~I'm Stepping Out Of This Old...Green...Shoe
2005-01-15 - 11:36 p.m.

There's something about typing on my laptop (which I'm not) that is so satisfying - especially when it's a journal entry. I kinda like the word journal better than diary; it sounds a bit more sophisticated. I think that "diary" somehow sounds rather teenish. However, it hardly seems fair on the poor word to consign it to the teenybopper world, when it's a perfectly appropriate noun. You may or may not have noticed that I therefore switch without prejudice between the two as the mood takes me.

I did not sleep very well last night. I went to bed far too late, anyway, and then had bad dreams about Nazis chasing shooting at me and a bunch of other kids (we were all children and teenagers). Then we were all at a Nazi prison camp and they had heard that one of the girls, a pretty Asian, I remember, was a wonderful performer of, I think, some kind of dancing. They wanted her to get up and dance in front of everybody, but she was tearfully reluctant because the dance (or song? Dreams can be so vague) was something precious to her and her family. They forced her to at gunpoint, so she performed the dance half-heartedly. Then the leader, because she hadn't been enthusiastic in her peformance, took one of those automatic guns-on-poles that you can swing around, told her to stand in the corner, swung it around and shot her.

I think I must've woken up around then, but I felt deeply unhappy and insecure for a while.

I've been rather heavy-headed all day and now my neck is feel soooo stiff. Luckily, it's not quite painful, but the stiffness is remarkably uncomfortable. The best thing was probably all the Aussies winning their tennis finals today (well, apart from Samantha Stosur, who played compatriot Alicia Molik, so we were always going to have one Aussie winner and one Aussie runner-up).

Dianne and Tim are currently over watching slides with the parents. I was watching them too until about 15 minutes ago. I find them interesting but I'm tired and my neck is stiff, so it's been hard to get comfortable and to stay comfortable. I'm also soo tired, and staring in the dark at the slides projecting up makes me sleepier. In the end, Dianne snapped at me once or twice and, the proverbial straw, Dad snapped at me. I'd already been scratching away at my scalp, as I tend to do when I'm getting a bit tired and sedantry, so when he finally spoke in that reprimandy voice, I knew that almost three hours of slides were more than enough for Tired Jan, and I came out here (remembering that I'd left the compy on).

I'm a bit sad to be missing out on the rest of the slides. Not only are they just rather interesting, they give a bit of insight into what Mum and Dad used to do before Dianne and I were born, what things were like in the world thirty years ago and how Dad used to live in his little Welsh village when growing up. But I'm too tired and too stiff - and too sensitive and easily grumpy, too.

I was wearing in my new shoes today, with the orthotic inserts. They fit in as much as they're not too small for the orthotics and my feet and they're not ridiculously long or wide. My only concern is that they seem a little too loose in the heel, which is not only annoying, it's also not really good for my feet. My pediatrist told me off for having my sneakers loose enough to slip on and off without undoing the shoelaces, so I've tried to be better ever since.

I've been thinking that I maybe need to get a CD walkman or iPod kinda thing or something. I haven't been walking at all since Christmastime. I lie, I went for a walk once last week but had to cut it short when I developed a blister from the inner heel bit of my shoe, behind my foot. Anyway, I generally go walking with Mum, but I've been thinking that maybe I just need to go on my own more often. I don't really enjoy walking on my own because it's boring and I intrinsically lack motivation for just leaving and wandering around my neighbourhood singly. The only solution I can think of is to take music with me, but I have no kind of portable anything right now. I should look into this.