Little Sherri

Hi, all - I sort of pledged to write more about my 6-year diaper-versary, but then I lost track of time, because I've been so busy. I was travelling last week for work, just inside the province I live in this time, although I have more travel coming up which will be a little further afield. I spent a good stretch in the office, so my burn rate was higher than it usually is - I wore my fair share of Tena ProSkin whatever-they're-called's under business clothes. I was always happy to get back to my hotel room at the end of the day, and put on a decent ABDL diaper, and then go out for dinner somewhere. Doing that took me back to what it was like when I first went 24/7, and I used to freak out about wearing a "real" ABDL diaper out for dinner under jeans or whatever - I was convinced that I must look absurd and that it would be totally obvious. Whereas now, first of all, I largely don't care, but secondly, experience has taught me that 99% of the time, it goes totally unnoticed, if you dress with any intelligence. I had another thought about the past when I put on a Rearz Essential, a discontinued, white, plastic-backed product with tapes, that I've always liked; they weren't a top-performing diaper, but they did what you expected them to. They've been replaced by the BeDry, more or less, but they went on sale for a song right before the line was euthanized - about $1 a diaper - so I bought a few cases. I keep forgetting about them, as they languish under newer additions to my infantile wardrobe. I took a few with me as "nighttime at the bar with colleagues" diapers, thin enough not to have to think about them under jeans, but reliable for a few wettings. However, they are in the then-new Rearz large size, which is more like a medium, so they are snug on me. It was interesting wearing a diaper that snug - it made me think about the diapers I was put in, growing up, because they were generally snug, as well, being XL toddler diapers that were being used off-label for a school-aged kid who couldn't keep the sheets dry. So, as much as I don't usually tape myself into my diapers with undue tightness, these days, because I'm generally looking for long-term comfort, and reliable product performance, at the same time, being in those snug white diapers brought back memories. In other notes, I was once again subjected to diaper discrimination - it's as if people who usually "go" in their underpants don't have any other use for a bathroom. I was in a rush to get out of the house in the morning, and had gone into the bathroom to shave, still wearing my overnight diaper, which I would change right before I left the house - I tend to pee while drinking coffee, and while brushing my teeth, so when I'm leaving the house, and intend to do so in a new diaper, I put it on at the absolute last minute. Then, my wife burst through the door, and said, basically, "Get out - I need to use the washroom." It was early, so I am willing to forgive the dispensing with pleasantries, but, I was already using the aforementioned room, and, we also have two other of them, and a total of three people living in our house right now, ergo, a bathroom was available perpetually, for all. But, no, she wanted to use this bathroom, so she said - I am paraphrasing here, but along the lines of: "You wear diapers, so go enjoy them - I'm an adult and I need the actual bathroom. You can go anywhere you choose. So choose somewhere else!" I blushed slightly, but I quickly rinsed my face off, and left the room to her. She was more or less saying, "I put up with you dressing like a baby under your clothes, so I am entitled to some advantage, aren't I?"

I don't have much use for pull-ups, capacity wise; I find it more economical to wear fewer, better diapers, rather than more low-capacity products. But I do concur with this - I might be inclined to wear an adult pull-up on occasion for "short missions" or where maximum discretion is required (EG under a fitted suit, for example), if the pull-up didn't look like someone's grandma's knickers, with the high-rise waistband.

That’s hilarious. My primary concern wearing diapers on job sites or in plants has been when I fall off the scaffold or get sprayed with hot polymers, and then paramedics hastily cut my clothes off, revealing a diaper festooned in pink mermaids, or whatever. So I usually go with white, if I think there’s a chance I’ll end up on a stretcher…

How have I never stumbled on this thread before? I had “legitimate” access to diapers until I was 10, because I was a prolific bedwetter in the 1980’s. So I won’t count those years, although I was definitely a DL from a very early age, probably 4 or 5. I knew I was “funny” about diapers. Once I outgrew wetting the bed, I started making my own diapers pretty quickly, I’d say by age 11. I made cloth diapers out of white pillowcases, towels, pins and cut-up plastic bags. Very rarely, I’d get my hands on a baby disposable, but by then they didn’t fit, so I’d have to use tape, or just tuck them in my underwear. I wore my homemade diapers to bed, or around the house when I had it to myself (rare), and I even wore one to school a couple of times, or went out to the park across the street late at night in just a diaper (bad ideas, both…). My stepdad found my diaper stash when I was 13, and after that, I took 20 years off. Then, I saw a picture of myself in a diaper in an old photo album, and “this” came right back. I bought pull-ups and Depends and wore them when I could, until I discovered Rearz, and this site, and then within a couple of years, I was 24/7.

Maybe the site should employ a simple algorithm that adds a year to your age every 12 months from when you signed up? But I think that field isn’t confined to numbers, it will accept text, so that probably won’t work. I haven’t updated mine since I started, about 7 years ago (if memory serves). Although in my case, it’s not exactly misleading, as I’m still broadly within that range. The difference between 14 and 22 is more profound than 38 and 46.

I carry a MEC backpack that's pretty roomy - I can fit my laptop in there, and still use it as an overnight bag in a pinch, but usually, it's my diaper bag. These days, I carry a couple of ABDL diapers, plus a couple of slimmer, cloth-backed diapers, diaper cream, and a spare diaper shirt, and some emergency backup pants or shorts.

I wish someone made cute disposable swim diapers. Everything on the market now looks like someone’s grandma’s knickers. I have a pool, but I don’t wear diapers when I swim, because, as noted, regular diapers explode, and swim diapers all look unappealing.

Tomorrow marks 6 years since I started posting on this thread, and I'd thought that it marked 6 years since I went 24/7, although I just went and read a few of my first posts, and doing that reminded me that I actually wrote that first post on a Saturday, but I'd been diapered since Friday, in an attempt to see if I could get through the weekend, living 24/7 in diapers. The following week, I decided to see if I could get through a weekday or two, and somehow made it through the week, and into the following weekend. Originally, I had planned to test my metal in preparation for having the house to myself for a few weeks, when my family went away in the summer - I had thought about turning the water off to the toilets, and living 24/7, fully committing to my diapers, but I quickly realized that using them for #2 was rarely convenient, and usually resulted in an "agricultural" (a term borrowed from Oznl) mess, so I decided I didn't "need" to do that very often (not to say that it never happened, or happens). That snowball of time in nappies kept growing, and I never went back, to the point that when I joined my family on vacation in Europe, I was in diapers the entire time, whereas the original plan had been to wear them before heading over, when I had the house to myself. Here I am, ~2191 days later, standing atop a pile of probably 6500 diapers (~3x per day), a couple of dozen tubs of nappy cream, and untold bottles of baby powder. So far, my plan is to stay the course; I have about four months worth of diapers in my basement, and I'd have to pick through this thread to find the exact day, but I'd say that it's been around 5 years since I've owned any other kind of underpants. I still remember that watershed moment when I binned my bag of boxer shorts, which had already been stashed on a shelf in my garage for several months at that point. That was really when I crossed a line; when I made a deal with myself that I could only wear diapers, from now on, for as long as I could make it last. I'll probably write more on this tomorrow - I've a few things to accomplish today, but I wanted to say a couple of things: first, I can't believe how fast time flies, and I'm amazed at how long I've lasted, and, how well it has gone. I wouldn't call it "easy", exactly - this path has it's stones and potholes - but, basically, if you want to wear diapers, at some point, you put a diaper on, and you go forth and wear it. It's not exactly learning to fly a helicopter, or performing surgery on infants. Second, I want to say a sincere thank you, to all of you, who have engaged with me, mostly in positive ways, with remarkably little negativity, but even then, still, you gave me some of your time and some of your mind-space, and you gave me things to think about, so, I appreciate you. And, I want to say thank you to my friends, both here, and in real life, who know I wear diapers, even if they don't know why, and who have accepted me, and opened up their hearts and their houses, despite my penchant for unconventional underpants. And, thank you to my family, who have been, if wryly sarcastic at times, still ultimately supportive, and who have never proposed that I should move into a van.

Rearz's InControl brand makes a diaper called a BeDry - there are three versions. The BeDry EliteCare and BeDry Night are higher-capacity, higher price, although still less than the MegaMax, at least here in Canada. But the regular BeDry is very comfy, has decent capacity for a "daytime weight" diaper, and they cost about $3 a diaper here (~$2 USD).

Rearz & InControl, which is also a Rearz brand, sell good ones. They look like grey, black or white t-shirts; I own about 12 of them. My oldest one is probably 7 or 8 years old, and it has one snap that has frayed a bit. The white ones tend to go a bit grey with time, but the black and grey ones have held up really well. They keep everything nice and tucked in, and you don't have to worry about your diaper rising up out of your pants when you bend over to tie your shoes.

These are just the people I follow, but in my experience, anything by these writers is probably worth a read. I'm sure there are many more good ones in there. @AB_DeLane, @Alutheria, @Annie_Austria, @Elfy, @BabySofia

I feel for you, @oznl. I can't do much to help, but my anxiety level rises, when I contemplate your circumstances. My job has become very stressful, and I find myself working 10-12 hours a day, easily, and sometimes, I'm still in front of my screens at 10 PM. Good diapers are essential. Part of me envies the thought experiment of not working, but, as you noted, most of us are going to have to push back retirement, so that some billionaires can have their fun shaking the ant farm we are trapped in. I wish they would retire. Taking the thought experiment over to a world where my wife is the singular breadwinner, and then needing a few hundred bucks worth of detested lifestyle accoutrements... dark times. Although presumably your decades of dedicated toil mean that your contribution to the household's net worth, and future earnings, still carries some salt, even if it is being eroded like a sandcastle in a rainstorm, right now. After Christmas, I was convinced that I had tumbled down the slippery slope of nocturnal nappy dependency, and was approaching terminal velocity; I was wetting the bed every night. A couple of weeks back, I had a strange dream, where I woke up needing to pee, convinced that I'd gone to bed in an inadequate diaper, so I got up and shuffled to the bathroom, annoyed with myself, only to find a dry, decent disposable wrapped around me. Since then, irritatingly, I've been waking up needing to pee, or, waking up dry in the morning, except when I've picked myself with Petite Verdot, or IPA. So, these spirits seem to visit us and then depart, at their whims. I'm sure I'll wet like a champ this weekend, when I resume Olympic-class drinking. I think I need to binge-drink for two weeks straight, as I did over the holidays, to reset myself.

More or less sums it up! I can delve into an elongated history and armchair psychoanalysis, but the above is essentially the main point. As to the why of that - why do I/we like diapers - many of us have found ourselves here in an attempt to work that out. Some of us are sure why, some of us think we know, and some of us have no idea, and maybe never will. My background with diapers is as follows: I wore them for bedwetting as a kid in the pre-Goodnites 1980's. At some point, I realized that I liked wearing them, but I knew, even as a little kid (6,7) that I could not tell anyone that. Also, I still wanted to be seen as a big kid, and to grow up, so I had a complicated relationship with my taped-on plastic underpants; it was steeped in shame, anxiety and embarrassment, but also comfort. At some point, somewhat akin to Stockholm Syndrome, I think I sublimated my dislike for still being infantilized every night, into a need for it. Now, here I am, decades later, "taking back" wearing diapers on my own terms - nobody is making me do it, and I've gradually burned off most of the anxiety and shame that my relationship with diapers had been ladened with, as a kid.

Congrats! You are well and truly established on this strange path now; odds are, if anything was going to deter you, it would have by now. You have weathered most of the storms and gotten over most of the major speedbumps, and you know for sure that "this" is for you; you've experienced the inconveniences, the doubts, the disasters, the lows, as well as all highs, the plusses, whatever you it is that you get from being in diapers - the answer is different for everyone. You have stayed the course. My hat is off to you!

I feel for you, @uncreativename. I remember getting the shakes when I rode my bike up to the drug store on the corner near where I lived, to buy diaper pins. Not safety pins, but actual diaper pins, with the plastic covers on the heads in blue and pink. I was about 11, and I went in and walked around the store, pretending that the baby aisle was an afterthought, and not what I was really there for. I bought a pack of Halls cough drops for "cover" (made sense to me at the time?), then I fairly darted up the baby aisle, grabbed the blister pack of pins, and made straight for the cash, in case any of our neighbours or one of my friends came in. The cashier didn't blink, but I rode my bike home like I was being chased by a pack of dogs. I recall fondly the first time I walked in the Rearz store, in Waterloo, ON - I was red in the face and probably had the same heart rate you did. And, you had to park and ring a doorbell, to be let into the showroom. However, I quickly realized that the people working there were seasoned professionals, and me buying bags of diapers in cash was about as remarkable as a grocer selling bags of apples. About the third time I went there, I realized that the lady helping me had a pull-up on under her jeans, because she bent down to get me a garbage bag (which was the camouflage they gave you to carry out your prizes), and it came quite a ways up her back above her jeans. Then, I started to relax, and I built up the courage to buy a pacifier. Back then, I didn't want diapers to show up on a credit card bill, but now, I am "out" with my family, so I can just order them. But I do miss that in-person shopping experience.

This is one of the challenges faced by those of us in "this" line of interests who have families. Obviously, no sane person is going to seek to live openly as an adult baby in a household with kids in it, but this interest is unique in that it can create dependencies that bleed over into everyday life, whereas being into, say, S&M play, can probably be kept in the boudoir. Keep the basement dungeon locked. "What's in there?" "Water heater. Water heaters are dangerous. Never go in there." I've been 24/7 for coming up on 6 years, and I'm married and have kids in their teens. I never set out to let them know about "this" side of me, and I believe I still haven't, in the sense that diapers haven't been identified as a "kink" accessory. However, wearing diapers all the time inevitably results in 24 X 7 X 365 chances that even the best security will be breached, and that's what happened to me. My wife decided to assign my younger daughter the task of emptying the trash cans, a few years ago, and meanwhile, I had left a diaper in our bathroom garbage can, because I had just showered. I was planning on transplanting the contents to my hidden diaper can in a few minutes, but my wife beat me to the punch. Hilariously, my daughter thought that it belonged to my wife, but my wife did not find this hilarious, so I had to come clean... sort of. My daughter was a bedwetter, and she and I had talked about my having the same history, so I leaned into that, and said that I was wearing them "because I needed to again", but that this was uncommon, and she didn't need to worry about it happening to her, in all likelihood, until she was much older than I was, if ever. She seemed to accept this, although of course, she told her older sister within about 5 minutes. I also emphasized that, just as we didn't talk about her wearing pull-ups in front of her friends, so it went that we didn't talk about anyone else's underwear outside of the family, either. So, here I am, having leaned into a "non-worrisome" medical explanation, now "openly" wearing diapers - sort of. I don't walk around in them, anymore than I would my underwear. But it is nice not to have to be at 100% security levels all the time, at home, and it helps when, say, one of them busts through our bedroom door without knocking, not to have to jump behind the bed like I've been shot by a sniper, if I happen to be midway through getting dressed. Or, when a case of diapers gets left on the front porch by UPS, I don't have to make up stories about it being files sent from my office. Nobody wants to know anything about their parents' love interests or kinks, at least in my opinion, so going down any other road would be a non-starter, at least for me. The bottom line is that people wear diapers for medical or developmental reasons, and there are commercials on TV about it, and aisles at the grocery and drug stores dedicated to it, which will back up your contention that it's not that abnormal or remarkable. While wearing diapers hasn't exactly been destigmatized in our society, neither is it looked at like wearing a leather gimp mask to go pick up milk. But, you always have to put their interests first - you'll be amazed how fast the time goes by; they're really only little kids for a blink of an eye. You'll have lots of time to build the nursery of your dreams (if that's your dream), after they move out; I'd suggest leaving that level of attempted self-actualization, until after you have discharged your primary parental duties.

I was watching part of one of those TLC shows, My 600 LB Life. Generally, I find that, and Hoarders, to be harrowing to watch, almost mental illness porn, but my friend's wife had happened upon it while flipping through channels during the intermission of a hockey game, and it wasn't my TV, and I didn't have any say. There are two kinds of people in the world... well, maybe three, when it comes to what you do while watching televised content, when ads come on. Some people immediately flip to another channel, trying to find something, anything, to watch, until the commercials are over, or until they start up on the channel you just flipped to, which often happens, because they tend to coordinate these things, I suspect, for precisely that reason. The second type of person stoically watched the ads. The third type, among which I count myself, reaches for the mute button, and their phone. The flippers can irritate me, because they are never very precise about when they go back to the original programming, and if they happen upon something more interesting, might never go back. That would be, I guess, serendipitous for them, but, I came over to watch the game, so... hey, let's see if the game's back on, maybe? But, again, not my TV. The people I was sitting with, my buddy and his wife, know I wear diapers. I don't flaunt them, just as I know they wear underpants of some sort, and they don't flaunt them, but I also don't go to the lengths I would go to, with those not within "the circle of trust." Case in point, they like to wear comfy clothes around the house, if the are comfortable with you - they all basically wear pajama pants if it's anytime after about 9 PM, or before 11 AM (on a weekend), if it's a relaxed atmosphere, IE not "hosting company." And because I've made so many appearances, stayed over so many times, babysat their house, they've babysat mine, I don't count as company. For which I am honoured. So, I will hang around with them in my comfy pants, usually track pants, which I have in my overnight bag. They don't do as good a job of hiding a diaper as my jeans do, but they're not form-fitting, so they don't advertise it, either. When I'm in a plastic diaper, you can definitely hear it more, but that doesn't matter. So, we were watching the hockey game, and then during the intermission, she flipped over to this story, midway through, about a morbidly obese guy who needed to travel to Texas, and drop a certain amount of weight on his own, before he would qualify for bariatric weight-loss surgery of some sort. He was on a plane with his brother, and this unfortunate individual took up two airline seats, and looked very uncomfortable during the flight, basically filling the entire space between his seats, and the ones in front of him. He also had to turn sideways, and shuffle down the aisle, in order to get on or off the plane, so they loaded him first, and unloaded him last. They couldn't use a wheelchair until he got off the plane, because he wouldn't fit in one that could be rolled up that aisle. I was amazed they tried to transport him that way, actually. I think he might have been better off in a van, even if that took 20 hours. But it wasn't my decision. Anyway, towards the end of the flight, he's being asked how he's doing, and he says, very candidly, "I need to get out of this diaper." Which provided the answer, which I already suspected, to the question, "How the hell is he going to go to the bathroom if he needs to?" I don't know if he meant he needed to get out of "this diaper" and out of diapers in general, which had been a practical but temporary wardrobe decision, or if he just meant that he needed to change his diaper after a few hours trapped in one position on a plane, but either way, I felt a connection with him. I am not morbidly obese (at least not yet), but I have felt that "I really want out of this diaper, but I can't just yet" feeling many times. Given his lack of mobility, I suspect disposable underpants are part of the deal for him. At the same time, his saying that on the big screen TV to all of us made me immediately think of my own diaper, and then my face started turning red, and then I was wondering if anyone could tell my face was turning red, so I tried not to look at them, and then I wondered if I was being obvious in not looking at anyone, when we were engaged in animated conversations about every minute or two. Finally, I drained my beer, hoped that any glow I might be carrying would be attributed to ethanol, and then I asked if anyone else needed a drink, to which my buddy replied in the affirmative, and I "crunch-crinkle-crunched" myself over to their fridge, and came back with two beers. By then, the guy on TV was lamenting that there was nowhere in the airport that he could change his diaper, so he'd have to wait until he got back to the hotel. I had recently had a "trapped in a diaper" airport experience (well, pull-up), and part of me wanted to just be completely open and say, "Ha ha, I've been stuck in a diaper in an airport, too", or something to that effect, but I stifled the impulse. We are all very good friends, and we talk about many things quite openly - finances, relationships, kids, jobs, our health - so I probably could have just candidly said, "I know how that feels," or even tried to spin the humourous tale of my wearing a pull-up through the TSA because it was slimmer, but then it leaked when I was in the bar, and I had to dry my pants in the bathroom... but I decided not to dwell on it, and a moment later, we were flipped back to the hockey game, and the conversation went in the direction of scores and standings and playoff matchups. It will probably be a while until the Universe drops a "natural" opportunity to talk about wearing diapers again; maybe next time, I'll a bit more open to it.

God bless the Princess Pinks by Rearz; I had forgotten how comfy and capable they are. I have a bag of them in my inventory, but they linger in in a tub on the bottom shelf in the basement, and often don't see the light, because they're a bit small on me, and, well, they're so, so pink. The lower tabs don't fully make the landing zone, so if I am going to wear one, once it's taped on, it has to stay on, or else I will need to conduct repairs on one side, after taking it off. But the main "problem" is the pinkness; I'm not bashful about wearing absurd underpants in front of my spouse, but... they feel a little like wearing girls' underwear, I guess. On the one hand, a diaper is a diaper is a diaper, white, pink, blue, polka dotted, the main point, as my wife has pointed out, isn't the esthetics, it's the facts - you're wearing taped-on baby pants. She's never directly said anything about most of my printed diapers, including the Princess Pinks, Lil' Bella's or pink MegaMax's I have had in my inventory - I've experimented with every description of nappy. I think I detect maybe a slightly faster eyeroll, in the very juvenile, and/or effeminate ones, but it's probably mostly in my head. Esthetics aside, they are a comfy, capable, crinkly diaper that leave you feeling gently pampered for the duration of their service.

Agreed! I used to worry about it, but now I realize that either it just doesn't register, or nobody knows what they're hearing, for the most part. I've had family members who know I wear diapers say that they can hear them, say, if I'm trying to sneak up on them somewhere, but in general, people who don't know just don't put two and two together. And I live the sound of a crinkly diaper, a gentle tap on the shoulder reminding me that I'm wearing them.

I think that going 24/7 was part of making diapers "normal" for me; I'd worn them as a kid, and obviously wasn't "turned on" by them - I just knew from a very early age that I liked them, but I didn't know why. It wasn't until I outgrew needing them, and started going through puberty, that they took on a "sexual" aspect, at which point I walked away from being a DL for a couple of decades, after my stepdad found my stash of homemade diapers, and yelled at me in front of my family. Rediscovering this aspect of my psyche as an adult, diapers became a sexual thing, but in addition to "quick thrills", if you will, I felt a deeper longing to be in them. We could talk all day about the causation of that - books have been written about it, and many of us have engaged in "why am I like this" self-analysis, but the bottom line (if you'll excuse the pun) is that once I started wearing diapers all the time, it being impossible to be perpetually "turned on", I was able to eventually reconnect with those deeper, nostalgic feelings of comfort that I used to get from wearing diapers, as a kid, which were unrelated to erotic endeavors. They can still be a turn-on, but they don't have to be.

I suspect this would be of value only with the profoundly immobile, and it also raises the question... rather than using a cheap diaper, and a cheap pad, maybe go with a better diaper? I used to play around with using boosters or stuffers, but more than half a decade wearing diapers has brought me around to an understanding that most of the time, I will have to change before a decent diaper has been completely saturated, because I have to run errands, or people are coming over, and it's my preference not to undertake those activities in a diaper that is at the twilight of its career. Plus, the artful integration of two unrelated products tends to produce artful failure modes - again, maybe this would not be an issue for a person who intends to remain in more or less the same position, perpetually, but if you need to climb a ladders or drive cars or walk up and down staircases, the odds are that your delicately-folded origami capacity-improvement solution will become a sluice, directing stormwaters to places they were not intended to gather. Interesting video, though - I learned something about the structure of Japanese!

I am religious about using diaper cream; I generally use the off-the-shelf Parent's Choice stuff, because it smells like baby powder, works well, and is relatively inexpensive, so I can use it generously. I used to only employ it when I felt diaper rash developing, but then I made the decision to use it preventatively, and have never looked back. I use baby powder, mostly because I like the scent - I'm not convinced it makes much difference to my skin. It absorbs a little moisture, but within the "climate" of a typical diaper, I suspect it is totally overwhelmed, pretty much right out of the gate. I reach for the medicated antifungal spray if I develop diaper rash that goes beyond a "slight sunburn" level, having learned my lesson about pernicious, malignant diaper rash, and how much impact it can have on my quality of life, if not taken seriously.

During the pandemic's many restarts and sputters, I acquired some cloth facemasks from Rearz in their Dinosaur pattern. I was tempted to wear them, but slightly worried about identifying myself as a "diaperist" to others; I'd only been on my 24/7 "journey" for a couple of years, however. Now, I would agree with the above sentiments, and would probably wear them, knowing that only those "in the know" would know, and that's kind of the point. However, I also hope that there is no call to resume masking anytime soon, so my social experiment will have to wait for the next plague. On a sidenote, I confirmed that a pacifier under a mask is basically invisible, unless someone talks to you, but I didn't have the intestinal fortitude to employ that camouflage where it would be most useful, which for me would be on planes, where I have a hard time falling asleep. I did experiment with driving with one a couple of times on long journeys, at night, as a distraction, almost like chewing gum. However, the fact that I only really use them while sleeping conspired against me, and I realized I was in danger of falling asleep.

I almost made the mistake that has occasionally been the bane of my existence, from a laundry perspective; my daughter has, on a couple of occasions, left a pull-up entangled with other clothing that she threw into her laundry basket, and if someone just jams it into the machine, without conducting a pre-inspection, then in addition to chapsticks, coins and phone charger cables, the wash can end up polluted with SAP beads. She hasn't done that in a while now, but somehow, this week, probably because of beer, I threw a balled-up Tena that I had worn on a short shift, into the laundry with my clothes. I don't think it would have been entangled in the clothing, because I don't do that thing that my kids do, where they just drop everything to the floor and step out of it. That works with pull-ups, but not so well with diapers. I think I actually threw the diaper into the laundry bin, and then deposited other clothing on top of it. Luckily, it was me that was loading the machine, and I noted the football-like mass amidst the laundry, and rifled in to see what it was. So now there is a Tena in my laundry room trash can that I will have to remember to relocate when I empty my diaper can, which I'll do later today.

I spent the day yesterday with my sister, which was interesting. I get along with her a lot better now than I did when I was a kid, and I generally enjoy hanging around with her, but she does elicit in me an uncommon (these days) level of self-consciousness, with respect to being in diapers. I have not "come out" to her, or anyone else I am related to, outside of my immediate family, about wearing baby's underpants. It's not that I don't think she'd be capable of being understanding or sympathetic, if I had to some day show her that card, but, she was there when I wore diapers as a kid, and she was there, specifically, when my stepdad found my stash of homemade diapers a couple of years after I had outgrown needing to wear them, and he yelled at me in front of the family while waving one around. SO, I don't know exactly what her, or my brother's thoughts would be, were they to find out I'm back in diapers, 30+ years later. Would they assume that it was a resurgence of a "legitimate" need to wear them, some physiological deficit reasserting itself in adulthood, or, would they recall "the incident", and therefore assume that I was wearing them because I liked to, and not because I needed to? And then, what would they make of that? Would they assume it was a psychological hangover from spending many impressionable years hurtling past key developmental milestones, while unable to surmount that one, pivotal early milestone that most people get past by the time they are three or four, thus sentencing me to being relegated back to infancy, at least in the underpants department, every night at some point after dinner? "The training wheels just came off my bike - big day! But I still have a carton of toddler diapers on the floor in the back of my closet..." Or, would they think it was the byproduct of a kink, the equivalent of announcing that I now intend to wear a leather gimp mask to family events, and that I expect my choices to be respected? I don't want to find out. So, I went with the full security protocol - silent Active Air diaper, onesie, oversized pants, long sweatshirt. We spent part of the time at a public venue, an arena, watching one of her sons play hockey, and I decided to take advantage of the large, well-lit and anonymizing public washrooms to change my diaper. While I had a silent diaper on, the I had to replace it was not silent - it was a Rearz Lil' Monster. However, we were past the point of the day where we'd been hanging around in her church-quiet barn, so I didn't let thoughts of being accompanied by crinkling noises deter me. However, the arena had enacted a concept I've encountered a couple of times before, but never really had to avail myself of - they had one, very large, all-gender bathroom on each floor. This doesn't bother me in the least, except that I did not anticipate the possibility that my sister would, because the universe has a sense of humour, enter the same bathroom I was in, shortly after I did. SO, there I was, in the stall, making a bit of a plasticky racket, not really worried about anyone, to reuse the same analogy I leaned on a couple of posts ago, putting two and two together, or, caring what they were hearing from some random occupant of a bathroom stall in a large public venue. At least I threw the wet football of the retired Active Air into my backpack diaper bag, before exiting the stall - had it been just a men's room, I might have chanced carrying it over to the trash bin, because guys really don't spend much time paying attention to what other guys do in the bathroom; most of us adhere to a well-rehearsed policy of keeping our eyes on our own work. But, since there was a chance I would run into say, a lady with a gaggle of kids, over by the sinks, I chose to be careful. I exited the stall, did a quick scan of the room, thought it empty, strolled over to the big trash can over by the paper towel dispensers, unzipped my bag, dumped my diaper into the dark depths of that can with a thud, turned around to wash my hands... to encounter my sister, who had emerged from a stall a couple over from where I'd been briefly manipulating a big plastic diaper, that I was now wearing. She had clearly seen me throw something into the trash can, as well, although she wouldn't have seen what it was, from behind me. I guess she must have caught the surprise on my face, or the burst of colour in my cheeks, because she said, "This is weird, eh? But I guess it's the future...." "Uh, yeah, takes some getting used to, but I guess it makes sense," I mumbled, while zipping my bag shut, and then going over to the sink to wash my hands, my heart pounding detectably in my ears... She washed her hands, and then she tossed the paper towel she used into the trash can with my diaper, although I don't think she really looked inside of it. In other "news", I had an inverted diaper dream last night; I dreamt that I was peeing in my diaper, when I felt a leak from one of the sides, so, I believe I then got up and used the bathroom - I had some scotch on board, so what exactly happened is not completely clear. However, when I woke up this morning, I expected that my diaper, and possibly my sheets, were going to be a bit damp, but they were not, and I only slightly needed to go pee. Ergo, I think that what happened was that I made up the part about peeing, while I was dreaming about doing it, in response to signals from the #1 department that an initiative was immanent. I then bolted to the bathroom in a daze, thinking that I was already peeing, and that my diaper had malfunctioned, but, in fact, that did not happen. I suspect this might be related to drinking coffee late in the day, something I usually avoid. Maybe I wasn't sleeping as deeply as I usually do, hence the burst of activity.