Strange days indeed - a 24 x 7 experiment

[oznl]

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I'm trying to figure out which model this is over here. We don't have a Mega XL, but we have Mega-ed versions of the Inspire+, Critter Caboose, Safari, Barnyard, Dinosaurs, and Mermaid Tales. If the diaper you're referencing is white, then I'm going to assume it's a Mega Inspire+.

Yes.  You are correct.  It is the Mega Inspire+  I should have been more precise using Rearz's prolifically polysyllabic naming conventions.  I selected the XL size not because I need XL but because since their "new" sizing, although the tapes fit just fine, I've experienced minor leaks out the side of the front crotch when they get wet enough.  The XL provides a bit of extra coverage there compared to the new L.

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

the Elite is a Mega Mermaid Tale with no print

Having both in my nappy cupboard I think NOT.  At least down here. Although I accept (and appreciate) that the taping system is the same, there appears to be more padding in the Mermaid Tale.  This is evidenced anecdotally by the fact that I can last longer in one (up to 18 hours vs 12 hours for the Elite), their tactile feel (thicker in the seat) but also by their average tare weight.  An Elite is typically 227g per unit whereas an identically-sized Mermaid is 264g  Whereas I have found some variability in weight from unit to unit, the delta within a pack is typically well under 5%.  The Elite/Mermaid weight delta is closer to 15%; more than could be explained by the stuffing guy not paying attention.

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I'm trying to figure out which model this is over here. We don't have a Mega XL, but we have Mega-ed versions of the Inspire+, Critter Caboose, Safari, Barnyard, Dinosaurs, and Mermaid Tales. If the diaper you're referencing is white, then I'm going to assume it's a Mega Inspire+.

As an aside, Rearz seem to basically have 3 current lines, excluding the outlier single-tape Selects and other leftovers: the Lil' series (Monsters/Squirts/Bella), the Mega series (outlined above), and the V2 series (Princess, Alpaca). They also have some weird low-volume products like Rebels and Halloween and Christmas themed diapers that I've never tried but that I think might rest on their old Inspire platform, before it went Inspire+ and then Mega Inspire+, and could no longer legally be shipped by air because if they come in contact with water, they might expand enough to damage the airframe. 

The size of the Rearz product portfolio is a mystery to me.  I would have thought that fiscal efficiency (manufacturing run scale) would have driven some SKU consolidation.  I'd be VERY happy to see them offer 25% less range for 10% less money, especially since nappy vendors didn't get the memo about inflation only running at about 6%

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

It's interesting that, being in 24/7 mode, and "open" with your spouse, "getting the house to myself for a weekend" is no longer a big deal. I used to cherish the opportunity to have the house to myself, to the point of spending notable sums on having my family spend 2 or 3 weeks at whatever vacation destination we'd chosen, while I, the wage donkey with the 9-5 job, would join them partway through the trip, because of a "big project", or whatever. Or, I'd snag whatever opportunities I could to travel for work, just to get those precious nights in a hotel somewhere, when I could relax and just be "diaper guy" and watch 24 or Breaking Bad and drink a beer in bed while reviewing a spreadsheet with one eye. 

It's an interesting point.  Although nappies are normalised at this point within the relationship, they are NOT approved, more officially (and reluctantly) tolerated.  In recent past I've used "free" time not so much to lounge about in nappies (since I live in nappies) but more to test some limits here and there.  I might wear an Inspire+ Mega XL to destruction (it's the next morning here, it's been on about 14 hours but is still going strong) or more controversially, in the past I've tried skipping nappies for bed to see what happens (bad sleep on night #1 followed by wet bed on night #2 both times). 

The first of those examples would merely annoy my beloved as she might fret for our furniture.  The second would enrage her (not unreasonably).

Similarly, depending on what I'm doing, I might not bother wearing anything over my nappy (especially if it's a fully-saturated Mega Inspire that might leak).  That's something she'd HATE if she were here to see it.  I also probably won't bother wearing more than a t-shirt and nappy to bed (she hates that too).

I just felt that this time around that I couldn't be bothered with the "cold and wet at 2am" thing followed by a massive laundry job so I'm not sure about skipping the night nappies.  I know full well that I'm prone to wetting the bed now.

 

ps: update.  Spring has sprung and its 27C today so, having a large house to myself after getting back from the airport, I've decided to ditch the jeans and wear just a onesie.  THAT wouldn't be happening with my beloved her too.

[Little Sherri]

44 minutes ago, oznl said:

Having both in my nappy cupboard I think NOT.  At least down here. Although I accept (and appreciate) that the taping system is the same, there appears to be more padding in the Mermaid Tale.  This is evidenced anecdotally by the fact that I can last longer in one (up to 18 hours vs 12 hours for the Elite), their tactile feel (thicker in the seat) but also by their average tare weight.  An Elite is typically 227g per unit whereas an identically-sized Mermaid is 264g  Whereas I have found some variability in weight from unit to unit, the delta within a pack is typically well under 5%.  The Elite/Mermaid weight delta is closer to 15%; more than could be explained by the stuffing guy not paying attention.

Interesting.  You are correct, sir. The InControl Elite Hybrid Brief (it has both an internal combustion engine, and an electric motor, I take it), rates itself at 5455 ml in size XL, whereas the "Mega'ed" Mermaid Tale rates itself at a bonkers (and unachievable) 11000 ml in all sizes, AND, the sizing doesn't line up, either. A large Tale would be about the same size as an XL Elite.

I'd always just assumed that I had an older (pre-Mega) stash of Elite's, and that at some point they would take on the Mermaid Tale proportions, and maybe get the Mega name, but, in classic white. But it would appear that they are indeed a different product, despite having the same fastening system, and, both being "super-duty" nappies within their respective lines. 

To me, this is like finding out - and this may be gibberish to you over there - that the GMC Sierra and the Chevrolet Silverado were engineered completely independently, are manufactured in separate plants, and, no parts are interchangeable, although both are 1/2 ton pickup trucks build by General Motors and sold for within a stone's throw of the same price, adjusted for options. That sounds expensive, although admittedly, nappies have fewer moving parts than pickup trucks. But the principal stands. 

[oznl]

1 minute ago, Little Sherri said:

To me, this is like finding out - and this may be gibberish to you over there - that the GMC Sierra and the Chevrolet Silverado were engineered completely independently, are manufactured in separate plants, and, no parts are interchangeable, although both are 1/2 ton pickup trucks build by General Motors and sold for within a stone's throw of the same price, adjusted for options. That sounds expensive, although admittedly, nappies have fewer moving parts than pickup trucks. But the principal stands. 

I remember reading with much hilarity, that the ONLY commonality between the US and European Ford Escort was one bit of the diff.  Apart from that, 100% unique...

[oznl]

Report follows:  I wore (and used) a Rearz “Mega” Inspire+ for a full 24 hours after putting one on at my evening change yesterday.  It made an excellent night nappy.  I woke up warm, wet and very comfortable.  It was just a shame it was so early.  I had to take my beloved to the airport. Instead however of my customary morning nappy change, I just pulled on some jeans over my plastic pants, went to the airport, came back and went about my (non-working) day.

Did it last 24 hours?  Well, kind of.  It was pretty good until lunchtime.  Then it wasn’t so great but still functional.  Finally for the last 2 of those 24 hours it wasn’t really functioning as a nappy at all. 

By this time the inner lining had largely disintegrated under its own weight, the padding at the front had split horizontally at my pubic area and the lower part had slumped down.

The weight was pulling the nappy down and somehow, the top of the crotch kept folding over wicking pee into my plastic pants and beyond.

The two lower tapes had failed, necessitating a field repair with masking tape to keep the thing on me at all.

As I peed, I could feel that pee percolating out both sides of my nappy’s crotch to run down my inner thighs and collect upon the towel on my chair that I’d thoughtfully put there.

As with previous nappy ultra-marathons, towards the end I felt wet, icky and a bit smelly.  I could distinctly smell stale pee despite my plastic pants.  I was still wearing it (somewhat) but it was no longer a viable nappy.

A bit after 5pm, I called time out (all I was doing was reading the internet whilst wetting my chair) and waddled down the hall for a well-overdue nappy change.  Upon removal (this was really more unleashing than removal, that nappy REALLY wanted to around my ankles on the floor anyway) I found ALL the padding to be fully involved with pee.  It was hard to see how it could have held more.

And the final score?  This fallen soldier weighed in at 2913g in contrast to its dry weight of 249g meaning that it had (kind of) coped with 2.6 litres of pee over a 24 hour period.  This was at the upper end but within manufacturer tolerances for my body on a well-hydrated day.

This was only one quarter of the Rearz (11 litre!) claim though and we were already well into “product failure” territory!  I’m already well familiar with the useless nature of the ISO absorbency score for these things but even with that dysfunctional measure, I’d expect to get around 1/3 of the theoretical capacity.

I therefore declare the Rearz (non-ISO) absorbency claim to be an even greater confection that has even less application in the real world relative to the (already meaningless) ISO rating methodology.  What next?  We rate nappies by how many barrels of water may be stored adjacent to them?

But I digress.  Does that mean it’s a bad nappy?

Not at all.

It was awesomely comfortable when I put it on and when it got wet (as my nappies inevitably and swiftly do), it only got MORE comfortable.  This was just like the non-Mega version of the Inspire+ although UNLIKE the non-mega Inspire+ it did not exhibit the sudden and unexpectedly premature leaks that the non-mega Inspire+ was so tragically inclined toward.  This mega kept ME warm and wet whilst keeping my JEANS warm and dry (at least for a fair while): end of discussion.

It was effortlessly comfortable to wear for 12 hours.  It was a wet night nappy that I felt no desire to take off come morning and I didn’t NEED to take it off.  It felt like a warm hug when I woke.  It remained comfortable all the way up until about midday the next day (an 18 hour shift) until Gravity roared at the tapes and plastic outer to yield.  Gravity’s mate Absorbency was also standing just behind.

It seems a truly functional 24 hour nappy remains commercially elusive.

[Stroller]

6 hours ago, oznl said:

It seems a truly functional 24 hour nappy remains commercially elusive.

It's probably just as well.  We'd be getting pretty whiffy by the end of the 24 hours.

[Kawaharu]

On 9/29/2023 at 8:52 PM, oznl said:

It seems a truly functional 24 hour nappy remains commercially elusive.

If there was ever such a thing as a 24 hour diaper, I would be the first one in them. I know sometimes when I am diapered and boosted in my NorthShore Megmax diapers with 3 to 4 boosters, I can take them to the next day unless I poop in them really badly.

[oznl]

I’ve just come out of four days and three nights with my beloved away.  I thought I’d do the usual dangerous things that I’d dare not attempt in her presence.

I tried not using my nappies to see what happened.

For day #1 (around the house), I simply didn’t wear a nappy.  I used a toilet like a grown up.  I was swiftly and vividly reminded that by now, not being in nappies is REALLY annoying and VERY inconvenient.  I needed to pee every 90 minutes to 2 hours with strong and sudden urges BUT I was in control.  As long as I stopped what I was doing and did what my bladder wanted, everying was ok(ish). 

Peeing took AGES.  It was probably only a minute or so but a minute is a long time stuck in a small room with no view.  My pee stream seemed quite weak and slow.  There wasn’t really a well delineated “end” to it either.  I had to just wait for the drips to stop.  It seemed like a very long time wasted for no good reason when I could simply have let it all happen in my pants and just continued with whatever it was I was doing.

For day #2, I had to go out.  Considering public decency and my car upholstery, I opted to wear a very thin all-in-one cloth nappy (the mainly-useless “Night N Day”) under my jeans.  I knew I would be out for a little less than 2 hours and that I probably wouldn’t have to use it and if I did, it should cope.

Keeping it dry proved VERY difficult though.  By the time I parked the car back home, two whole hours had (nearly) elapsed I was clutching and grabbing at myself.  I was obviously desperate and couldn’t pass for normal.  I think a few drops of pee escaped anyway.  I hadn’t felt myself urinate but the tip of the toyshop was wet and there was a small faint yellow stain in the relevant area of my nappy.

As I literally ran from the garage to the bathroom to discover this minor seepage, I’d thoughtfully grabbed a measuring jug on the way through to find out how much my bladder could hold.   THIS was certainly science I could not undertake in the presence of my beloved. The (eventual) pee quantity was much better than I expected at 430ml (a bit googling suggested that average “peak” adult male void volume was around 700ml).  It looks like my bladder WILL still hold some quantity.  It’s a mystery how I came to make that much pee in two hours.  I suspect it’s to do with the time of day and proximity to taking a blood pressure medication that has a diuretic effect.

The (what felt like) Herculean “holding” effort for my brief outing however, kind of wrecked what was left of my holding ability for the rest of the day.  My pee interval sank down to about 1 hour before massive and painful pee urges with uncontrollable spurts.  I stayed in a nappy and abandoned trying to keep it dry early that evening.

Still, although I was kind of continent although I’d make the travel companion from hell.

Those two nights were VERY disappointing.  I did NOT wet the bed either of them.  This was both perplexing and frustrating for me.   I was fairly sure I’d wet the bed at least twice the preceding week:  On one morning I’d woken with a glimmer of memory that I’d stirred during the night to discover that I was mid-pee.  I found my nappy to be soaked and I had no other recall of using it.  On another night, I’d had a markedly vivid “pee dream” where I dreamed I was wetting the bed (no nappy) with my beloved lying beside me and that she’d be cross when she found out.   I starkly recalled reaching under the covers and feeling sodden blanket and sheets at my crotch as it was happening.  This was sufficiently life-like to wake me into realising that I was peeing but it was ok, I was dressed for such an occasion and the bed was fine.  I swiftly fell back asleep.  I can’t even remember “finishing”.

It seems however that under test conditions, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle was back at play:  I was simply was woken by my bladder at highly inconvenient 2 – 3 hour intervals.  Getting up to use the toilet inevitably inhibited my ability to quickly fall back asleep and so after the 2nd night, I was exhausted.  My old habit of trying to pretend that I did NOT need to pee when first woken instantly re-emerged, merely prolonging my sleep deprivation because I my bladder wouldn’t let me fall back asleep anyway.

Night #3 was reserved for a different kind of experiment that I may chronicle later.

Anyway, that’s how things landed.  Daytime continence is denuded but operational.  Staying dry for both nights sucked a lot though.  Surely I haven’t gone backwards on that score?  My sleep however was terrible both nights and as I write this (morning), I feel so tired it’s as though I’ve jetlag.  I’m glad I don’t have to drive anywhere today (public holiday).

Co-incidentally, all this happened on the 4.5 year mark of my final return to nappies.

I guess I’ll push on for my “5 year” badge but it’s honestly hard to see much of a trajectory right now.  Colour me grey.

[Kawaharu]

Shouldn't this be a blog post instead of a forum post

[dribblez]

You make an interesting observation @oznl. My range is now unpredictable, from as little as 45 minutes to 3 hours, but like you, if I manage to hold for a long time and pee in the toilet, my bladder seems to decide it's not going to put up with any more abuse, and withdraws its labour with inevitable results. As for volumes, they also oscillate wildly now when I use the toilet, from surprisingly large torrents to times when I respond to a strong urge, only to produce a pathetic teacup full. Strange times indeed.

[ozziebee]

Do you not remember your words some time ago - last testing period - where poking the bear to critically examine experiment results, resulted in unexpected results?  You expected a wet bed - your body decided otherwise.

I just returned from a road trip into far western Queensland, travelling about 4000km all up, and I admit I spent a day or two in knickers, but mostly spent either in pullups or nappies.  My conclusion is that I get urges way out of proportion to the amount of pee that's produced when I wear knickers with there being no absolute wetting accidents, but I do end up with wet knickers every time (so there is some ongoing minor leakage), that my body knows the difference between pullups and diapers, and my bowels do not like travel... 

Strangely enough, for the first time ever, I walked into a caravan park office one afternoon after driving some 500km to book in and find the location for my caravan, when my bowels decided to try gravity expelling.  No urge, no nothing during the drive, but as soon as I stopped walking into the office, my bowels decided to have a go.  

The pullups v diapers thing is interesting.  I strongly suspect that my fear of leaking from pullups through floods causes me to unknowingly clench up down there, so I end up with urges every few hours to go, and nothing to show for those urges.  My pullups remain stubbornly dry (but ultimately similarly wet per knickers).  Put on a nappy, and I leak like a faucet!  So I suspect that this is conditioning training happening, and I'm experiencing more interesting aspects of that.  For instance, I find it very easy to wet when I'm at running water and in a nappy.  But if I'm not in a nappy (eg I'm at the bathroom sink washing hands or something whilst stark naked down there) I'm not wetting.  However, I do get urges, and a few times now I've leaked onto the floor.  My body is slowly understanding that (a) the consequences are minor (it's a tiny bit of cleanup) and (b) if an urge hits when I'm naked in the bathroom, the command likely to be returned would be "do whatever you like", rather than "request is denied!".  It may get to the stage down the track that no request is sent up the chain of command, as all the responses previously have been "do whatever you like".  Conditioning training.  

I am happily back in cloth nappies, now I'm back home.  They are _so_ comfy.

I'm yet to work out a method for cleaning cloth nappies when on a road trip, as they require a lot of water to soak/clean, and a caravan has limited water supplies when off-grid.  At a caravan park, this is much easier, as one can hook up to water and power.  Maybe the answer is to do a pre-rinse in the caravan, and then go into the laundromat in (most) towns to do the full wash and dry.  Disposables are so much easier when travelling, but add to the storage challenge in the interim.

Experiments are fun, aren't they!?

8 hours ago, Kawaharu said:

Shouldn't this be a blog post instead of a forum post

You obviously haven't seen the past 56 pages of this thread then, eh?

[oznl]

23 hours ago, ozziebee said:

Do you not remember your words some time ago - last testing period - where poking the bear to critically examine experiment results, resulted in unexpected results?  You expected a wet bed - your body decided otherwise.

Yes, I DO remember that.   However my experience (had) been that this effect was fading away as bedwetting was becoming entrenched.  I’d already wet the bed repeatedly (on the second night at least) when running this kind of experiment twice before and fully expected to do so again. 

Wrong.  Still, you know me directly and that I’m in the habit of seeking to understand what I see (to sometimes ludicrous lengths), you probably won't be surprised that I’ve been looking into how this circuit might be wired.

I believe that whilst my bedwetting absolutely exists as bedwetting (it happens outside of my conscious control, whilst, asleep), it is still at some level, a psychological construct.  My physiology down there is, although a bit rusty, normal enough.  Passive continence (that trick whereby we don’t pee unless we choose to) appears to be operational and YET, I will occasionally void in my sleep now.

When I wet the bed, it is because some part of my subconscious has decided that for some reason it’s ok for me to do so.  If I contemplate that too closely, it's less likely to happen.

Cue Milton Erickson (1901-1980): a leading and influential American psychiatrist who specialised in hypnotherapy pioneering methods of accessing his patient’s subconscious mind to apply solutions to problems. 

Bedwetting was one of these problems.  He "fixed" quite a few.  Whilst doubtless, there were some bedwetting candidates who endured physiological dysfunction that made their bedwetting medically inevitable, many others did not, and they responded favourably to his therapies.   Papers were written.

His therapies could sometimes be confronting, even shocking.  Consider his advice to a young married, bedwetting couple (they, they BOTH wet the bed together every night) who sought his assistance.  I’ll quote Erickson directly:

“You are to receive experimental therapy, and you are obligated absolutely either to benefit or to pay me whatever fee I deem reasonable.  Should you benefit, the success of my therapy will be my return for my effort and your gain.  Should you not benefit, all I will receive for my effort is a fee, and that will be a double loss to you but no more than an informative disappointment to me.

This is what you are to do: Each evening you are to take fluids freely.  Two hours before you go to bed, lock the bathroom door after drinking a glass of water.  At bedtime get into your pajamas and then kneel side by side on the bed, facing your pillows, and deliberately, intentionally, and jointly wet the bed.  This may be hard to do, but you must do it.  Then lie down and go to sleep, knowing full well that the wetting of the bed is over and done with for the night, that nothing can really make it noticeably wetter.

Do this every night, no matter how much you hate it—you have promised, though you did not know what the promise entailed, but you are obligated.  Do it every night for two weeks—that is, until Sunday the seventeenth.  On Sunday night you may take a rest from this task.  You may that night lie down and go to sleep in a dry bed.

On Monday morning, the eighteenth, you will arise, throw back the covers, and look at the bed.  Only as you see a wet bed, then and only then will you realize that there will be before you another three weeks of kneeling and wetting the bed.

You have your instructions.  There is to be no discussion and no debating between you about this, just silence.  There is to be only obedience, and you know and will know what to do.  I will see you again in five weeks' time.  You will then give me a full and amazing account.

Goodbye!”

It worked.  On the morning of the 18th, the couple (gratefully, for they did not share our inverted predilections) retired to bed WITHOUT first deliberately wetting it whereupon they awoke dry the next morning and did so going forward.  Their subconscious’s had re-patterned their behaviours whilst their conscious minds were distracted (and presumably distressed) by the ordeal of deliberate bedwetting which by their account, they initially found to be not just unpleasant, but extremely difficult to do.

The relevance of this in my mind however is that they altered a subconscious behaviour through related conscious focus.  Is THIS the Heisenberg-esque phenomenon we see?

Erickson believed that by using indirect suggestions through tasking that is metaphoric to the intent of the suggestion (in this case, taking back conscious control of urinating in bed), he was able to bypass consciousness and communicate directly with our subconscious and in doing so, directly modify subconscious behaviours.

I THINK, somewhere in all of this, there is the solution to our “problem” but it’s proving difficult for me to think it through.  Any psychiatrists or psychologists in the house?

[oznl]

Due to the fragile perch that is life, my beloved left home again last weekend for another (different) interstate trip.  This one to pay final homage to a frail, elderly relative who slipped off that perch quite ironically whilst my beloved was partying interstate the weekend before.  It wasn’t unexpected and as far as such things can be, was a suitable full stop to a long, productive and happy life.  It would be nicer to finish with a party but that’s not how mortality works.

Once again I found myself driving her to the airport at silly o’clock in the morning, wondering what to do with ANOTHER three days away from work with the house to myself, following up so closely as it did to the previous weekend’s bout of painting-and-continence-testing.

I decided to expand upon a brief, somewhat-aborted experiment I’d dallied with on one night that previous weekend.  I thought I’d spend a couple of days using my nappies for EVERYTHING. 

Yes, everything…  This is the point at which some of you may care to stop reading.

To lay my kink kredential kards on the table here, I’m not unacquainted with a full nappy.  It’s just something I’ve chosen NOT to do on this strange voyage.  This is in part because I’d like to stay married, part because I need to pass for normal out in company and part because I’m a lazy sod and the clean-up can be hellish.  For some reason deep inside the crazy-paving of my disrupted mind, not filling my pants daily does NOT leave me with a turd-shaped hole in my happiness.  I don’t NEED to do it.  So I don’t.

Sure, it’s happened often enough.  Sometimes through a confluence of laziness, proximity to changing and convenience, sometimes more recently through a degradation of general control in that department in extremis:  accidents happen now.

In stark contrast to the permanent pee party that happens inside my pants, I was planning to exercise some SOME control.  I had errands to run and a whole society to not offend whilst doing so.  It was a fairly vague plan though.

It wasn’t until early evening in fact when, not long after changing into my night nappy changed out of my night nappy after getting back home from the airport when, before lunch I became “aware” of a potential code brown.    It didn’t seem that serious so I had dinner and watched a movie before (provocatively it seemed), I got up to put away my plate.

Suddenly things got serious.  I was swiftly reminded that the general atrophy of my departments downstairs has had more impact on the #2 division than for #1.

Quite quickly.  I duck-waddled back to my chair and sat down firmly hoping to delay things until later, preferably morning.

No chance.  My body doesn’t do that anymore.

Within half an hour, ¾ through a reasonably mediocre Netflix movie I realised a point of no return had rather suddenly been reached.  I was going to fill my nappy right then, right now whether I wanted to or not.  There was absolutely nothing I could do about it anymore.  The only thing moderating the force of the expulsion was the back-pressure from the chair I was sitting on and that seal was imperfect.  I experienced entirely reflexive pushing that I was unable to do anything about and I relished that there was no company.  I’m sure my face was a picture.  After a series of epic seismic events, despite the seat of my nappy being pushed firmly against the bomb bay door, I could distinctly feel a certain “stickiness” suggesting that all was no longer pristine in the pants department.

With an air of inevitability (and some notes of hydrogen sulphide), I stood up to refill my glass.  “Carpe Diem!” cried my soon-to-be-relieved rectum and with an audible “Splorch”, the first code-brown of the weekend was abundantly and inescapably delivered.

The problem was that the timing was far from ideal.  It was late.  I was tired (I’d driven to the airport very early).  My nappy was hardly even damp.  The thought of shower, premature-nappy-rinsing, burning of clothing etc was just all too depressing.

I was comfortable enough though.  It wasn’t too bad in a “mud between your toes” kind of way.  Just don’t think about the clean-up.  I was aware that I didn’t smell great but olfactory habituation took the edge of things and my plastic pants/shapewear combo also helped.

So I went to bed and slept in it.

It was remarkably easy.  Within a few minutes I was asleep.

Some part of my subconscious however knew what was going on and that it was not normal.

I had vivid dreams.  In them, I was out in public, close up and personal with crowds.  Exactly NOT the scene one looks for when carrying a load in ones’ underwear.  No matter how hard I tried to avoid, withdrawn or discourage, it seemed like there was just a conga-line of excellent reasons for people to come up and stand VERY close to me.  People I knew would materialise out of nowhere and make beeline for me whilst I tried to blend in with adjacent furniture.  It never ended.

I’ve no idea if I bedwet or not.  That whole department had fallen out of the headlines.

Eventually, it was the next day.  I awoke to a perfectly comfortable nappy, somewhat slippery in the seat department but almost luxurious.

The air from beneath the covers however was less than luxurious: sour and foul.  A very faint sunburn note from my less-than-factory-fresh arse suggested that a change would be a great idea.

The clean up was a handheld shower job and involved MANY litres of water.

My terry nappies had to be soaked in bleach.  I know that’s not great for terry towel but consider the alternative.  My plastic pants needed a holiday.

The bedding had to be washed.  Somehow, the stench of a full nappy had permeated it.  It was bedding-wash day anyway.  To be fair a good airing may have sufficed but I was in the mood to take no prisoners.

I had two more full nappies that weekend: at each of them, urgency defeated my attempts at timing.  Two more inevitable, highly localised "incidents" after brief periods of me trying to “manage” strategic delays for operational convenience.  Both of them in cloth nappies (ones that frankly, I’d rather not have filled) triggering more bleaching and remediation effort.

It wasn't really the hedonistic abandonment I'd imagined but rather uncomfortable-and-doomed attempts at management followed by failure followed by half an hour in a hot shower and a gag-inducing laundry issue.

I’m not sure how people do this on a 24x7 basis.  I salute them.

[jeremy12312]

1 hour ago, oznl said:

somewhat slippery in the seat department but almost luxurious.

I haven't been able to do this in a LONG time, but that is the perfect description.  After everything cools to room temp, overnight, it's a wholly different sensation than the initial deposit. 

Speaking of not being able to do that, it's how my relatively-non-participating spouse talked me into buying a house.  It's just the two of us, she said, so if I had to I could mess and then sleep in a guest room.  We closed on the house and after a couple weeks, I went to sleep in another room with a load in my pants after she fell asleep.  When she woke up to an empty bed in the middle of the night, boy did I get both barrels...

[Little Sherri]

On 9/29/2023 at 8:52 PM, oznl said:

It was awesomely comfortable when I put it on and when it got wet (as my nappies inevitably and swiftly do), it only got MORE comfortable.  This was just like the non-Mega version of the Inspire+ although UNLIKE the non-mega Inspire+ it did not exhibit the sudden and unexpectedly premature leaks that the non-mega Inspire+ was so tragically inclined toward.  This mega kept ME warm and wet whilst keeping my JEANS warm and dry (at least for a fair while): end of discussion.

It was effortlessly comfortable to wear for 12 hours.  It was a wet night nappy that I felt no desire to take off come morning and I didn’t NEED to take it off.  It felt like a warm hug when I woke.  It remained comfortable all the way up until about midday the next day (an 18 hour shift) until Gravity roared at the tapes and plastic outer to yield.  Gravity’s mate Absorbency was also standing just behind.

My experience with them exactly. Magnificently comfortable, to about the 18-hour point. A great product. 11000 ml as a capacity number is, however, as accurate as saying that you can fit 11 Great Danes into a Volkswagen Beetle. Maybe you could, if you mulched them and blew them in there. If you want to drive the car and you enjoy your dogs intact... 4? Being reckless? 

On 10/5/2023 at 4:31 AM, oznl said:

Anyway, that’s how things landed.  Daytime continence is denuded but operational.  Staying dry for both nights sucked a lot though.  Surely I haven’t gone backwards on that score?  My sleep however was terrible both nights and as I write this (morning), I feel so tired it’s as though I’ve jetlag.  I’m glad I don’t have to drive anywhere today (public holiday).

This tracks exactly with my experiences. I can cruise for 90 minutes if I have to, but it's not fun. I could probably make it through the night dry, 2 out of 3 nights, certainly, but I would have to get up and pee, and, I would sleep like crap. 

 

On 10/5/2023 at 12:33 PM, Kawaharu said:

Shouldn't this be a blog post instead of a forum post

He's been doing this for 5 years. Most of us are happy with the format and location... I been told this about my own forum string as well. I don't really see the benefit of the blog format over this, and anyway, it's my story, I'll tell it how I want to tell it. The blogs here are distinctly under-read, as compared to the forums, so I think most people prefer this venue.

 

 

On 10/12/2023 at 8:38 AM, oznl said:

I thought I’d spend a couple of days using my nappies for EVERYTHING. 

I've been contemplating this as well. Not that I've never done it, but, to borrow your words, I find the cleanup agricultural, arduous, and, like smoking a cigar in the bathroom, it's hard to keep it a secret. But, to use an aviation analogy, I feel like a private pilot who occasionally hangs out with people who fly for a living. If I'm going to present myself as some kind of expert at living in diapers, then I should at least know what it's like over there. 

What I haven't worked out is, first of all, when I'd do it, although I will have the house to myself (sort of) for a few days in November. My daughter will be home but we don't share a room so I should be able to manage not to offend her. 

Next, do I poop at strategically selected moments, say, to minimize nappy consumption, as well as inconvenience, or, do I simply sit on the urge, until I can do so no longer, and thus, have it impose upon my routine in a bit more of a realistic way? I doubt that I'll be at it for more than a couple of days. My tush may be slippery, but this slope, I think, is not. 

[oznl]

My bedwetting drought broke last night in the usual fashion.

I’d started to become almost, worried.  Whilst it’s hard to be certain, it SEEMED like I’d been waking to pee every night for the best part of three weeks.  Certainly, the attempts at corralling my bedwetting into direct observation during my beloved’s absence two weekends ago had failed dismally: more dismally than they had previously.  I was well aware that in the early days of my reversion to bedwetting, any attempts at measurement or even contriving the event were counterproductive but over time, I’d (mistakenly) concluded that this fragility had eroded.

Anyway, last night at around 2am I was actually stirred into wakefulness by the physical sensation that I was about to pee.

The interesting thing though was the thought that had somehow dragged me out of the land of nod into physical reality.  That thought was that I should NOT pee because I wouldn’t be truly asleep and this would therefore be some kind of “failure”.

I woke up properly in order NOT to wet my nappy whilst I was asleep.

Is THIS the Heisenbergian uncertainty principle at play?  Was my subconscious trying to curate my bedwetting experience?  It was as though something was blocking me from peeing in at least a semi-sleeping state because it wasn’t what I was looking for.

It didn’t really matter thius time as my physiology was out in front of my subconscious.  Before I really even had time to process all of this, a spreading heavy warmth was telling me that the ship had sailed.   I was awake properly by then but it was clear that this pee event had started in my sleep so it “counted”.  I finished, was perfectly comfortable and so fell back asleep fairly quickly.

What was interesting however was that blurred glimpse that some part of my brain is aware about what is going on and is making decisions beneath the floor of consciousness, the effect of which is to inhibit sleep wetting by actively looking for it.  More grist for the Milton Erickson mill if only I could figure out how to leverage it.

[oznl]

This week I road-tested another re-usable product from my parade of unexceptional nappies: the “Men’s Sleep Well” from “Staydry”.

https://www.staydry.com.au/collections/briefs/products/mens-sleep-well

I bought two pairs of these a couple of years ago.  Partly because they claimed “Go to bed feeling assured that you will be protected from any accidents”, partly because they (quite unusually) look very much like an old-school re-usable nappy but in a grown-up size and partly because their claimed absorbency (850ml) might actually have been sufficient to cope with a bedwetting incident.

Testing them under battle conditions however, I was reminded of the Jaguar “XJ-S” series car (1975 – 1976, RIP).  This Jag combined the muted performance and boat-like maneuverability of a large limousine with the cramped interior and appalling ergonomics of an uncompromising sports track car.  It managed to at once to wrest the worst compromises from each from the two pursuits of automotive excellence it attempted to combine: luxury and sports.

Similarly, the StayDry managed to combine the puffy, plastic-and-elastic-clad bulk that you might expect from a 1960s toddler clad in a cloth nappy/plastic pant combo designed to last the whole weekend along with the pee-absorbency of a nylon-mesh bikini bottom.

I suspect that the label “Staydry” is more of a manufacturer’s exhortation rather than a brand promise because if you have a pee in a pair of these, many things around and beneath you will NOT stay dry.

I’d first tangled with them in May 2021 when my beloved was away.  I wore a new pair to bed dry to test for suspected bedwetting.  Even at the time I suspected they may not be up to the challenge in case anything happened but I figured they’d be better than nothing.

I wet the bed.  Metaphorically AND physically.   There were three overlapping puddles I woke in.  One each out each leg-hole and the third was out at the small of my back.   I hadn’t actually peed that much but whatever I had, finished up soaking my bedding.  The only thing they HAD successfully done was deflect my pee from going upwards into an extremely-difficult-to-dry doona (duvet, comforter, insert your regional translation here).  The waterproof layer had worked well enough to ensure that the pee drained on the downhill side of my nappy and into the sheets underneath me.

I didn’t bother opening the other pack.

Two years later, I thought I’d try them again to see if they really were that bad.  They were.

Wetting them awake this time, I couldn’t help but notice that things felt wet very quickly down there.   Using a nappy triggers (at first) a very localised but soon-to-be-spreading warmth.  Using the Staydry felt like I was wetting my pants.  I could feel pee trickling downhill instantly.

Despite their padding being largely unused, the very minor leaks due to gravity started quite quickly.  I persisted with them until a little over 800ml was on-board (quite close to the manufacturer claim of 850ml)  but the reality was that catastrophic wicking leaks and “run off” was happening long before this milestone was reached.  I was only still in them because I was home alone.

Out of idle curiosity, I decided to (after rinsing a wet one) simply wait for it to stop dripping and then measure its gross weight to calculate absorbency.  This isn’t a million miles from the actual ISO process (that gives us those wildly inflated absorbencies).   This came in at a little under 1400ml but since the 800ml load had already overwhelmed them, that tells you pretty much all you need about the usefulness of this ISO test cycle.

Why are they so rubbish?

The construction of these was typical for the resusable adult nappies I’ve encountered in the “medical” world.  The outer “plastic” pant (which appeared to be coated nylon) was sewn to what looked like a terry towelling underpant at the leg and waist seams.  This cloth underpant was fortified by a strip of padding buried within it that run from front to back but not the sides.  NEVER the sides of course for side protection is an abomination in the eyes of the medical incontinence management community.

Upon close examination of the laundering label, I found that my “terry towel” underpant was in fact, polyester.

The first problem was that the inner cloth underpant (the one that sees all the pee action) appeared to be if anything, slightly hydrophobic.  I could feel pee literally trickling over myself instead of being absorbed by the adjacent dry padding.  When I peed, pee came out of them before it could be absorbed by them.

This is probably why polyester nappies aren’t really a thing. 

The second problem is that the “underpants” part, as thick as it was, didn’t seem to absorb very much.  I seriously suspect that it too was polyester: the wonder-product of the 21st century for nappies that also serve to irrigate carpets.

The third problem (and this howler seems to be almost endemic to the medical adult cloth nappy world) was that not only were the elastic bands at the waist and legs NOT waterproof but they were sewn directly to the (doomed to get pee-soaked) inner underpants causing rapid and automatic wicking of pee to the great outdoors.

Getting past their disabilities with respect to keeping pee inside pants, we have the other types of problem inherent with this architecture.

As the pee-soaked bits are fully encased (on one side at least) by the waterproof bits they are subject to horrendous drying difficulties and I expect, premature product “failure” due to the waterproof outer layer becoming unserviceable prior to anything else.

They just don’t work…

It’s possible that they COULD work over a disposable to catch leaks in bed but that’s NOT what the Staydry is sold to do.  It’s supposed to be a front-line adult nappy to managed bedwetting and anyway, I’ve got my Babykins terry-lined plastic pants for “over disposable” night time insurance and they are completely awesome at it.  They also have wicking-prone elastics but the inner liner is proper terry towel (and so not afraid of pee) and the inner liner flips out and away from the plastic pant to facilitate drying.

Additionally, I can’t really risk a wet bed with my beloved in it beside me.  I know the Babykins will work.  I know that the StayDry has failed every task I’ve thrown at it.  There’s just no reason to risk a change.

The second pair is still sealed in its polythene bag.  It’s probably the only way to ensure that it doesn’t leak.

For now my front-line reliance on planet-raping disposable products remains as unchallenged as my dismal opinion of “medical” adult reusable nappies.

[Little Sherri]

1 hour ago, oznl said:

Testing them under battle conditions however, I was reminded of the Jaguar “XJ-S” series car (1975 – 1976, RIP). 

I'm a car guy, and this car perplexed me - it seemed like a British answer to the bloated 1970's Ford Thunderbird, which similarly had a hood you could land a light aircraft on, but, almost no knee room in the back seats, although the car was the length of a station wagon. The radiator shroud was a FOOT deep, and that, in front of a 351 V8... were they leaving room for a commercial diesel, in case one was called for?

And like the XJ-S, that 351 consumed a lot of fuel, but generated little drama for it. The XJ-S was eventually available with an inline 6, but the V12 that they offered, while smooth as silk, offered little motive advantage over the engine with half as many cylinders. I believe they used a General Motors 3-speed automatic starting out, later moving to a 4-speed, but they had that "J-gate" you-can-drive-it-as-a-manual shift selector... did anyone do that, ever? In a 3-speed car? 

I briefly owned a Jaguar XJR from the turn of the century that was a lovely, lovely machine to drive, but was haunted by electrical poltergeists. I bought it for the price of a 10-year-old Toyota, and soon learned why. I had it for one magical summer that ended with the rains of September, and four tows in two weeks. You'd think that a British car would function in the rain. 

1 hour ago, oznl said:

NEVER the sides of course for side protection is an abomination in the eyes of the medical incontinence management community.

You're supposed to sleep on your back, because rolling around just tangles up the leads to the ECG and your IV lines. I think that there is a conspiracy afoot between the unions representing hospital laundry employees, and the manufacturers of medical diapers. The bedding becomes the diaper. They might as well just put you to bed naked. 

[jeremy12312]

 

Here’s a video of a Tom Walkinshaw-modified XJS, unmuffled, manual transmissioned, running a qualifying lap.  It sounds glorious, and is the car I’ve always wanted, and is quite the contrast to the lazy GT that everyone knows. 

I think there isn’t a cheaper 12-cyl on the market. 

[oznl]

8 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I'm a car guy, and this car perplexed me - it seemed like a British answer to the bloated 1970's Ford Thunderbird, which similarly had a hood you could land a light aircraft on, but, almost no knee room in the back seats, although the car was the length of a station wagon. The radiator shroud was a FOOT deep, and that, in front of a 351 V8... were they leaving room for a commercial diesel, in case one was called for?

That was the "worst of all worlds" thing I was mentioning but I have to ask, what happened to that XJS?  There were two engine options: the 3.6 litre straight 6 and the silky torque-monster (when it worked) 5.3 litre V12.  There was ZERO space in the engine bay to do anything.  I spent a miserable two hours trying to find a cable break for a thermo-fan on a mates classic V12 XJS.  Brilliant idea running all the cables down the valley of the V12 boys!  Forget colour coding, after 10 years, all cables are "toasted" colour.

I know for a while down here during Jaguars darkest times (all of the 70s, 80s and most of the 90s), despairing owners would ditch the failure-prone original engines and convert them to Chevrolet 350 V8s.  These were known as “lumps”.  You may have been looking at a lump.

8 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I briefly owned a Jaguar XJR from the turn of the century that was a lovely, lovely machine to drive, but was haunted by electrical poltergeists. I bought it for the price of a 10-year-old Toyota, and soon learned why. I had it for one magical summer that ended with the rains of September, and four tows in two weeks. You'd think that a British car would function in the rain.

I owned a 2000 model simple XJ8 sport V8  (the famous AJ8 engine).  It is burned into my memory as the most engaging, gorgeous drivers’ car I’ve ever had:  even with that ridiculous “J-Gate” (albeit mated to the slightly-less antiquated 5-speed ZF automatic).  Known in the family as “The Pussy Cat”, my beloved called it “His other woman”.

Assuming it was an AJ8-powered XJR, be grateful that you only dealt with British electrical engineering and not the disposable plastic timing chain tensioners, paper mache water pump or, the mother of all problems, the “Nikasil” bore linings.

4 hours ago, jeremy12312 said:

 

Here’s a video of a Tom Walkinshaw-modified XJS, unmuffled, manual transmissioned, running a qualifying lap.  It sounds glorious, and is the car I’ve always wanted, and is quite the contrast to the lazy GT that everyone knows. 

I think there isn’t a cheaper 12-cyl on the market. 

They do sound great.  An "acquaintance of an acquaintance" also used to race one.  You wouldn't believe that an XJS would actually race well on a hill climb circuit so here is video proof of him racing his:

To drag things back on topic, the Jaguar V12 engine suffers from incontinence (so technically what you have here is "incontinence desires"):  fluid leakage was pretty much built in at the factory 🤣

 

[jeremy12312]

9 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I briefly owned a Jaguar XJR from the turn of the century that was a lovely, lovely machine to drive, but was haunted by electrical poltergeists.

Gotta go off topic one more time here.  I came this close to buying an XJR off of a Carmax used car lot.  It had been sitting long enough that the battery was dead (of course) so the technician comes out with the jump cart.  The salesman, flexing his superior automotive knowledge, helps out by assuming that 1)the battery is under the hood up front and 2) the hood hinges at the windshield.

So, he pops the release in the cabin, then tugs at the Leaper to open it the rest of the way, pulling hard enough that it comes clean off in his hand.

"Um.  We'll fix that if you buy it."

I didn't.

[oznl]

The heat is on.  “Spring” (such as it is in my part of the world) has, albeit quite late, finally sprung and the weather is now in a semi-permanent warm-to-hot phase.  The sun has that kind of brutal blow-torch feel to it that has us all scuttling for shade at every opportunity. 

Whilst saner minds languish beneath ceiling fans and AC, I’ve just spent a weekend alternating between working on getting a large in-ground swimming pool up to a sparkling blue aquamarine monument that I’ll hardly, if ever use myself (it’s getting hard not to pee every few minutes) and doing general yard work.  The yard work is a kind of endless treadmill of dragging away and mulching  fallen palm fronds (there’s a LOT of palms) alternating with bouts of chainsaw-wielding tree lopping (trying to head off mother nature doing it for me in a less-controlled fashion during the severe thunderstorms or, on a REALLY good year, maybe, just maybe, a cyclone) that is the reality of the hot half of the year here.  To round it all of I might wander about aimlessly in the heat haze with a leaf blower trying to send residual debris next door.

It’s the kind of weather and work combo exactly NOT suited to thick, insulating, warm-wet nappies, ventilation-killing plastic pants with perhaps a second pair of compression pants or even a onesie over the top.  A veritable private sauna for my nether regions and that’s before I even put on some grown-up clothes.

It was a bit miserable really.  The Abena disposable nappies, unsurprising perhaps in view of their Scandinavian design, disintegrate in the face of heat and friction.  Any pee action that occurs within their mortal remains under those kind of dehydrating work conditions has the chemical characteristics of battery acid.  Plastic elastics chafe, sweat stings my eyes, raucous birds shout and an armies of enraged insects launches wave after wave of unprovoked attacks.  After 15 minutes, my T-shirt is as wet as my nappy anyway whilst my own body betrays me by cooking up melanomas in the harsh Australian sunlight.

My reward for sacrificing my weekend in the name of sub-tropical urban garden maintenance?  Sunburn where the sun shines and nappy rash where it didn’t.

Nappies can REALLY suck in the heat.

It could be worse I suppose.  I might have been a 24/7 “furry”.  I can see that mowing a tropical lawn in an enclosed polyester-and-foam Scooby-Doo costume (I’m not judging: it’s just a question of heat transfer) would be worse and anyway, it will cool down some time next April…

[Little Sherri]

Meanwhile, we had our first below zero temperature last night - it allegedly got to -3. I blew out my outdoor water lines with my compressor at 9 PM because it suddenly dawned on me that the time was neigh. The grass has stopped growing but I still drive my lawn tractor back and forth over it maniacally, now mulching the leaves on top of it into a fine dust. On a side note, it still amazes me how a pile of leaves a foot deep, four feet wide, and 30 feet long can be reduced to invisibility after a few passes with the tractor. I used to rake them up and bag them - a hangover from when my lawn was measured in square feet, not acres, but after driving two truck loads to the dump (at least they're free to drop off), comprised of more than 80 bags, I thought, there has to be a better way. Some of my neighbours burn them, which smells lovely (it does), but, with half the forests in Canada having burned up already this year, I thought, is there a way to send the carbon back to the atmosphere in a more gradual fashion? 

A thick carpet of leaves does hide the piles of dog sh*t, however, a fact that my younger daughter, whose job it is to harvest them, has taken full advantage of. A couple of weeks ago, I had to change the mower deck belt, shortly after having driven through a couple of such landmines... that was lovely. 

But, working outdoors in jeans and a sweater and a jacket makes for fine nappy wearing conditions; you can wave to the people driving by and chat with the neighbours over the fence, while wearing your most glorious diaper, with nary a concern. A guilty pleasure of mine is, once the conditions warrant it, wearing snow pants over just a diaper while clearing the driveway... everything you have on gets wet, anyway, so why generate more laundry? And snow pants have the bulk and look of an ankle-length diaper, anyway. 

[BabyJilly_S]

At times like these I am reminded of why I really like living in good olde England. Not too hot, not too cold, nice and temperate.

Though as it did get to 41c in the summer and -7c in the winter this year I am no longer sure that this will remain the norm... The cold I believe I can cope with, but that heat was just outrageous. 

 

 

[oznl]

17 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Meanwhile, we had our first below zero temperature last night - it allegedly got to -3. I blew out my outdoor water lines with my compressor at 9 PM because it suddenly dawned on me that the time was neigh.

I've got that at least.  The end of our swimming season (usually some time in April) is marked by a decision to stop swimming in it and not much else.  I will switch off the solar heating to save power, maybe dial back the time per day the filter runs for and drag the pool cover across it to keep out the worst of the debris until early October.  No other "winterising" rituals required and in any case, if you are a kid and thus immune to cold, the pool may well get swum in year round.  It's only the adults that wait until October.

15 hours ago, BabyJilly_S said:

Though as it did get to 41c in the summer and -7c in the winter this year I am no longer sure that this will remain the norm... The cold I believe I can cope with, but that heat was just outrageous.

41 is pretty impressive for the UK.  Whilst far from unheard of down here, nobody would tell you that 41 was anything but a hot day.  I remember once when I lived there it got to 36C in greater London and it was like the world was ending.  The roads melted!   For the most part however the climatic specialty was protracted drizzle.

tbh, my part of Australia doesn't get to super-high temperatures but the crusher is high humidity and frequent failure to cool down overnight.  Hot humid nights get old very quickly: especially if you're stuck in nappies.

[Little Sherri]

We're back up to 20 C (~68 F) here, after flirting with -3, but colleagues of mine in Alberta are clearing their driveways after receiving 6" of snow. This is the time of year when the weather toys with us like a cat with a mouse, before the extended lockdown where water is no longer a liquid in its natural form. I'd imagine @oznl's summer is a bit like our winter, though, in that nobody wants to spend protracted periods of time outdoors, at least at its peak, because the weather is plotting to kill you. My buddy who lives in South Florida describes the heights of their summer (June to August roughly) as being essentially a winter - everyone retreats indoors, because it's over 30 C outside day and night, with unrelenting humidity. They have poisonous snakes, too, although theirs are considered unambitious in comparison to what Australia bristles with, and their spiders are positively lackluster, barely killing anyone. 

With the exception of mishaps involving exotic pets, nobody up here has died of a snakebite in the last 100 years. But we did have a couple of people eaten by a Grizzly bear a month or so ago. Black bears are basically big raccoons for the most part, but Grizzly's don't fool around, and in the areas where they occur, you need to know your bear taxonomy, because the strategies employed when encountering black bears - make yourself look bigger, make noise, appear unintimidated - are exactly the strategies that get you killed when you encounter a Grizzly. Australia doesn't employ any large mammalian predators, does it? Dingoes would be about it? Sharks, saltwater crocodiles and lethal jellyfish more than make up for that, however. Do you guys have any poisonous birds?