Strange days indeed - a 24 x 7 experiment

[ozziebee]

Oz,

Knowing your situation, my suggestion is to move to somewhere cooler, like Melbourne, or even Hobart . How about a nice little bungalow high up in the Snowy Mountains in Cooma?

JK

I did a road trip out to central western Queensland recently, and found the heat out there (the highest was about 38 degrees C) bearable, as the air was very dry.  Mind you, the humidity of nappy was very high, and not very pleasant.

[Tadpole]

11 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

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.

Australia, where all the plants and animals try their best to kill you. @oznl should relocate across the ditch to NZ, where nothing tries to kill you and the temperatures are always temperate 🙂

[oznl]

16 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Do you guys have any poisonous birds? 

Not poisonous as such but we DO have the world's most dangerous bird (😒 are you really surprised?)...  The Cassowary

https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/zoology/item/worlds-most-dangerous-bird/

7 hours ago, ozziebee said:

Oz,

Knowing your situation, my suggestion is to move to somewhere cooler, like Melbourne, or even Hobart . How about a nice little bungalow high up in the Snowy Mountains in Cooma?

JK

I did a road trip out to central western Queensland recently, and found the heat out there (the highest was about 38 degrees C) bearable, as the air was very dry.  Mind you, the humidity of nappy was very high, and not very pleasant.

Nahh!  I'm going to stay in the heat and use it as an excuse to drink beer 🤣  It's not the bad on the back deck under the ceiling fans by the pool.  It's just the yard work that sucks.

4 hours ago, Tadpole said:

Australia, where all the plants and animals try their best to kill you. @oznl should relocate across the ditch to NZ, where nothing tries to kill you and the temperatures are always temperate 🙂

Ah New Zealand, where instead of wildlife, the very TERRAIN ITSELF repeatedly attempts to shake its inhabitants, and their habitable structures to death with endless earthquakes.  At least in Australia the ground stays (mostly) where it is put even if it's alternately on fire and underwater 🤣

[oznl]

Despite the assurances I gave to myself and those who follow my travels that I was DONE with trying to “measure” my intermittent bedwetting, I find myself reporting a consecutive “2 out of 2” nights proved bedwetting under half-arsed test conditions.

So much for my resolve.

Night #1 (last Friday) ended up being a test during a just-before-bed epiphany that the Rearz “Omutsu” night nappy I was in had really seen a bit too much red wine action for it to be trusted between the sheets.   I swapped it for layered pull-on “Babykins” cloth nappies before clambering into bed.

At 2am, Mr Sub-conscious shouted at me “No!  You are NOT supposed to be peeing whilst you are awake!!”  This woke me up (gee, thanks Mr Sub-conscious) to find that I was actually having a pee already.  There wasn’t a lot of point in trying to stop, and it had started in my sleep anyway.  Maybe I wasn’t asleep enough for Mr Sub-conscious.  Like other bedwetting events I’ve woken during, it was a fairly low-flow/low-volume affair unrelated to any full bladder anyway: more of a leak really.  I swiftly went back to deep sleep no more than comfortably damp and strangely reassured that I still wasn’t reliably dry at night anymore.

Night #2 (Saturday) was a new experience.  I went to bed in a “dry” (I’d removed the evening-shift waterproof-backed anatomical pad I’d stuffed down the front of my Rearz cloth pre-fold it to allow it the exposed cloth beneath deal freshly and directly with pee until morning).   A long, rambling “non-pee” dream ensued.  Allow me to ramble lengthily. 

My god I dream some rubbish but this one was surreal by even my fairly loose somnolent story semantics.  Bizarre circumstances cart-wheeled wildly from point to point in my dream narrative in a fairly Monty-Python like way but in the manner of dreams, it all seemed perfectly reasonable enough at the time.

It started out that I was driving a van somewhere in town with my beloved in the passenger seat beside me.

Suddenly, instead of the suburbs, we were in a desert.  The van was also now full of our household furniture. 

Then, I didn’t know where I was going but the van had a sat-nav however this seemed to be making things up as it went along.  I stared uncomprehendingly at a rapidly-changing jumbled riot of impenetrable sat-nav iconography on the van’s dashboard and wondered how I would ever get us out of the desert.

I was annoyed too because then I suddenly knew I’d have to drive all night now to get to the interstate location we were moving to.

Then I realised that the desert side-track I had turned down was undulating with dunes I had to cross that were made of bedding and pillows.  I remember the relief when the van didn’t get stuck in the first eiderdown-valley.

Next, it was hard to move the van because I had to pedal it like a bicycle.  That’s dreams for you.  One instant you have an internal combustion engine doing all the work in driving a pantechnicon across a quilt (the van got bigger) and next minute you’re working up a sweat on pedals.

Then my beloved, was somehow walking just in front of my “van” (which was now effectively a bicycle towing furniture).  She kept stopping to look at various ineffable things around her.  There were hints of suburb around us suggesting my desert experience was coming to an end but every time she stopped, I had to stop behind her.  This forced me to, with great effort, to get my bicycle-cum-furniture van moving again.

I don’t know where ANY of this was coming from.  I was pretty sure I hadn’t eaten pickled wildebeest for dinner.

I bade her to walk behind me so I didn’t have to keep stopping.

Unusually, she complied whereupon I became aware that she was fiddling with the waist band of my jeans behind me.

“What now?”

“Your jeans, the top of them is all wet with sweat”.

Oh yeah, of course.  I suddenly remembered my nappy. 

“It’s not sweat, it’s my nappy, I need to change it” I replied tersely, vaguely annoyed at her fussing.  I had a bicycle-powered van of my household goods to pedal across a terrain of bedding to escape the desert that had terra-formed around me and arrive and my interstate destination by the next morning and frankly her interruptions weren’t making this life any less complicated.

It was a dream half-truth however.  In my (dream) reality, I knew my nappy wasn’t very wet (if wet at all).  I’d just told her it was a nappy leak in the hope that she’d stop dabbing at my belt line and leave me to get on with pedaling our furniture to a fresh future somewhere else. 

Compounding this problem was another irritation albeit 100% internal in nature: despite being completely relaxed in the relevant areas, I wasn’t peeing anyway.  For some reason this bothered me.   I was wearing a nappy and I couldn’t even use it.  Nothing was happening at all.  I remained stuck in this state for quite some time.  I was trying to use my nappy but I couldn’t.

I recalled this dream vividly when I woke up because of all the smoke in our bedroom.

I’m mystified by the tragedy of those who succumb to smoke inhalation in their beds due to their somnolent inability to recognise the olfactory cues to peril.  I suppose it’s better than being burned alive but to me it still seems like a poor cousin to “waking up and evacuating the premises”.

Strong smells will wake me up.  I can recall being woken by the smell of my own nappy in unfortunate circumstances.  Smoke wakes me up very effectively.

I quickly realised that this smoke was diffuse, indeed pervasive in the air as opposed to billowing from a nappy hamper that had implausibly self-combusted and smelled like bushfire smoke as opposed to burning household items.  They have very different odours.  Furthermore, all of the 9 photo-electric interconnected smoke alarms (yes, seriously, NINE) that Australia’s nanny-state laws require be fitted inside my house remained silent.

I recalled that late night news bulletin reporting a fairly major bushfire about 80km to our north west and realised that light north westerly winds were at play.

Cancel the panic.

It was only then that a quick nappy check revealed that despite my dream, my nappy was indeed quite wet but I really DID have an empty bladder at waking.  I’d gone to bed dry.  The pee fairies had again visited during the night but for some reason that experience was not deemed as dream-worthy as the experience of NOT being able to wet it anymore some time later.

[Little Sherri]

1 hour ago, oznl said:

pantechnicon

My first sighting of this word on this, or any website. Well done. It's not a word we use in Canada, despite being adherents to the King's English. I now plan to insert it in my next worthy conversation. "Those buggers at the U-Haul had put aside a panel van for me, when I'd clearly requested a pantechnicon, and needed as much." 

[oznl]

8 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

My first sighting of this word on this, or any website. Well done. It's not a word we use in Canada, despite being adherents to the King's English. I now plan to insert it in my next worthy conversation. "Those buggers at the U-Haul had put aside a panel van for me, when I'd clearly requested a pantechnicon, and needed as much." 

Glad to be of service.  It's not a common word in Australia but it IS a word (noun to be precise).

I didn't wish to pursue any kind of gratuitous lexicographical antidisestablishmentarianism (could this be the FIRST instance of this word on DD?) but if you're talking about a van that got slightly up-sized to carry furniture then "pantechnicon" nails it even if most of your audience end up reaching for google to translate 🤣

[Little Sherri]

46 minutes ago, oznl said:

but if you're talking about a van that got slightly up-sized to carry furniture then "pantechnicon" nails it even if most of your audience end up reaching for google to translate 🤣

Toronto has a fairly established film industry, and when they're not waiting out a writer's strike, you come across the occasional film sets on the streets downtown, or convoys of equipment being moved from one set to another, or between the large sound stages down by the lake. Sometimes they employ absurdly large box trucks, sized out of all proportion to what their chassis are rated for - the trucks might have diminutive dual wheels and then a 30 foot box with 15 feet of overhang behind the single axel, or the box is 15 feet in height, or both, and all of that might be on a 1-ton van chassis with hydraulic brakes, rather than a commercial truck chassis with air brakes and full-sized wheels. They've obviously been constructed to transport things that take up a lot of space, and weigh nothing. I take it that would be an example of a pantechnicon?

[oznl]

16 minutes ago, Little Sherri said:

Toronto has a fairly established film industry, and when they're not waiting out a writer's strike, you come across the occasional film sets on the streets downtown, or convoys of equipment being moved from one set to another, or between the large sound stages down by the lake. Sometimes they employ absurdly large box trucks, sized out of all proportion to what their chassis are rated for - the trucks might have diminutive dual wheels and then a 30 foot box with 15 feet of overhang behind the single axel, or the box is 15 feet in height, or both, and all of that might be on a 1-ton van chassis with hydraulic brakes, rather than a commercial truck chassis with air brakes and full-sized wheels. They've obviously been constructed to transport things that take up a lot of space, and weigh nothing. I take it that would be an example of a pantechnicon?

Something like this?

https://www.rentittruckhire.com.au/our-fleet/pantech-3-tonne-truck-hire/

Where I live, you can drive up to a 5 tonne pantechnicon on a car license (which is a bit bigger but similar).  I've done this.  It's a bit frightening and I'm surprised that the nanny state that is Australia allows it.  I suspect it is probably the kind of thing you're talking about.  They're designed for bulk rather than outright weight but for driving and maneuvering purposes, they are an outright truck rather a car.  The "automatic" one that I had was in fact an automated manual transmission that changed gears so slowly there were tea breaks.

[Little Sherri]

We have similar contraptions. I once rented one with a manual transmission, but most are automatic. Some come with diesel engines, but a surprising number have gas engines, which is absurd - the fuel economy is comparable to that of flush toilets. They'd be about a 5-ton truck, one that could be ordered with air brakes for higher GVWR applications, but you can drive one of these on a standard drivers license, although in terms of maneuvering them around, they absolutely are commercial trucks.  

https://www.uhaul.com/Truck-Rentals/26ft-Moving-Truck/

[Little Sherri]

A question for you, @oznl, @ozziebee, and anyone else who wants to chime in; this was spurred by a conversation on another thread about Halloween candy. What I'm wondering is, how does Australian chocolate rank?

I'm Canadian, I have friends in the US, and I have friends in the UK. It is generally accepted in these parts that Canadian chocolate is superior to US chocolate, while UK chocolate was handed down from the Gods. Where does Aussie chocolate stand? 

Since we're on the topic, I might as well also ask about chips (crisps...):

The US has by far the most flavours available to them, as they do with everything else, including chocolate bars, and particularly breakfast cereal. 

Americans consider some Canadian flavours to be either intriguing, or, alien and gross, depending on whom you ask - Ketchup and All-Dressed come to mind as flavours they don't really market in the US. 

However, both Americans and Canadians are fascinated, and slightly intimidated by some of the flavours they get in the UK - think pickled onion and aged cheddar, mustard and ham, prawn cocktail, Worcester Sauce (sort of their equivalent to Ketchup, I guess), paprika, Marmite (cursed be thy name), beets and expired sardines (I may have made that last one up...).

What passes for common, and what would be weird, on an Aussie crisp shelf? 

[oznl]

9 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

A question for you, @oznl, @ozziebee, and anyone else who wants to chime in; this was spurred by a conversation on another thread about Halloween candy. What I'm wondering is, how does Australian chocolate rank?

I'd have to say that I consider UK chocolate to be superior to Australian chocolate.  I recall being told that a part of this was that Australian chocolate had a different recipe to cope with a significantly warmer climate.  I've also noticed that with friends who have come over from the UK bringing "care packs" of Yorkie bars, I'm amazed at how quickly they degrade.  Far better to eat them quickly.

I consider Australian chocolate to be nicer than US chocolate but that may be a palette thing.  I don't quite "get" the fascination with Hershey bars.  I find the taste to be slightly sickly but having said that chocolate is like sex.  Even when it's bad, it's still ok.  It's not like I'd ignore a bowl of Hershey kisses if they were available.

9 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

What passes for common, and what would be weird, on an Aussie crisp shelf? 

I think "crisps" will be instantly comprehended by most Australians although "chips" is the more common parlance.  Confusingly, "chips" in Australia are also "French Fries".  I seem to remember "Smiths Crisps" being the thing when I was a kid but a quick google suggests that they have been re-branded to "Smiths Chips".

As for flavours, the ones I remember primarily from childhood are plain, salt-and-vineger and chicken.  I can remember cheese and bacon variants as outliers although today, mercifully, chilli chips are readily available. 

As I recall, the UK had more off-the-wall flavours but I think we've largely caught up.  If you want cracked black pepper, lime and a twist of lemming, there will be some hipster chip brand there to sell it to you.

US chips work just fine for me.  My standard modus operandi after checking into my US digs on my frequent work trips was to hit wally-world for some decently strong craft beer and some chilli doritos.  I don't miss the trans-pacific flights but I DO miss that.

[Stroller]

Well we're OK for chocolate here in the UK, although continental Europe does better IMHO.  They've got regulation in many continental countries banning non-milk fat, which we haven't got here.  My staple is Cadbury's Dairy Milk Whole Nut, which despite its name contains palm and shea fat.  And hazelnuts of course.  I like it best straight from the fridge.  When we splash out we go for continental brands such as Lindt.  US chocolate such as Hershey doesn't really taste like chocolate at all to me.  Mummy likes dark chocolate - but that's grown-ups for you.

As for crisps, my favourite is salt and black pepper, and the worst I've ever eaten (decades ago) was piccalilli.  You used to be able to buy hedgehog flavour crisps here.  I suppose they contained about as much hedgehog as smoky bacon crisps contain pig - I hope so anyway.  They tasted OK though.

[Little Sherri]

7 hours ago, oznl said:

I don't quite "get" the fascination with Hershey bars.  I find the taste to be slightly sickly but having said that chocolate is like sex. 

 

5 hours ago, Stroller said:

US chocolate such as Hershey doesn't really taste like chocolate at all to me. 

I find some US commercial chocolate to be waxy - you're chewing the same volume of material, but it has 1/4 the taste, with the rest being strangely inert. Whereas, to @Stroller's point, a bag of Lindt truffle balls will set you bag $20 CAD, but that hit, that hit, of chocolate flavour, the way they melt on contact with the mouth; dark, milk, even white behave the same way. To @oznl's point, you have to store those things in the fridge, because they become balls of mush at anything over about 18 C. 

I'd forgotten continental chocolate, but I agree, it's probably the best. I was in Germany a few years ago, at a little craft chocolate cafe, and I had what can only be described as a mug of chocolate soup. Mother of God, the flavour. I lingered over it for an hour. And it went great with the dunkel that they also sold. It nearly brought me to tears. But even mediocre (by local standards) UK chocolate is a 9/10 here, where half of what we get is from the US. 

I, too, love chili chips, and I'm glad that Canadian manufacturers have embraced them. 

[Tadpole]

17 hours ago, oznl said:

I'd have to say that I consider UK chocolate to be superior to Australian chocolate.

One worry emigrating from the UK to NZ was if good chocolate would exist. Thankfully... Whitakers. Not quite in the same league as some Belgium or Swiss brands, but more than enough to avoid importing UK chocolate. Cheese, however, is another story.

[oznl]

Another 100% “successful” pair of nights for detected bedwetting occurred over last weekend.

Clearly I’m going to persist testing myself for bedwetting until I beat it back into hiding.

Night #1 was not 100% proof but I’m fairly sure it happened.  I’d attended a dinner party with friends the previous evening.  This led me to (reluctantly) forego my usual Friday night cloth nappies.  The bulk is simply too great not to look a bit odd at the dinner table or in particular, arising from it.  Then there’s the question of odour control. 

Instead, at around 4pm I showered and changed into one of my favourite “long haul” disposable nappies, the Rearz Inspire+ “mega”.  I was comfortable that this could survive an evening of craft beer and red wine but still allow me to stagger out of my uber into bed at midnight without having to bother with nappy changes.

This duly happened and I greeted that Saturday dawn floating in a swampy, warm and VERY comfortable “mega” with an utterly empty bladder and no recollection at all of “using” it during the night.

Night #2 was similar but the evidence was more than circumstantial this time.  I’d changed just before bed into a dry nappy before swiftly falling asleep in it.  Usually, I stir every couple of hours.  Typically, I discover if a bedwetting event has occurred by around 2am.  I’ve noticed that they often happen in the deeper phases of sleep a couple of hours into my nightly sleep cycle.

Perhaps it was the red wine but when I woke it was because of birdsong and it was heading for 5am: an utterly unusual (and highly appreciated) 7 hour stretch of forgetting to wake up!   I’d forgotten other things to.  I found my Babykins pull-on cloth nappies to be wet: quite wet in fact.  They were as wet as you’d expect after a whole night under “live fire”.  The thing was, I had zero recollection of using them.  I remembered changing into them and going to bed but that was all.  I didn’t even know I was wet until I checked them, they were just warm.

Based on my known pee cadence and the fact that my bladder was quite empty on waking I’m fairly sure there was more than one episode of bedwetting that had occurred in them.  At least two, possibly three I suspect.

No pee dreams, no stirring mid-pee, no nothing.  Just an empty bladder and a wet night nappy by morning.  Had it not been for my nappies, the damage to the bedding would have been catastrophic.

I’m well aware of the maddening cycle of dry spells that has plagued my glacial-slow transition to permanent bedwetting so I’m far from calling it “job done”.  Having said that, I do seem to be noticing that the “wet” spells sometimes last longer when they DO re-appear.

[oznl]

Just a brief shout out to the general awesomeness of the Rearz prefold night time cloth nappy.

I find them a bit difficult to put on but once they are on, they’re very comfortable and effortlessly deal with the grown-up size bedwetting event that may have just occurred, just saying.

My pleasure at their general greatness however was alloyed sharply with regret when, deciding to buy some more, I discovered that they have not only suffered an eye-watering 40% price hike (SERIOUSLY???)  since the first one I purchased not 6 months ago but they are also out of stock from the ONLY importer in Australia that sells them.

That's life in a small market at the far end of the planet...

 

[ozziebee]

I initially went with the XL pre-folds, but found them a bit tight, but fit, so decided to go to the 2XL, which fit wonderfully. That extra couple of inches of rise meant more overlap of the back onto the front, and the nappy is wonderfully above my belly button by an inch or so. Very comfy. 

Then I discovered the lack of supply, and the 2XLs have been out of stock since forever. 

So I searched overseas, and found 3XL. Same width but another couple inches rise. Needless to say, I’ve been swathed in cloth ever since. These ones are Leakmaster birdseye, and comfy as. Maybe a tad thicker too. 

[Little Sherri]

On 11/3/2023 at 8:08 PM, oznl said:

Just a brief shout out to the general awesomeness of the Rearz prefold night time cloth nappy.

These are what I have in flat cloth diapers as well. I've found them to be bulletproof and long-lasting. I just had a look at the pricing again, but my ability to comment is marred by my inability to remember what the hell I paid for them when I bought them probably 4 years ago. However, for comparison purposes, the XL size is selling for $48.29 CAD currently. 

In my experience with Rearz, they often run a gonzo Black Friday sale in November, to coincide with the US Thanksgiving holiday tradition of passing out in your chair after eating turkey, and then awakening at 5 AM and going, armed to the teeth, to the local superstore, to compete with an equally well-armed mob of hundreds, for access to a half dozen big-screen TV's on sale for half price. The hope is to get in and get your TV before the gunfights start, and they close the store. 

Can you order from Rearz, @oznl, or is the shipping absurd, confining you to some local importer who doesn't offer the same deals? 

[ppdude]

On 10/26/2023 at 8:21 AM, oznl said:

I was annoyed too because then I suddenly knew I’d have to drive all night now to get to the interstate location we were moving to.

Then I realised that the desert side-track I had turned down was undulating with dunes I had to cross that were made of bedding and pillows.  I remember the relief when the van didn’t get stuck in the first eiderdown-valley.

 

Oh yeah, of course.  I suddenly remembered my nappy. 

“It’s not sweat, it’s my nappy, I need to change it” I replied tersely, vaguely annoyed at her fussing.  I had a bicycle-powered van of my household goods to pedal across a terrain of bedding to escape the desert that had terra-formed around me and arrive and my interstate destination by the next morning and frankly her interruptions weren’t making this life any less complicated.

 

Wait... That wasn't real? Huh?

[oznl]

11 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Can you order from Rearz, @oznl, or is the shipping absurd, confining you to some local importer who doesn't offer the same deals? 

I did actually take a look before I whined about this on my post an no, they don't.  Rearz only ship to a pre-listed selection of countries and the land of Oz ain't one of them.

Postage from Canada to Australia I can confirm, is as epically awful as you might imagine.  Apparently goods are prone to waiting at a depot somewhere until an entire shipping container is filled at which point somebody breaks out the Cutty Sark's jib sail and it's off to Australia in less time than it took Herman Melville to write "Moby Dick". Maybe...

[oznl]

Nappies at rock concerts are awesome!

As the months of living in nappies roll into years and those years start to add up (I’m on the home stretch for half a decade now!) the number of “first time” nappy experiences does tend to dwindle. 

Last week however, I went to a rock concert in nappies for the very first time!

I’m not much of a rock concert person.  I have a very good audio system in my lounge room with a very comfortable leather armchair positioned at the equilateral triangular apex formed with two rather expensive British speakers, loads of archived uncompressed digital audio and (nearly) unlimited cheap alcohol to hand.

Nevertheless it was the wish and intent of my beloved that we should BOTH join 53,000 like-minded others in a sports stadium, contorted into toddler-sized plastic seats with no leg room in front of an audio system that was an impressive triumph of quantity over quality in order to squint at a former-beatle who has somehow cheated Father Time to cavort about on a stage instead of pushing up daisies.  The cavorting was hard to spot without a telescope.  Said Beatle was no more a rice-grain-sized blob of colour glimpsed on a stage so far away it was in a different time zone.

The timing of this concert was impeccably inconvenient considering my workday and love of dinner.

Effectively I had to race home from work in order to almost immediately race for a bus stop (driving to the venue was not only discouraged by the authorities, but logistically almost impossible), fight my way back IN to a central city area most commuters were trying to LEAVE before spending hours in crushing crowds queuing for things.

There was no time to lose.

When I got home from work at around 4:30pm, my beloved was already waiting by the front door to leave.

The challenge was that I was clad in a grubby company t-shirt and a pair of work shorts that barely covered a rather pee-swollen Rearz InControl Hybrid Elite (“Barry”) that had been covering point duty downstairs since 6am that morning.

I suspect my beloved realised this.

“We have to leave more or less immediately so could you please just quickly go upstairs and, uh, sort yourself out?” she asked with a meaningful gaze at my curiously featureless and puffy crotch.

I do believe this is the closest my beloved has EVER come to telling me to “Go and change your nappy!”  She can’t bring herself to utter the “nappy” noun let alone, turbo-charge it with a verb such as “change”.    I remain some light years away from un-encrypted communications on the subject but the subtext to her message was clear so I went upstairs to change my nappy.

In a “splash and dash” pitstop style wash and change, I switched into a Rearz “Critter Caboose” under plastic pants, compression pants and some loose jeans.  The gaudily-infantile decoration of the Caboose was NOT really a garment I wanted to see cut off of me in an ER room (presumably after being extracted from a mosh pit by paramedics) but I knew it would easily manage the 14 hour shift until my next changing time (saving me the horror of a midnight nappy change after a concert) and the “one shot” tapes would be fine as I could see no reason for removing it before changing time the next morning.

The caboose made for comfortable and largely friction-free waddling as we dashed the 800 meters or so from our house to the local bus stop.

The bus ride itself was relatively uneventful.  The wheels on the bus went round and round as my beloved fretted about not having enough time to queue at a merchandising stand to spend a king’s ransom on an ill-fitting polyester t-shirt that would disintegrate on the way home.  I fretted about not having the time or even forethought to check in the mirror that I wasn’t obviously nappy-clad before leaving.

The advantages of concert nappies made themselves known more or less immediately upon arrival.

Having cleared the huge security queue into the venue, my beloved immediately announced that that she needed to go to the bathroom and that whilst she was doing that, I could join a very long line and buy us some drinks.  Her unspoken message was again perfectly clear.  I clearly did NOT need a toilet and therefore I might as well do something useful.

Her line was even longer than the drinks line.  She got no further than 10 meters away from me before joining the end of a queue of slightly-uncomfortable-looking females snaking off towards the horizon.

Later that evening, she returned announcing that the facilities were “horrible”.  I’d wet myself a bit whilst waiting for her.  It’s important to do things together as a married couple.

The next entertainment item of the menu was getting to our stadium seat.  Naturally, this was roughly in the middle of a row of 7 million tiny fold-down plastic seats that had to be accessed by shuffling sideways past several dozen already-seated people, forcing most of them to stand to let us past in a kind of obligatory Mexican wave.  A special shout out to the late middle aged female who stubbornly declined to stand for anybody forcing later entries to her row to contort themselves past her as best as they could.  Her reward from me for this was having my nappy-clad bum wipe the side of her head.  I’m not an exhibitionist.  It couldn’t be helped.  At least I was only damp.

Having made it to our allotted seats, we then proceeded to consume plastic cups of cheap cider and boxes of cold chips that had cost more than the Bolivian national debt: the dinner before the show. 

Every few minutes we were forced to stand to allow even-later arrivals to shuffle past.

The concert itself started later that month.

The performance was fine, despite the logistical and acoustical challenges imposed by a sports arena.  The delta between light speed and mach speed made a mockery of some of the musically-timed pyrotechnics though.  The flashes were well-synchronised but by the time the bangs reached this distant corner of the stadium we inhabited the band was into the next song.

The concert goers for the ex-Beatle in question were however predominately of a certain age.

Within the first hour, the shuffle-pasts for toilet breaks had commenced and I couldn’t help but notice that at any given point in time, roughly 2% of the audience seemed to be either en route to or returning from bathrooms.  This isn’t something I remember from my (limited) previous concert experiences.  It seemed that ageing Beatle groupies with ageing bladders struggled with the stadium seating scenario. 

Not me.  I didn’t suffer at all, peeing freely where I sat as the need arose which was, as is usual for me, quite frequently.  .  It did occur to me however that without my nappies, I would have been one of the worst audience members in the stadium.  I would have had to disrupt 30 or so patrons sitting in my row between me and the aisle somewhere between two and four times during the course of a three hour playlist.

It would have been bound to attract attention.  I’d HATE to have attempted that event without my nappies.

The concert ended sharply at 10:30pm, not because the Beatle was running out of steam (aux contraire!) but rather, the Nanny State had decreed that 10:30pm was the time where the noise had to stop at the stadium: time for all good citizens to go to bed!

We again joined a queue of 53,000 people, this time shuffling forwards to tiny exits and buses that would take us in random directions away from the stadium whereupon we would have to find our own ways home in the face of public transport that was rapidly closing for the night.

My beloved looked longingly at yet another snakingly long line for the facilities before thinking better of it and embarking upon the 60 minute series of buses that got us home.

She bolted in the front door once home and made a bee-line for the nearest toilet.

I went upstairs, stripped off my jeans and brushed my teeth and went to bed.

By the time she got out, I was just finishing my wee from under the covers.  It’s important to do things together as a married couple.

Nappies at rock concerts are awesome.

[BabyJilly_S]

Totally agree!!

As the owner of a bladder the size of a walnut and enjoyer of many a gig, the timing of when to go or not was a paramount concern and worried me to the point where i did not really drink anything.

When I commenced on this path it proved to be an absolute godsend, beer at a concert , wow!   

Seemingly the physical appearance and sound of wearing a nappy has not raised any interest from friends or family though i do wonder if they notice i went from "where's the toilet?" to Captain Iron Bladder......

 

[WetDad]

The Mrs & I have enjoyed four baby-boomer dated concerts this year. I agree with you- there is always a lengthy line at the loo. I stay refreshed through it all, and just enjoy the shows. Being an old dude in diapers does have advantages.

[carsfan]

Not a baby boomer but a music fan who happens to wears toddler -style underpants. I saw Kiss, Peter Gabriel, Iron Maiden, and Andy Summers from The Police all in the last month or so. Lines for the facilities were long. I on the other hand could enjoy the music while enjoying beer  at ridiculous hockey rink prices and pee my pants accordingly. Diapers to concerts (and most other places) are my only underwear.

[Little Sherri]

I discovered that diapers are a concert hack a fair bit back in the time tunnel. I'd have to think hard about which concert was my first in baby pants, but I'm sure it happened the summer or fall of year 1. I've since worn them to a good number of shows; the pandemic slammed the brakes on live entertainment for a good stretch, and then once things opened up again, all the venues were backed up with shows, so, as coincidence would have it, several shows I'd acquired tickets to all materialized over the course of this last year. My wife at one point asked me to write down what concerts I had left to go to, because for a while it seemed like my answer to what I was up to on the weekend was "Going downtown for a concert", every second weekend. My wife doesn't get excited about going to concerts anymore, and only really did it if our daughters wanted badly to see an act, whereas I have several friends who stalk the bands of our youth, and frequently put out messages that they've got four tickets to Depeche Mode/Tears For Fears/New Order/Erasure/U2/One or the other people from Oasis/Morrissey (though he boycotted Canada for a while)/Guns N' Roses/Jack White and on it goes. 

Your description of getting there, and what it costs to drink very mediocre beer and eat usuriously-priced warmed over cafeteria food, was spot on. All our major venues have beer contracts locked up with the usual fizzy yellow macro-swill purveyors - there is sometimes one or two craft beer stands, among the 62 places to buy beverages, but you have to search for them, the line will be intimidating, and you'll pay $14 for your beer, but it will be half the size. I still do it, though.