep on when aspects of their new life overwhelm them.  University-age men are easy to spiritually mother--you just feed them and house them when their roommates kick them out, etc. It's probably best  to house them only if you already have a man in the house, however, and they must never be given their own key.

Well, those are my thoughts on childlessness. If you have any, feel free to emote in the combox, but remember that long-time readers who are mothers are probably going to ignore my advice and read this post anyway. That reminds me: thanks again to Julia and others who have sent me Mothers' Day presents in the past. This is not a cadge for more presents (Amazon), but a reflection of how very touched I am when readers do things like that.

Coffee, My Downfall

Bother. Woke up at 5:15 AM and willed myself back to sleep until 6 AM. Got up, showered, cooked breakfast, brewed coffee, ate breakfast, checked timetable, skittered around trying to find book, put coffee cup (with lid) in knapsack, headed out the door, began sprinting for the train station and suddenly realized I was soaked through with coffee.

So that was that. Fortunately for my goal to go to Mass every day before the Chartres Pilgrimage, the 8 AM Extraordinary Form is not the only Mass in Edinburgh. I am very cross all the same. However, there's no point sulking that I have to catch the 7:13 train in order to get to a daily TLM. I could have had everything prepared before I went to bed, not to mention washed out my proper thermos.

It's funny: I had a conversation with a fellow pilgrim about how I think pain is highly overrated as a spiritual tool. This was not a very traddy thing to say, and I have been thinking about it ever since. For one thing, I have been doing all these practice hikes so as not to hurt too much during the pilgrimage, and they have acclimatized me to hiking when my feel hurt, hiking when I have blisters, and caring for my aching/wounded feet at night. So in a bizarre way, not only the exercise but the pain suffered from the exercise is helping me prepare.

Interestingly, it is more difficult to get to daily trad Mass than to walk 10 miles. Ten miles just takes a pair of good shoes and a handy trail. Daily Trad Mass in the morning means getting up at 6, getting washed, getting decently dressed, getting breakfast, finding the missal, getting a book for the train, getting to the station, remembering to buy the right ticket, transferring trains (if necessary) and then walking to the chapel. Daily Trad Mass at night means coping with rush hour traffic. How the elderly do all this is beyond me.*

The cheerful news is that I bought myself a new sleeping bag yesterday and although it is very snazzy--it should keep me cozy at 5 degrees Celsius and tolerably warm to zero--it cost less than it could because it is the CHILD'S version. Apparently I am the size of a large child, or the largest child, since the label warned that my height was the maximum it could accommodate.

I am absolutely delighted to have this snazzy space-age bag (in which I resemble a pale green caterpillar) because I can remember to this day how cold I was when I camped as a Girl Guide. It is quite cheering to compare my spartan sleeping kit of yore to my new rig-out. For example, as a child I slept on top of a groundsheet. Now I have a self-inflating air mattress. Maybe that's another gift of pain: the memory of it helps you to truly appreciate the comforts of today.

*If you do this yourself every day to get to work, my apologies for the world's smallest violin! For me the worst part is having to catch the 7:13 AM or there is no point in going.  At least with a job, the job is still there no matter how late you are!

The Polish Partitions

Good morning! It is Polski Piątek, so let us contemplate the three Partitions of Poland. Apparently the Nazi-Stalinist pact revealed in 1939 does not count as a partition. "Tylko okupacja!" said my Polish teacher, and who am I to argue, eh? I am keeping my powder dry until she blames the British for something, and then I will suggest the French generals or Roosevelt were to blame. Maybe I should prepare my argument po polsku in advance, so as to sound properly impressive.

It turns out that when my Polish teacher announced we were going to concentrate on politics this term, this was not an excuse to complain about the current Polish government but to teach proper Polish history. This is a great relief to my mind because the current Polish government is just too easy a target in Guardian-reading Edinburgh and my classmates might faint in horror if I mentioned that when it comes to life issues, the Polish Bishops Conference and I are at one.

As there are no Prussians, Austrians or Russians in the class, the Partitions of Poland are controversy-free in Polish 2.6. I recall with chagrin that I got the dates wrong in CWR, but this shall never happen again, for they have been impressed upon my brain by the sheer effort of having to pronounce tysiąc siedemset siedemdziesiątego drugiego roku  ( "the year 1772"), etc.

I Rozbiór (First Partition) 1772 r.   Poland, once a staggeringly powerful country with masses of territory (see exciting video below), was in a state of inner turmoil. Austria, Prussia and Russia drew up a treaty saying, in effect, "Hey,Prussia says we should take advantage of this situation. Let's do it!" So they toddled in and took away a third of Polish territory before the Poles could do anything about it.

II Rozbiór (Second Partition) 1793 r. Austria was busy fighting France, so this time Prussia and Russia drew up a treaty saying they could further annex Polish territory. This totally destabilized the Polish government and destroyed Polish manufacturing and banking. The economy was shot.

III Rozbiór (Third Partition) 1795. The Polish uprising (1794) led by Tadeusz Kościuszko vastly annoyed Austria, Prussia and Russia because of its revolutionary ideals as much as its threat to Prussian and Russian bullying. So they all got together and ended Polish self-rule, which made just as much sense to the Poles as Canada, Mexico and Russia dividing up the USA would make to American readers. (Mexico has the numbers, Russia has the cash, Canadians conveniently look and sound like Americans... Hmm. Hmm. Get back to me on this.) At any rate, there was no more Polish government and therefore no more Polish state for 123 years, but clearly there were still Poles.

Here is an amusing Polish video to illustrate all the above. Stick around for the end to watch Poland swell, shrink and swell again through the centuries:

Speaking highly generally, if your first language was Polish during this period of Polish statelessness, you were a Pole. Some argue that to be a Pole is to be a Catholic or at least a Christian (as well as Polish-speaking), but I am not going there. This is the sort of idea the Guardian wails over with barely disguised glee. Adam Mickiewicz and other Polish writers since 1795 have been very keen on the idea that there have been lots of patriotic Polish Jews, and I'm leaving it at that. Presumably Polish Tatars were also patriotic when they were not in cahoots with the Ottoman Empire.

Now the poor Tatars have to put up with foreign Wahhabist immigrants throwing their weight about--yet another reason why the Polish government is absolutely right to limit Islamic migration. Remember, boys and girls, when you are accused of being Islamophobic before some authority figure, this useful speech: "I like ordinary Muslims. It's the Wahhabist bastards I object to, and their attempts to destroy native Islams, like the faith and way of life of the Tatars in Poland." This should knock your enemy off-guard, as they will have no idea whatsoever that there is an ancient native community of Muslims in Poland, and thus you will have out-sympathized him/her.

By the way, as part of my preparation for my trip to Paris, I have been reviewing in Survival how best to survive a terrorist attack.  (Hint: I'm not fussed about the Huguenots or the Soixante-huitards.) The times we live in, eh?

Preparing for Chartres Pilgrimage

1. Spiritual: Daily Mass, prayer.
2. Intellectual: French review.  Because the Chartres Pilgrimage is a French pilgrimage, and we foreigners are just tagging along, and there's going to be a lot of French. Pimsleur, as always, is AWESOME!
3. Physical: Many long hikes, followed by intense care of feet. Much making of sugar-free recipes that can be stored in air-tight containers and taken on the road. Waking up at 6 AM every day.
4. Psychological: Much reading of excellent and exciting book called "Survival." Much consulting of pilgrims who keep telling me how painful the pilgrimage is, how exhausting and how badly their feet hurt by the end.

No Vigil Masses for Holy Days of Obligation in Edinburgh?

It would seem that there are no Vigil Masses for Holy Days of Obligation in Edinburgh.* This is surprising as there are several Vigil Masses for Sundays in Edinburgh, and whereas there are some people who simply have to work on Sundays, there are even more who work on Thursdays. Sunday: not usually a work day. Thursday: usually a work day.

"The point is that one is supposed to go to Mass on a Holy Day of Obligation," said my helpful informant, perhaps a little too strictly.

"Sundays are Holy Days of Obligation, and yet there are vigils for them," I pointed out. There's even a vigil for Christmas, come to think of it.

It's been a while since I had a good theological argument. However, I let it go with a kindly "Manpower issues, I imagine."  (At the current rate of attrition, Edinburgh-St. Andrews will have a grand total of 30 full-time priests in 2035.  Currently the diocese has about 129, including retirees.)

Anyway, there are a number of morning and evening Masses in Edinburgh to cover the Feast of the Ascension (tomorrow) which in Scotland has not been shifted to Sunday. Be aware that various church and Daily Mass websites are completely out of date, so your best bet is to phone the church-of-your-choice ahead of time if you can't get to your usual parish/Mass centre.

Further complicating matters for the faithful this year are the Scottish elections, which are also tomorrow. Sigh. Vigil Masses before a work day which also involves elections would have been very pastoral but, well ... manpower issues.

*UPDATE (7:13 PM): Source lacking information. The Archbishop himself is saying a Vigil Mass from 7 PM at St. Kentigern's in Barton. Sigh.

Ego Linguam Latinam Amo

I am reading Michael Erard's Mezzofanti's Gift, which is about hyperpolyglots like the eponymous Cardinal Mezzofanti. Like many anglophones, Erard bewails being locked in by English--having the world's current business language as your native tongue is as much a curse as a gift--and I was silently agreeing when I suddenly realized I functioned in four languages today: English, Polish, Latin and--if only a snippet--Greek.

As it's Traddy Tuesday, I will emphasize Latin and the snippet of Greek, which I heard at Mass this morning.*

Whenever I extol in print Latin as the language of the Western Church, some armchair linguist always writes in to say that the first language of Christian worship was Greek, so why don't I suggest we all pray in Greek? Or how about Aramaic? I don't doubt he thinks this a terribly clever put-down, but I do doubt he knows much Greek or more than five words of Aramaic, i.e. Talitha, kum, Eli (or Eloi), lamach and sabbithani.

Christian Latin is the first western language used only by Christians. St. Augustine, who did not enjoy Greek studies at school but absolutely excelled as a Latin orator, defended Christian Latin from fellow Classicists who sniggered at its borrowed Greekisms. "Ecclesia" was one such word, as is "presbyter" (from presubos).

It is true that the earliest Christian communities were Hellenic and that Greek was the business language of the day. However, in the West Greek was soon supplanted by Latin as the universal language. From Latin come several Western European languages, including French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Romanian. English is a strange hybrid of Germanic and Old French, and therefore Latin at secondhand, but a lot of Latin was added to English over the centuries in the realms of religion, law, governance, philosophy and science. 

Latin, shared more or less intimately by all Christian Europeans, therefore became a language that anyone who went to school in a western European country had to learn. Sure, you could learn French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, and on top of that German, Dutch, Norwegian, etc., but no doubt it was simpler for the average schoolboy (and girl whose parents thought she ought) to learn Latin. (I haven't the foggiest how many languages your average 11th-19th century European merchant's son was likely to know, but if he was going to know one, it was Latin.) A thousand years (or more, come to think of it) of pedagogical insight have gone into the teaching of Latin, which was taught universally to schoolchildren in the West until my mother graduated from high school. Après Mom, le Deluge. 

I am painting in broad strokes, as is my wont. As you may object, Latin did hang on in some schools and in fact I was taught Latin in Grade 9 and then in summer school, where I spent a blazing hot July. Whether or not I yet knew that the Roman Rite used always to be said in Latin is an interesting question. I strongly remember getting up the courage in Grade 13 to ask my history teacher how the Church was different before Vatican II, and he had to admit that he didn't know. (When the Toronto Catholic School Board was granted full government funding, it had to hire non-Catholic teachers.) 

I had been interested in Latin since age 12 upon reading Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Eagle of the Ninth, which my father had brought back as a present from a business trip to Britain. Goodness, how I loved that book. Anyway, I had a look at the first chapter of Wheelock's Latin Grammar, and my father explained to me how the Nominative and Accusative worked (Nauta Dorotheam amat; Dorothea nautam amat ), and I even had a (very) brief stint in a university night school Latin course.  Thus, it was a no-brainer that I would sign onto Sister X's Grade 9 Latin course.

Sister X was a tartar, well-hated by most (if not all) of the 800-900 girls in the school. I got the shock of my life when I discovered Catholic girls of my mother's generation had loved her. What on earth happened? Surely Vatican II cannot be to blame for that although nobody with eyes in her head could have supposed Sister X dressed better in 1985 than she did in 1963. To get a sense of what Sister X looked like in my day, conjure up Dana Carvey as Church Lady. 

I disliked Sister X along with everyone else, loathing her sneering sarcasm and her habit of giving you a mark of  0 if you did your homework in pencil. In fact, come to think of it, I wrote a story in which she featured as the villain, and it was published in a city-wide paper. However, Sister X did do one thing that stuck with me forever, and it was that she taught us how to sing Salve Regina in Latin. Rarely do I sing Salve Regina after Mass without remembering poor old Sister X, who (if she is still alive) has slipped into the twilight world of dementia. In fact, I went to see her some years ago, and although she didn't remember me, she certainly remembered how unhappy she was just before she quit teaching. Poor old soul. 

Sister X might have given me something else although the circumstances are not clear in my mind. I think it may have been a reward for writing a Cambridge Latin Exam; it may have included a sweetie, but maybe not. For sure it included a button (the pin-to-your-jacket sort) that read "Ego Linguam Latinam Amo." I absolutely adored that button. 

Where am I going with this? Oh yes. Let's jump forward twenty years (or, ahem, more) to St. Peter's Square, where Benedict XVI, still the pope gloriously reigning, was having a Wednesday audience. Father O, whom I knew when he was a 17 year old schoolboy, was on the balcony with His Holiness, introducing the English-language pilgrims. There were two or three other such useful factotums, introducing Italian-language pilgrims, Spanish-language pilgrims, et alia. And every time a group was introduced they cheered and waved their national flags like mad.  After a while of this, I started feeling a bit ill. There's a time for proud nationalism, no doubt, but during a Roman audience with the Vicar of Christ is surely not it. Benedict being Benedict, bless his red shoes, led the whole gathering in a recitation of the Lord's Prayer----in Latin, naturally, which meant that all the Canadians, Poles, Mexicans, Slovaks, et alia, prayed together, not as a sort of Junior UN conference, but as Roman Catholic Christians. 

Now skip ahead to today when I sat on the train in Waverley Station and contemplated the anglophone prison. There are people (although probably only Americans) who honestly think English should supplant Latin and (let's face it) Italian as the Official Language of the Church. I think this is a horrible idea, and it stinks of Anglo-American imperialism. English is (ha ha ha) the official language of the Asian Bishops Conference which gives Indian and Filipino heretics the edge over orthodox Koreans and Chinese. 

But that is a whole other can of worms.  Suffice it to say that I am delighted that when I go to Mass, I escape the limits of being a native English speaker and of having been born after 1970. Not only am I sharing in the experience of all other living Christians who attend the Latin Mass, I am sharing in the experience of countless generations before mine. This linguistic unity especially beautiful when there are altar servers of various nations on the altar, all saying the Confiteor together, not one having a national-linguistic advantage over another. 

*Lest I appear holier than I deserve, I should explain I don't usually go to Daily Mass, but I'm in training for the Chartres Pilgrimage. Quote from Latin-praying priest: "You walk too much!"

The Cardigan Fits

It is Week 2 of my Eight Week diet, and I am happy to report that my woolly powder-blue cardigan fits. Our bathroom scale is wonky and I can't find my fabric tape, so I have to depend on my clothes to tell me if I have lost weight or not. My mother always diets to fit back into her clothes, and here I am doing it, too. Yes, one thinks long-term about how awful diabetes, heart disease and cancer are, but in the short-term, one would like to wear one's spring dresses now that it is spring.

Food is always interesting, even (or especially) when you aim to eat no more than 800 calories a day. (Naturally I would never recommend such a thing to a teenager, a young woman or someone with a history of eating disorders.) Forbidding yourself refined sugar, wheat flour and prepared foods adds to the interest. For one thing, you stop and read the ingredients listed on every package, you read curious new cookbooks, and you buy new foodstuffs from health food shops. The top priority is packing as many nutrients into those 800 calories as possible. 

Fortunately, breakfast is always easy as I am long used to making oatmeal porridge. Apparently oatmeal porridge is almost magical in its life-giving properties, and there is no reason to put sugar on it if you mix in blueberries or strawberries. It tastes more satisfying with a dollop of yogurt on top than with milk, which is a nice new discovery.

Then there are a number of delicious foods one can have for other meals, like eggs, herring, salmon, hummus, chicken, an ounce of cheese, a quarter-cup of nuts, an eighth-cup of seeds, vast forests of spinach, etc. The tricky thing is weighing everything to make sure you aren't exceeding your 800 calorie allowance. Drinking 2 litres of water turns out not to be a challenge when you are on 800 calories. I am up to about a half litre of herbal tea a day. 

I have been asked how Benedict Ambrose is doing, which is a fair question. I was determined not to let my diet interfere with B.A.'s life, but this is difficult as B.A. usually does most of the cooking and believes in generous portions. The poor chap assumed that brown rice has a low Glycemic Index (at 50, it is much higher up than Uncle Ben's 38).* It is also 216 calories a cup, which is fine for a normal diet--even if you are given a whole cup--but not so fine for a severely calorie-reduced one. Also, B.A. likes to eat at 8 PM, which means either a 6 PM snack or a raging headache for me. Thus, I have had to disrupt the family eating regimen. In short, that B.A. has a pork chop and a baked potato at 8 no longer means I am having a pork chop and a baked potato at 8. Meanwhile, the evening the sugar-withdrawal kicked in was not a happy one. Rarely do we raise our voices, but on that occasion there was a slight atmospheric alteration of the historical roof. 

However, not all is adjustment and strife. Benedict Ambrose has enjoyed some of the new dishes I have been making. Homemade hummus with real tahini was a great hit, preferable to my own low-fat, no-tahini version. My first experiment with farinata (made from gram flour) was edible but odd, so we are going to try other recipes. B.A. also likes the "Eat Real" hummus chips from Real Foods, which are a fantastic substitute for potato crisps. (As prepared food, they shall be eaten primarily by B.A.)

Meanwhile, I decided to honour Sunday by relaxing my personal 800 calorie rule and doing some baking from The Low-Sugar Cookbook by Nicola Graimes. First I made the Coconut, Banana and Oat Cookies (p.208-9), and then I made the Apple & Raspberry Flapjack Pie (p. 220-1), which is basically flourless apple crumble (i.e. crisp). This last has 2 Tbsps of honey, brown rice syrup or maple syrup, so I found it incredibly daring.  I put an experimental drop of honey on my tongue, and it was the sweetest, deepest, most honey-like substance ever. It zinged into my bloodstream with loud music and crashing of cymbals. When anti-sugar people swear sugar is a drug, they aren't kidding. 

The Coconut Cookies are only so-so, I think, but B.A. says he really likes them. When I eat cookies I expect sweet, and these are not sweet cookies. However, they do taste of coconut and banana, which are good flavours, and toasted oat is very nice. The raw cocoa nibs, which illustrate how important sugar, no matter how little, is to the making of chocolate, taste pointless on their own, but do add an indefinable something to the cookies.

The Apple & Raspberry Flapjack Pie (which at 325 calories a portion shall be only a Sunday treat) is the best apple crumble/crisp I have ever made. It's absolutely scrumptious. The secret is to use eating, not cooking apples, as they are already sweet, and the addition of small amounts of nuts and sesame seeds. I have always used oats in my crumbles/crisps; here no addition of flour is asked for. The result is crunchy, fruity goodness. It is sweet but mostly because eating apples and raspberries are sweet. No doubt the honey--I made 2/3 of the recipe, so that was 1.5 Tablespoons--did its work, too. 

It is perfectly possible to hike 5 miles on this diet, for I have done it three times. Earlier this week I walked about 10 miles and on Saturday B.A. and I did at least 5 miles. I was not at all hungry. In fact, I don't feel hungry except in the mornings, when I go directly to the kitchen upon waking and start my porridge. When food is in front of me, I certainly eat it. However, "I must eat now" now belongs more to reason than the appetite. That said, I bring a packet of pumpkin seeds with me on my journeys. 

Sadly, there has been an unexpected challenge from an entirely different quarter. The walking has been murder on my left heel, and I may go back to the pod to complain. However, at this stage I don't think the bony deformity is to blame. Never having used blister plasters before, I eagerly used one on a beginning blister, only to discover new blisters sprouting up under the sticky plaster edges: now I literally have a blister on a blister. At the moment I have a good old-fashioned cloth handkerchief taped to my heel, and I am not stirring from the house until late afternoon. I very much hope the blisters are all gone by Thursday, when my companions and I are going on a 10-12 mile walk. 

*That said brown rice has a relatively low Glycogen Load of 16. (I'm still figuring out the GI/GL relationship). White rice has a GL of 43! Kraft Dinner has a GL of 32! The big surprise is premium ice-cream... Well, look here.