Little Sherri

Both kids are out of the house today, so I put on a Rearz Lil' Splash size large under some jeans and a t-shirt, and am enjoying how they are rising up out of my jeans at the back and forming a "diaper shelf" that my shirt comes to rest on basically anytime I move around and don't pull it back down. Waistband diaper excursions used to be my nemesis, but most of the time now, I wear a diaper shirt onesie that keeps everything snug and hidden. Most high-profile "diaper humiliations" that I experienced as a kid occurred as a result of waistband sightings, so I have always been paranoid about this possibility, hence my investment in onesies. The Pampers of the 80's weren't extremely bulky, and their crinkle was well-muted under corduroys or jeans, although they talked more under pajama pants. So, the "give away", other than a wet spot, was a line of white plastic at the lower back. I didn't have onesies back then, so I used to wear my longest shirt, if I had to leave the house in diapers, and tuck it as far as I could, and conduct frequent status checks, while also being aware that constantly tugging my shirt down also served to highlight exactly the area I was trying to hide. Sometimes my mom would also tug the back of my shirt down, although I didn't like her doing it, because she would tug it down on the outside of my pants, which wasn't as reliable as my tucking it in. I wonder when I first started becoming self-conscious about what I was wearing. I have no recollection of a specific event, or, indeed of any of that evolution. I just know that as a youngster, I'd play on the floor or climb around the playground, utterly unconcerned about what might be seen, and then at some point, I became more private about it, and eventually, I developed what could only be described as fairly intense diaper anxiety, as I grew older. Of course, by then, wearing a diaper other than at home was much less frequent. But it strikes me that this path I'm on currently essentially represents a reversal of the developmental process I just described. As an adult rediscovering this aspect of my psyche, I started out, years ago, wearing pull-ups or diapers ONLY when I knew I was entirely alone, and likely to remain so, and even then, usually under clothing, wary of a knock on the hotel door or a delivery that had to be signed for or a neighbour dropping by, let alone my wife. I hid them like they were radioactive material. Sometimes I packed what I could and threw out the rest, if I were going on an extended business trip, lest my wife decide to organize the basement or my office, and stumble upon them. I progressed to wearing diapers under clothing, often under my underwear, for a couple of hours here and there, or crawling into bed wearing one, after my wife was asleep, but, I was so choked up with anxiety that I barely slept at night, and if something emergent happened during the day that required my involvement - say, the couch needed to be moved or something got spilled or broken and needed cleaned up (with kids and dogs around, this happens...), I would bolt into the washroom and toss my diaper before wading in. Gradually, I became more comfortable wearing a diaper. I was still cautious, but, I would, say, leave my hotel room (with clothes on!) to get something from my car, without taking it off. But I'd take the stairs in case I ended up in the elevator with someone, such was the extent of my concern about how obvious what I had on might be. I never flew with them in my baggage - I would buy them when I arrived, generally Goodnites or similar, and toss anything I didn't use before my departure. Eventually, cautiously, I might be willing to go out and fetch takeout. A couple of times I ate in a restaurant, but only one on site, nothing that required a drive. Fast-forward to where I am now, a few years later, coming up on my second anniversary as a 24/7 diapernaut. I travelled with a suitcase 1/4 full of diapers (back when one could travel). I wore one on the plane. When the kids are out of the house, or asleep, I wear diapers without a care in the world. I don't obsessively tuck my shirt into my pants. Indeed, sometimes, I'm not in pants. I sleep in one every night, and I sleep, well, like a baby, most of the time. I have gone back to where I came from, essentially - blissfully, unconcernedly diapered, at least sometimes. It's been an interesting journey, and I don't feel like I'm done with it yet. I wonder if that's the "reason" for all this - taking control back, as an adult, over something I had no control over, when I was a kid?

For some of us who grew up in the 80's, attending a Star Wars movie was almost a religious experience. I was too young to see the original Star Wars or Empire Strikes Back in the theatres, but when Return Of The Jedi came out, it was an epic event. This was back when VHS access to movies was in its infancy, and you couldn't summon movies from the ether at will, you had to wait for them to come on TV. Eventually rentals became an option. So nothing competes with Star Wars in terms of significance - it was burned into my psyche when I was at a tender age (much as diapers were!). That said, my enthusiasm was dimmed considerably by the prequels. Meanwhile, I fell in love with watching TNG on TV. So, it is possible to love both, but, my love for them is separate and different, almost like my love for dogs versus my love for pizza.

A somewhat unfortunate, but also interesting development. She is communicating on the topic, just not verbally. My betrothed hasn't specifically stated that she does or does not prefer me to wear something to bed. When it was deeply cold out, I tended to favour pajama pants, but now that we're getting into the (low) positive temperatures, I'm tending to sleep in just a diaper and a t-shirt, which is my preferred sleepwear. She has a couple of times served warning that she expected one of the kids, generally my oldest, to drop in for something or other, when it's past the time that such a visit would be expected. She'd generally say "you should put something on, child A is coming in to discuss X". I normally don't operate in just a diaper until probably 10 PM or so, when youngest is asleep and oldest is on an all-night video chat, and YouTube, and Netflix. As a side note, I remember saving up to buy walkie talkies as young teen, so that I could chat with my buddy, who lived a couple of houses over, without concerns about either of our older sisters demanding to use the phone, or, restrictions about how late we could be on the phone, etc. How quaint. As an added bonus, sometimes we'd end up intercepting communications among commercial truckers. Who would have imagined back then that our children would someday be able to communicate at will with strangers in Belgium.

The Lil' Splash are a great diaper for sure; I always have either these, or Lil' Monsters in stock, and I wear them day or night. Another staple for me is the Rearz InControl Essential; these are more or less interchangeable with the Northshore Megamax; both have great capacity and reliability.

Pampers for me, because I grew up in them in the 1980's, primarily plain white ones. Although I do have a soft spot for Huggies and Luvs, because they came to greater prominence, at least in my recollection, sometime after I outgrew needing to wear diapers, but, right around the time that I was coming to terms with the fact that I still wanted to wear them. So I would see the commercials for Huggies and Luvs, as an 11 or 12 year-old, and wish that I could fit into them.

My temporary moratorium on purchasing diapers, while I burn through my stock of half cases and quarter bags, is having the desired effect. Yesterday, having exhausted all the diapers I had in my bedroom, I took a black cloth shopping bag down to the basement, and pulled out my boxes of diapers, opened them, and commenced selecting about 15 or so for restocking my dresser, and jamming those into the Bag of Disguise, lest I encounter my children in my travels. As an aside, I started doing this about 18 months ago, after I walked upstairs with, mercifully, only a small stack of diapers under an arm, only to run into Daughter #1 running down the stairs. Which caused me to pivot like I'd forgotten something vital, head back downstairs while holding my infantile underwear in front of me, and then, once I'd turned a corner in a direction I assumed would be opposite to her intended path, I jammed them under my sweater. Having selected a mix of common (several Lil' Monsters & Splash's, medium Megamax's, BetterDry's) and uncommon diapers (a Bambino Classico, a Rearz Alpaca, a large Megamax) for the week, I turned to consolidating my remaining inventory, and I was able to collapse everything down to four basically full cases, from six. That also took me down from occupying three shelves to occupying two, although I should have put a placeholder sign on the ones I vacated ("reserved"), because I may at some point have to cache product there again. My plan, if it can be described as such, is to burn through another case-sized box, while favouring my medium Rearz diapers, because I want to completely divest myself of those holdings - too many frontal leaks have occurred over the past couple of months. Other than with Megamax, which has a slightly larger cut for their medium products, I no longer plan to buy anything in medium. I had thought that their reduced bulk would be useful for some day-wearing situations, and they have been, but at the expense of reliability. I've taken to wearing them under plastic pants, and that cancels out a lot of the bulk reduction benefit I was looking for. I also used to wear those mediums of various models as single-tab diapers on occasion, primarily out of a nostalgic preference for having one tab on each side, because all the diapers I grew up in were constructed thusly. I remember being a bit unsure, when I bought my first "adult" diapers, if I would ever come to enjoy wearing double-tab designs. I have come around to them, needless to say, although I still don't relish triple-tab's, which end up looking like plastic gym shorts, and remind me more of yawning graves than of cribs. These leaks have dispelled me of any single-tab frippery, however. If I use the lower tabs to secure the leg openings, despite the fact they barely make it over to the landing zone, I can then use the top ones exclusively to keep the waistband snug, which discourages Northward migration of fluids. I will say this about these medium Rearz products: I am not abandoning the line, merely moving up a size. First of all, I really like having a couple of printed options - my tastes seem to vacillate back and forth between white diapers (again, the underwear of my youth), and, the cute printed diapers that I wished I could wear, most of which hit the market shortly after I outgrew their plain predecessors. But, as importantly, the Rearz Lil' Monsters and their ilk are at a good intersection of price, capacity and minimized visual bulk. They also hold up extremely well to active wearing; I spent part of this weekend helping a friend repair a barn, and my diaper, a Splash, held up great. Try that in a Tena. My takeaway is that there is not a lot of ladder climbing in palliative care settings.

I have a number of friends who are getting to a certain age who have mentioned that his has become a fact of life for them, and I have occasionally wanted to ask if they ever considered wearing a nappy, but, I've stopped myself. It's just not a solution most people consider voluntarily. Which is really too bad. They're actually quite comfortable. Beats the hell out of getting up three times a night, if that's how one is coping. I, on the other hand, appear to be going in the opposite direction for some reason. I put a dry diaper on right before bed last night, and I woke up this morning with it dry. As soon as I got out of bed and stood up, I had an immediate need to pee. I go back to carbon monoxide as a probable explanation. Well, my wife made physical contact with my diaper; I made some smartass comment on a topic we were discussing, and she swatted me on the butt. I was wearing a t-shirt and a Rearz Lil' Monster. I'm not going to lie - I got an immediate thrill out of it. I don't think she'd ever go any further down that road, but one takes what one can get. I'm not sure in any case if I would actually want her to interact with them to some greater extent, or not. I have read posts here by people who are occasionally lovingly diapered by their significant other, or someone else, and it sounds really nice, in theory. At some point, I probably want to experience that, but, I don't know where my head lies with respect to her doing it - putting myself in that essentially submissive position, the power dynamics, and also the strange interplay of "mothering" behaviour that also has "fetishist" and sexual undertones. If she were into it, that might be a different story, but if she essentially thinks it's weird, and goes through the motions while harbouring distaste for what she's doing, I don't think I want to inflict that moment on her or on myself. I other news, I pushed a Rearz Essential to almost its breaking point yesterday, and I think I need to keep a couple of diapers in a drawer in my office. Usually, when my diaper hits 75% or so, I can find 5 minutes to run into the house and change it, but, yesterday, it was back to back to back calls, and maybe 30 minutes after I shotgunned a Diet Coke, a nearly-equal volume of liquid started dribbling out of me, and I could feel it wondering around beneath me, trying to find a place to call home. The diaper did amazingly well - I got one quarter-sized leak on my left hip where some of the moisture followed a path along the side of the diaper and slipped out. But then I had to wait for the end of the call I was on, and run into the house with a now-bulging diaper on, hoping that I wouldn't encounter the kids as I dashed up the stairs to my room to get changed. That thing landed in the bin with a thud that probably registered on a seismometer somewhere.

Good point, @KittyMerriweather; do you have an idea what the duty is on products like this? I've never imported anything directly. I live in the GTA so I'm relatively close to a couple of outlets that, between them, offer a good selection, and I can usually do curbside pickup so I don't have to pay for shipping.

Interesting video. I'll have to check out the Walmart size 7's - haven't seen those in Canada, but I haven't shopped for diapers in a Walmart in a while. They seem like the biggest of the size 7's. I would imagine that we won't really see any manufacturer pulling way ahead in terms of the dimensions of a size 7 diaper, because a quick glance at a height/weight/age average chart shows 41 lbs as being at the far end of the bell curve for a toddler, and not an uncommon weight for an 8 - 9 year-old. At that stage of development, kids tend to increase more in height than they do in waist size, as their weight goes up. I found a sizing guide printed on a packet of Walmart girls' briefs, and it suggests that someone weighing 43 lbs would have a 22" waist, while someone weighing 66 lbs would have a 24" waist, and any size 7 diaper would have more than enough stretch to go well beyond that. 66 lbs is within range of a common weight for a 10-11 year-old. From personal experience, my daughter would still fit in one of these when she was 10, and, at that point, the manufacturers are essentially competing with their own respective pullup brands. While the parent might prefer a diaper, most kids probably prefer a pullup, which I'm guessing is why there has never been a size 8, for example.

Sorry to hear that, @DailyDi. Tonsil pain is the worst, so distracting. I used to get that all the time, although it has been quite a while (knock on wood) since I had a tonsil infection. They considered taking them out when I was a kid, but in the end, they decided not to, ostensibly because medical science had moved toward viewing tonsils as more than just a useless vestigial part, so you had to have history of extensive issues before it was worth the risks associated with their removal. As an aside, as a kid, when they were talking about possibly removing them, I recall wondering if they'd make me wear diapers in the hospital, because I wore them to bed at home. Would my mom tell them? I was both anxious about, but also intrigued, by the idea of having to wear them in the hospital. Would someone try to change me? Could I do it myself? Would the diapers be weird? (I pictured them as being giant adult diapers, although in all likelihood, had it been necessary, my mom would just have brought a couple of mine from home.) Could I get out of bed and use the bathroom? I had never been in the hospital. Back then, they also kept you in at least overnight, whereas now, after a tonsillectomy, people generally get discharged the same day.

Another copy-over; it was just announced that Bambino now ships directly to Canada, so I went to the site and had a look. Here is how they break down: The pricing on the site is in USD, and when I converted it to CAD, and added the shipping (also in USD), the total for a case of 48 Classico's is $3.05 CAD per diaper, which is considerably less expensive than they cost through most distributors here. I've seen them for an average of $5 CAD per diaper with shipping, which makes them way, way more expensive than, say, Northshore's Megamax, or anything made by Rearz. This actually puts them back into contention as an everyday diaper. Having said the above, I will have to evaluate them again - I have some in stock, but when I did my recent comparison between all the top-tier products in my inventory vying for inclusion on my "always have in stock" list, I didn't spend a lot of time comparing and contrasting them to the Megamax, or Rearz Essentials or Elite's, because they were so much more expensive that they amounted to a special occasion play diaper - I couldn't consider them as an everyday option. But at $3 a piece, I will have to wear one back-to-back with a Megamax and see how they compare.

Interesting. I just had a look, and while the pricing on the site is in USD, when I converted it to CAD, and added the shipping (also in USD), the total for a case of 48 Classico's is $3.05 per diaper, which is considerably less expensive than they cost through most distributors here. I've seen them for an average of $5 CAD per diaper with shipping, which makes them way, way more expensive than, say, Northshore's Megamax, or anything made by Rearz. This actually puts them back into contention as an everyday diaper.

I've copied this over from a thread that @Stroller started elsewhere, because of my desire to collate all of my experiences in one place. He had mentioned bedwetting progression after having started sleeping in diapers. *** I can't make heads or tails of my nocturnal wetting situation; for a long time, I seemed to be tracking a bit behind @oznl, in terms of my "progress", if one can use that term. But that isn't the case at the moment. Background: I slept in diapers for about a year before I started on my 24/7 journey, and during that period, with *maybe* one exception, every time I wet, it was deliberate. If I woke up with an urge to go, I had to push, almost to the point of straining, for it to happen. I was an inveterate and accomplished bedwetter as a kid, and as an adult, I have had the odd, very sporadic incident, but we're talking about maybe a couple in 5 years. I leaned into this as an explanation for why I was wearing diapers to bed, when I finally confessed to it, but, in truth, wearing a diaper to bed every night is the equivalent of wearing a helmet at all times. Could be useful. Probably won't be. But, once I started wearing 24/7, I quickly got into the habit of answering nature's calls as soon as they come in, and, after four or six months of weeing every 15 - 30 minutes, surprise, my comfort in holding, and ability to hold, had declined. Thus, I began experiencing more demands for relief overnight, and this actually became a bit of a pain in the ass - I used to sleep through pretty soundly most of the time. However, I became adept at surfacing, waving at the guards manning the gateways, and then drifting right back to sleep, and I wished that at some point I might reach a place where I didn't have to "permission" events anymore. Which started happening once in a while, usually correlated with a night on double IPA's or GSM or Cab/Merlot. However, lately, I'm not waking up at all overnight anymore, or if I do, it's very close to when I normally get up, and I'm usually dry, unless I was a bit wet before I went to bed. (I usually try to start the night in a dry diaper, but my schedule gets thrown around by other demands, and if I put a diaper on at 9 PM, and it still has 80% of its capacity available when I call it a night, I'm generally not going to bin it.) The exception being, of course, if I've spent a night with Lady Ethanol. I also am not drinking as much water as I did overnight - I used to always wake up and have a sip of water at some point, and generally a wee at the same time. I'm not sure why this is the case, but I'm not going to complain to my doctor that I'm sleeping too well, and never have to pee, which would be precisely the opposite of what nearly everyone in my demographic (middle-aged man) complains about. However, as I sit here typing this, I need to pee about every 20 minutes. So, the dissonance between my overnight performance and my alleged daytime requirements leaves me wondering how much of this is in my head. But I'll tell you, if I try to go an hour without peeing, I will be getting none-to-subtle jabs from down below, and once it starts happening, there will be no stopping it, other than to physically pinch myself off - I have had the disconcerting feeling in the shower of staring at myself, dribbling, WILLING it to stop, and it does not stop. That, as far as I can tell, is not a product of my imagination. So why no bedwetting? No idea.

The math is similar here in the Frozen North (although, as an aside, it has been gloriously "warm" this week - IE between 3 and 6 C during the day, which, after a February of -20, has me wanting to wash the car in a t-shirt...). 10 L of your average 7%+ IPA would run me $80 CAD in 473 ml cans. I can make 18.9 L of it for about $45 in ingredients, although that totally ignores the cost of all the equipment I had to buy to be able to do that. But, consumables only, $23.80 for 10 L. Thus, my theory is, the more I brew (and drink), the less my equipment costs add to each litre I consume. At some point, the slope of the curve approaches zero. As the odometer on my liver approaches throwing an error message. I also am not buying ingredients in the most cost-effective manner I could; I tend to design recipes online and have exactly what I want milled and bagged for me, along with hops in 1 oz packets (lots and lots of 1 oz packets). If I started buying bags of un-milled grain and larger quantities of hops, I could drive the cost of a good beer down to maybe $30 for 18.9 L, and a watery lager could be made for pocket change, if I ever decided to do that, which I probably will not. But I made 5 gallons of what I think is a pretty convincing Pilsner for $27 in ingredients a few weeks ago. And if I didn't spend money on brewing equipment, I'd probably have killed myself on a motorcycle by now, or, I'd be racing radio-controlled helicopters or something. Then dropping $3.75 CAD a can for IPA to drink while talking about the helicopters. You have to do something.

I definitely concur with this. Although I can't make heads or tails of my nocturnal wetting situation; for a long time, I seemed to be tracking a bit behind @oznl, in terms of my "progress", if one can use that term. But that isn't the case at the moment. Background: I slept in diapers for about a year before I started on my 24/7 journey, and during that period, with *maybe* one exception, every time I wet, it was deliberate. If I woke up with an urge to go, I had to push, almost to the point of straining, for it to happen. I was an inveterate and accomplished bedwetter as a kid, and as an adult, I have had the odd, very sporadic incident, but we're talking about maybe a couple in 5 years. I leaned into this as an explanation for why I was wearing diapers to bed, when I finally confessed to it, but, in truth, wearing a diaper to bed every night is the equivalent of wearing a helmet at all times. Could be useful. Probably won't be. But, once I started wearing 24/7, I quickly got into the habit of answering nature's calls as soon as they come in, and, after four or six months of weeing every 15 - 30 minutes, surprise, my comfort in holding, and ability to hold, had declined. Thus, I began experiencing more demands for relief overnight, and this actually became a bit of a pain in the ass - I used to sleep through pretty soundly most of the time. However, I became adept at surfacing, waving at the guards manning the gateways, and then drifting right back to sleep, and I wished that at some point I might reach a place where I didn't have to "permission" events anymore. Which started happening once in a while, usually correlated with a night on double IPA's or GSM or Cab/Merlot. However, lately, I'm not waking up at all overnight anymore, or if I do, it's very close to when I normally get up, and I'm usually dry, unless I was a bit wet before I went to bed. (I usually try to start the night in a dry diaper, but my schedule gets thrown around by other demands, and if I put a diaper on at 9 PM, and it still has 80% of its capacity available when I call it a night, I'm generally not going to bin it.) The exception being, of course, if I've spent a night with Lady Ethanol. I also am not drinking as much water as I did overnight - I used to always wake up and have a sip of water at some point, and generally a wee at the same time. I'm not sure why this is the case, but I'm not going to complain to my doctor that I'm sleeping too well, and never have to pee, which would be precisely the opposite of what nearly everyone in my demographic (middle-aged man) complains about. However, as I sit here typing this, I need to pee about every 20 minutes. So, the dissonance between my overnight performance and my alleged daytime requirements leaves me wondering how much of this is in my head. But I'll tell you, if I try to go an hour without peeing, I will be getting none-to-subtle jabs from down below, and once it starts happening, there will be no stopping it, other than to physically pinch myself off - I have had the disconcerting feeling in the shower of staring at myself, dribbling, WILLING it to stop, and it does not stop. That, as far as I can tell, is not a product of my imagination. So why no bedwetting? No idea.

Congratulations, @Stroller! Reading this brightened my day. I am more or less on the same path that you are; I have been 24/7 for just a few weeks short of two years now, and I very much enjoy every new day in nappies. I still wake up giddy knowing that I have a diaper on, and that when that one is done, I will change into another, and on and on. My start was the corollary of yours - I slept in diapers for about a year before I decided to test-drive living in them 24/7, two years ago. I am less far down the "spousal-acceptance" road than you are, however. When I was wearing diapers only to bed, I kept them hidden from my wife - I used to get up after she fell asleep and change into them like a ninja. Once I decided to go 24/7, I "came out" to her about wearing them... but at first, only to wearing them at night, even though I was already 24/7. Gradually, I disclosed to her that I was wearing them longer and longer into the mornings, until it was into the early afternoons sometimes, and gradually, I started "getting ready for bed" earlier and earlier, until the two ends of the circle met, and I was no longer secretive about being in a diaper at any time of day. I never actually came right out and said that I wear them full-time, now, but she hasn't seen any of my boxer shorts come through the wash in a hell of a long time, and the last time we travelled (when one could do do such a thing), I only brought diapers. I have slept with a pacifier for going on 3 years now, and she knows about that, although I'm still shy about pacifier use during the day in front of her. She hasn't decided to divorce me, so far, or given me any ultimatums, and every once in a while I get a joke or a wisecrack out of her about my absurd underwear preferences, but, for the most part, she doesn't talk about my being in diapers. I also wear the t-shirt style onesies pretty much every day, and she has seen and folded lots of those without comment. She did buy me a neck-to-ankles onesie with a bum flap on it for Christmas last year, in a sober grey, which was pretty cool of her. My kids still live at home so I am very discrete when they're around, but when they're not, I like to wear just a t-shirt and a diaper, or a diaper under athletic pants - in short, I don't mind that it's obvious that I'm wearing one. As you noted, there was a lot of learning and a lot of spadework to get to where I am now, and I also had to take a leap of faith - coming out about it with my spouse could have resulted in my living in my car for a while! Thanks for sharing, @Strollerand thanks for your advice along the way - you responded to a lot of questions I had about daytime wearing when I was starting out. Everyone here has been great, really. I couldn't have done it without all of you.

That thing is slick! Do you have both ends of it - the brewer and the server? I take it the beer self-carbonates during fermentation? What becomes of the trub? I don't know if this is a Canadian word or a universal brewing term, so I will add, for anyone wondering what I'm talking about, that I am referring to the yeast that settles out when fermentation has completed. I couldn't figure out based on the quick look I had at a video on their site, how (or if) the yeast remnants are separated from the beer. I like the idea of being able to have a few styles on the go, in the fridge, and to quickly swap between them. I have a keg fridge with two taps on it, so I can have 2 X ~ 18.9 L/5 USG batches on at the same time, but when one kicks, if I have been foresighted enough to have a batch in a fermenter ready to go, I still have to transfer it and give it a couple of days to carbonate. I have a fermentation chamber made from a freezer and a heating blanket, both tied into a thermostat, because I need to worry about heating and chilling, depending on what I'm making, and what it's doing outside. What I actually bought from your countrymen is a pressure fermenter - I want to play around with pressure fermentation because of the promise of shorter fermentation periods for lagers. Other than that, though, I'm pretty much a luddite when it comes to the equipment I employ: a mash tun made from a modified picnic cooler, a pot over a propane ring for both HLT and kettle, a drop in immersion chiller made out of a coil of copper pipe, and some glass and stainless carboys. Long-term, one things I want to add is a temperature-controlled mash tun. Right now I rely on that cooler to hold temperature, so I'm fighting the laws of thermodynamics the whole time, and, I can't fly-sparge, only batch sparge. Plus stepped mashes are a dog's breakfast. I have to do all my brewing in my garage, because my wife can't stand the smell of it, so I've never tried doing it in the kitchen. I could see mashing in a pot over an electric element adding some capabilities in terms of temperature control. I guess I'd have to pour the mash into my mash tun afterwards to separate the wort and sparge. Do you have a mash tun with a false bottom that you can put directly on an element, or do you heat the works in a pot and then filter it afterwards? I think that the smell of brewing divides the population more or less along gender lines. Every adult male of the species that enters my garage says something like "Mmmm, beer...." or "What is that wonderous aroma?", whereas every female, adult or child, says "Ewww, what's that smell?". Male children tend to sniff the air and withhold comment. They don't know what they're smelling, but, they know instinctively that it portends something good. All of the above assumes that my nappy-stuffed garbage cans have well-seated lids on them.

I used to worry about buying diapers at a pharmacy, but now I realize that they sell so many things of a "personal" nature they wouldn't even blink at a guy buying a bag of nappies; they could be for a parent or whatever. I was a bit a bit freaked out the first couple of times I bought anything at Rearz, back when they had a storefront, however, because there was no getting around it - if you wanted a purple pacifier, some pink plastic pants, and a bag of printed diapers, you had to walk up to the counter, put them down, and then pay for them. I haven't bought more than a couple of pacifiers from regular stores, because even the largest toddler ones are too small for extended use - they become uncomfortable eventually, or they fall out when I'm sleeping. Whereas the adult ones available from Rearz and others are much better, at least for me.

Well, I am in plastic pants today, in an attempt to cure the most common failure mode of these medium-sized diapers that I have now dedicated myself to burning through, that being frontal wicking and/or leakage. I don't wear plastic pants often, other than over cloth diapers (which I also don't wear often), so the additional layer is intruding on my awareness from time to time, in a way that my diaper used to. It's not unpleasant, just... different. These ones also add a bit of noise to moving around - they're stiffening a bit, losing plasticizers or whatever the effect is, and are probably due for replacement at some point. Let's see if they're up to the job. I wouldn't say that I' m entirely unaware that I have a diaper on, these days, but I can actually more or less forget about it for good stretches. It took me a while to get here; back when I was wearing only on days when the house was empty or when I was on a business trip, being in a diaper used to demand a certain amount of my processing power, to the point that I had difficulty concentrating, during the day, or difficulty sleeping at night. Now, I honestly forget about it for stretches, but, I have become much better about NOT forgetting to use it - I used to forget my diaper, start holding my output unconsciously, get a twinge of urgency, smack myself on the forehead, open the gates, but then, have to worry about moderating the ensuing release, lest it overwhelm the infrastructure. I seem to have overcome that - I just go now, even if I get wrapped up in something and stop paying attention. It's not completely automated, but if there are two gates, one, at least, has chosen "open" as its resting position. However, I still get a bit of a charge out of being reminded of my diaper, as it changes shape or starts to become more obtrusive, if I have gone, say, a couple of hours without giving it any thought. I still love the fact that I wear diapers. Which I guess explains why I still wear them. My experience with pacifiers was similar, in the beginning - if I was using one, I thought about it continually, or at least frequently, whereas now, at least overnight, having slept with one for probably three years or so, it disappears from my radar almost like the bedding does. During the day, using a pacifier has become a bit like chewing gum; it doesn't vanish from your awareness like your socks do, but, it's definitely a background process. I don't use one during the day with any great frequency - the mood has to strike me, and often, I use it as kind of an incentive to stave off procrastination. If I have an enormous spreadsheet to wade into for a few hours, I'll make an agreement with myself that I can use a paci, if I'll just get down to it. It also tends to deter snacking - I wonder if that's an idea for a diet plan? "Introducing the Peloton Pacifier...". I think they also distract me a bit from drinking - not ethanol, but rather, water - I have a large water bottle perpetually at my side. In so doing, perhaps using a paci extends the range of a diaper a bit as well.

@oznl, I purchased brewing equipment from your side of the globe this week, via kegland.com.au. I should have suspected that you guys would have a well-developed home brewing scene. I have flooded your economy with a couple of hundred Canadian dollars. Interestingly, the pricing you guys pay for this stuff isn't far off what it costs here. Have to watch the electrics - 240 V. Nice wattages on the heaters, though - we're limited to about 1500 unless we want to either go 20 amp, or, 240 V as well, but, for us, 240 V is for the ovens, air conditioners and the clothes dryers. Everything that uses a common receptacle is 120 V 15 amp. I use propane for heat when I'm brewing, but I am very attracted to the set-and-forget potential of heating elements. "HAL, give me 67 degrees C for an hour." "Your wish is my command." The shipping, I imagine, would have been bananas, but I went through a local distributor that must consolidate shipments. Or, the whole business is a front for something illicit. Either way, I win. Charting a global supply chain sometimes boggles the mind... brewing equipment from Australia goes to Canada, where it assists in the production of a Belgian-style beer that is eventually drained into a diaper that was (likely) made in China, for a company in Germany.

Good way to put it! On another topic, I forgot to mention in the above that I am DONE with medium-sized diapers, other than the Northshore Megamax. Once again I had on a medium Rearz Splash, again while having beers with a buddy of mine, this time in person, in my garage - thank God (the pandemic lockdown having been slightly relaxed in our area), and, once again, I eventually became aware that there was a dampness at the top of my jeans, and a probing when he got up to head to the washroom confirmed that my jeans were wet at the top at the front, actually visibly so, although the way I was seated, my sweatshirt covered it entirely. From now on, I will only wear them with plastic pants, and when they're done, I am only ordering them in large. I'm losing an outfit a week to front waistband leaks in medium diapers, on average - it's too much. I have sufficient experience at this point to be confident in my ability to operate in larger ABDL diapers, and I still have my gym diapers if I find myself in need of something smaller to wear. I don't have these issues with the gym diapers because they fit very snuggly, and, I never wear them for more than a couple of hours. Whereas a medium ABDL diaper provides a false sense of security, with its 8 - 10 hour core but its failure-prone front zone. Sigh.

That's the dream, @Autiesaurus. I haven't told anyone other than my spouse, and, of course, everyone here. How did telling your friend go? Did you tell them just because you wanted to be upfront with them, or was there some reason why you felt you had to? This weekend I had "socially-distanced" beers with a couple of groups of friends, outdoors, because, first of all, our level of pandemic lockdown has been reduced, and, secondly, it was actually above 0 degrees C (32 F), for the first time in weeks, so it wasn't uncomfortable outside for a change. Although it's amazing how context changes perception. In October, if it gets down to 3 degrees, we pull out our warmest jackets, zip them up to our throats, cross our arms and lament about how chilly it is. Fast-forward to the depths of February, and if it's 3 degrees, we're outside in a t-shirt washing the car and beaming about what a lovely day it is, because water isn't a solid for a change. I have some observations; this may be because most of my friends are approaching a "certain age", wherein those "Talk to your doctor about Fantastica" adverts start to become relevant, but, when having beers in a garage or on a driveway or whatever, practically everyone I was with had to excuse themselves to use the washroom at least once an hour, if not more so. One buddy of mine went 3 times in 90 minutes. I, of course, stood (or sat) patiently and did not need to head in to use the facilities, courtesy of whatever nappy I had on at the moment (I was smart enough to start each occasion in a fresh one). One of my friends brought up the mythology of "breaking the seal" - the idea that, when you start drinking, you seem to be able to hold it for a good stretch at the start of the race, but then, once you go that first time, you find yourself needing to go with much greater frequency. This had me curious for a couple of reasons, and I thought that I would turn to the diaper "gestalt" here, since arguably, outside of the field of nephrology, nobody spends as much time thinking about these things as we do. First of all, I once again am wondering if I should think about adding in some feigned washroom visits... a couple of my buddies excused themselves four or five times, while I sat stoically, drinking my beer. I don't think that they're paying much attention to what I am or am not doing, but it does make me think about if I am inadvertently adding another data point to the universe, that, when taken into consideration with a bunch of other ones, might serve to lead someone to a conclusion. If, say, a person noticed a couple of things that seem like they're completely unrelated... a bulge, a crinkle, consistently oversized trousers... and then, they put that into an equation that also held, somewhere in brackets, the fact that I seem to have a camel-like ability to store fluids... and all of a sudden "he might wear diapers" comes up as one possible outcome. I have faked a pee here and there before, but only when it's been hours and hours, and I might, in any case, need to change, or at least, evaluate, a diaper. Should I do that more frequently? But, pre-diapers, I don't recall having to go nearly as often as these guys do - I wonder if they should be talking to their doctors, or if that's just part of being in one's mid-40's... and is something I'm unaware of, because my plastic underwear causes me to rarely hold anything back. Second, I'm curious as to if pressure in the bladder causes reduced renal output? Anecdotally, this seems to be the supposition - that back pressure causes flow to decline somewhat, hence, the idea that not "breaking the seal" buys one more uninterrupted time on a bar stool, than heeding nature's call earlier would have. In my own, draining into my diaper experience, it does seem like my output is more voluminous than it used to be in the "before times" - I feel like I pee about every 15 or 20 minutes. I wonder if the fact that my bladder is generally pretty close to empty is causing increased output. I'll have to do some research on that.

Hi, @Bel George; I have to say that I sympathize with your plight. I work from home all the time right now, but pre-Covid, I was home about 60% of the time and with clients the other 40. I've been 24/7 for just under two years now, and, on top of that, we recently moved to a house where my office is on top of the garage, so most of the time I can, if I want to, work in just a diaper and a shirt (so that I look professional for the camera). My wife isn't enthusiastic but is accepting, and my kids don't know, and I don't intend them to know, so when they're home, I'm more discrete. But on a typical day when they're in school, I can wear whatever I want while I work, and I can surf at will. I too have struggled with what you describe. I have definitely whiled away good chunks of time on this site, although I don't really know of any others. This may be like one addict asking another addict where they get their stuff, but, what other sites are out there that are worth looking at? The only other one I ever checked into was Fetlife, but I found it indecipherable. Learned a lot about midget nooseplay, though. But it also took me about a year between finding this site and posting anything. I wade in cautiously. But back to the topic at hand - self control. One thing I have done is spent a lot less time in the chat than I used to. I used to open it almost every day, and sometimes sit in it for most of the afternoon, trying to get work one with one eye and keep up with the conversation with the other eye. However, I find that I get stressed when I have to ignore something, in order to work, while I have the feeling that someone is waiting for a response, which is the nature of a live chat, whereas, if I'm reading articles or blog posts or stories or updates on this and that, I can come back to it as I have time to, without the feeling that I've left anyone hanging or been impolite. Which is why I tend not to go into the chat if I'm at all busy. The nature of my work is somewhat intermittent, which also helps, because I can pick and choose my times. I get deluged with work sometimes, things that need attention right away, but then there will be a stretch where I am waiting for responses back from people, and, while I could probably make better use of my time in those moments, I find that I can take a few minutes to read or comment on something here, without disappearing down a black hole. I actually think that going 24/7 has helped me with this, because I used to be obsessive about carving out "diaper time", to the point of planning vacations so that my family would be away a couple of days longer than I was, "because of work", just so that I could get a couple of days here and there to myself. And, back when I didn't have as much freedom, if an opportunity came up to do some reading here (I didn't really contribute much back then), I would make that my number one priority. Whereas now, because I'm in diapers all the time, and I have the freedom to drop in here whenever I choose, it's not a big deal if I'm not on the site for a few hours, in order to make some money, or, to spend some time with the family, or watch TV with my wife, or whatever. Finding a balance is key. I love drinking craft beer, but if I did it all the time, eventually, the repercussions would probably cut into my ability to drink craft beer. So it is with this site. If I blow too much time here, I'll end up looking for a new job, and that new job probably won't provide me with nearly the freedom that my current job does. And, I get to be in diapers all the time, so, sometimes it's worth putting off gratification for a bit, in order to do what needs to be done.

Welcome, @WeeScot. Sorry to hear about your relationship, and, I hope that being among us helps you. There are lots of friendly people here. While leaving a relationship is always painful, the fact that she wasn't accepting of your ABDL interests might have made life more difficult for you, long-term, had the relationship continued. Perhaps this is an opportunity to partner yourself with someone who is more open-minded. I know the feeling of having a disapproving partner; I have more or less dragged my wife along with me on this journey, although she has been more resilient and sympathetic than I had initially believed was possible. But she's not exactly enthusiastic.

Interesting, @Ferix - let us know how it goes. Good luck!