Strange days indeed - a 24 x 7 experiment

[oznl]

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

In Canada, we imagine that all Australians awaken to Crowded House, have at last one can of Fosters in the fridge, an affinity for shrimp and barbecuing, and have lost at least one person you know to sharks, one to a venomous reptile, and one to melanoma. Also, you have cool diesel-powered compact pickup trucks with manual transmissions.

Although formed in Australia, there is a very, very strong New Zealand component in Crowded House so debate rages on how Australian it is.  Fosters departed Australian shores decades ago narily to be seen again.  Last time I drank it I believe I was living in the UK.  It is about as Australian as Dame Edna Everage and funnily enough, is rarely, if ever, drunk here.  We call them prawns, not shrimp: that rebranding was courtesy of a Paul Hogan US advertising campaign and I suppose you COULD throw them on the BBQ but I always had it in my head that BBQs were designed for cows.  Not sure on the shark score but if its any consolation, I've lost a number of family pets to Eastern Brown snakes and I HAVE had a malignant melanoma (these are TRULY frightening as they are so innocuous but so lethal) but so far, I have survived to tell the tale.  An adult daughter has a manual transmission diesel "ute" for farm work.  So, some of these things may be accurate ?

My only insight into weird Canadian things is that there is an Australian curling team although it is doggedly upheld primarily by Canadian ex-pats.

7 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

However, I recall experiencing what you described, when I was a kid wearing nappies, and I was, at the time, definitively a licensed and certified bedwetter.

Interesting to hear.  Prior to this, I haven't been a bed wetter since I was two years old so part of the enigma is about understanding the criteria to apply for testing.  It did seem VERY much to me that this was some kind of automatic void and in no way consciously planned.  My first thought was "Ooh, what's that?".

7 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Once in a blue moon, usually after some IPA's or stouts with the word "Imperial" or "Double" somewhere in the name, I will wake up wet, with no recollection of having done it myself, but, it's not common, and it's no proof that I didn't drift up 4/5th's of the way to the surface, wave a hand at the guards, and then drift back down to the depths, without logging the incident.

Same here initially at least.  Madam Alcohol was definitely the harbinger of this change but over time, it seems that I've learned to do it without 12% ABV beer or a vat of red wine.  It does seem quite random now.  The next night (last night) was perfectly normal.  I woke a number of times  and used my nappy each time.

 

 

[carsfan]

Oznl makes valid point. As a Canadian I had a good laugh at the exchange above. I adore Split Enz and like a lot of Crowded House but on a slightly slower level. I’m delighted that CH gets mentioned on a website related to adults who like to wear diapers? Never thought I’d see it.

[Little Sherri]

12 hours ago, oznl said:

Fosters departed Australian shores decades ago narily to be seen again.  Last time I drank it I believe I was living in the UK.  It is about as Australian as Dame Edna Everage and funnily enough, is rarely, if ever, drunk here. 

This remind me of the Keith's story in Canada. @carsfan, do they, or did they ever market Keith's in BC? Or were they wisely intimidated by the number of really great, actual IPA's that are available on the West coast?

Background: Keith's is a beer, a fizzy yellow one, that they allege with no evidence to be an IPA. However, in my experience, IPA's exhibit at least some hop characteristics, whereas Keith's is basically indistinguishable from most of the mass-market ales that are, in turn, nearly indistinguishable from fizzy yellow mass-market lagers. Homogeneity and inoffensiveness is the name of the game. 

They marketed the hell out of it in Ontario for quite a while as being the Nova Scotia's favourite beer (Nova Scotia being a province on the East coast of Canada, and, where Keith's is made). Although I tried it and was unimpressed, I nevertheless fell for their PR effort, and, in preparation for attending a stag party in Halifax, Nova Scotia, I purchased two cases of Keith's - "when in Rome...". 

Well, I plunked my offering on the floor next to the ice chests, and I pulled a dozen or so out and jammed them into the icy depths. It didn't take long for the crowd to respond... almost right away, I heard someone exclaim out loud "Who brought the f*cking Keith's!?!" So, I responded that, where I am from, they have lead us to believe that you guys live for this stuff. The reply was a riff on Keith's slogan at the time... "Those who like it, like it a lot." To which they had added their own addendum... "And those who hate it, f*cking hate it." 

Lesson learned. 

[oznl]

A small update.  I realise it isn't a week since my last but it turns out that life is NOT really like the Seinfeld show at all and does not neatly compartmentalise itself into weekly installments.

A routine trip to the doctors today.  Once again, I squibbed and took OFF my nappy for the exercise. 

Yes, I am a wuss.  I know.  I can rationalise this as fiscal prudence.  I’d booked the “short consultation” as I really just wanted a script renewal.  A 45 minute conversation about my preferences in underwear, the risk of functional incontinence and the offer of psychological referral did not fit within this chronological envelope.

As a redundant middle manager, I keep gentlemen’s hours these days and thusly took an 11am appointment instead of my usual “first available on the day where the Dr does the early shift”.  Actually, not competing with the working demographic let me get an appointment sooner.  I’ve often wondered what might happen in the event of sudden, critical illness since the rather snooty receptionist at my local Doctor’s office is forever hectoring would-be patients about how many days one might need to wait before receiving medical attention.  There are plenty of stories from locals waiting one week or more.  Presumably if it’s important, you just go to hospital.

So, Dr appointment, no nappies…

I had some mild “range anxiety” as obviously, it’s been another 6 months of not attempting any kind of urinary continence since I last visited.  However the surgery is only 5 minutes by car (let’s be honest, it’s a 10 minute walk if it wasn’t so hot and humid).  In the past I’ve been there and back in less than 30 minutes.

To avoid wasting a day nappy, I just wore a BetterDry the night before and persisted with it until around 10:45am.  It was a bit bloated by then but showing true Teutonic fortitude, it had neither disintegrated nor leaked.  A removal, a quick rinse and I located my sole remaining pair of underpants.

There is such an odd “empty” feeling in your pants when you stop wearing nappies after months or years.  It was like an empty house down there.

The consultation itself was uneventful however my decision to remove my nappy was vindicated.  I’ve been suffering from persistent lower back pain off and on for several months and my beloved had threatened to set fire to me if I did not mention this.  So he wanted to have a look.  My jeans were not removed for this but he was certainly poking and prodding around in an area where a nappy waist-band would have been quite visible.

He also asked a novel question amongst the usual:  “How’s your bladder?”  Maybe he was ruling out a kidney issue, maybe it’s an age thing.  I replied that it is functional (true) but range and urgency were becoming a thing as I age, as it did for my own father (also true).  He just nodded and asked “So no catastrophic failures then?”  I replied “No, just some near misses” (somewhat true for daytime at least) and we moved on.  My PSA is stable and normal so there probably wasn’t clinical reason to pursue things but it’s the first time he’s ever asked.  If I was wearing a nappy at the time, I would have automatically assumed I’d been spotted.

Poorer, but flushed with my operational success, I decided that since I had the car out, I’d move on to the chemist to pick up the drugs prescribed without first going back home to re-apply a nappy.

The chemist was a little further away (the organic/holistic/sustainable/pretentious one in my immediate locale being outrageously expensive) but it seemed that everybody else wanted the cheap chemist also.  It took nearly 20 minutes to drive there and I spent another 20 minutes waiting under the glare of low cost fluorescent lighting for my prescription.  I passed some of the time by looking at the dismal collection of poor-performing adult nappy products typical of Australian retailers.  I decided that the collective noun for Depends undergarments should be a “puddle”.

My bladder was starting to hurt though: the first time I’ve felt anything at all from it in months.

Nevertheless, I had one more errand to run before returning home, at the mall…  This too took time, navigating the satanic arcade game that is a shopping mall car park dominated by Valium-fuelled uber-mummies juggling their Audis, smartphones and toddlers simultaneously.

Driving home, my bladder now hurt a LOT.

Getting out of the car, I found that I was clutching at myself.

I’d been out of nappies for nearly 2 hours.

Dashing upstairs, I briefly considered using the toilet but no.  That somehow seemed like cheating.  Instead, I grabbed a Molicare and speedily stripping off my pants, unfolded and fluffed it before pulling it up between my legs as I leaned my bum against bathroom door.

By now I REALLY REALLY needed a pee.  Cruising past “desperation”, my Doctor’s “catastrophic failure” was knocking at the door.  Before taping it up, I thought I’d let a little bit go into the nappy, just to relieve the pressure.  That should buy me enough time to comfortably tape it up properly afterwards I thought.

My bladder needed nothing more than the merest hint:  instant sweet relief saw the wetness indicator go blurry and the Molicare front grew heavy and warm in my hand.

I didn’t want to empty my whole bladder into an unsecured nappy however.  I figured it would be too saggy and tricky to tape up so I tried to stop the flow forgetting that I lost that capability months ago.

“You must be joking…” said my urinary sphincter upon receipt of this order, not even glancing up at me from its task at hand.

So I completed the my pee with my nappy secured manually.

Really though, it wasn’t THAT much pee.  I’d been completely empty less than 2 hours ago when I took the BetterDry off.  It was just monumental urgency.  Albeit already by now a bit wet, I taped it up maybe a bit crookedly but satisfactorily before pulling on some plastic pants and a compression pant and going about my day.

So there you go, two years later and I STILL have a degree of usable daytime continence but it doesn’t last long.  Two hours is about it and I should plan accordingly.   Sitting through a movie without a nappy is a definite “maybe”…

[Little Sherri]

6 hours ago, oznl said:

Poorer, but flushed with my operational success,

@oznl, do Australians pay to go to the doctor? Forgive me - I've never looked into it. I had assumed you guys had basically the same deal that Canadians and the British do - exorbitant taxation, but, free healthcare.   

 

6 hours ago, oznl said:

Two hours is about it and I should plan accordingly.

I'd say this corresponds with my experience. I held it successfully for a good 75 minutes or so when I went to see my doctor a few weeks ago, but it was not comfortable. Whereas in my past life, I used to sometimes drive a diesel-fueled German sled through an entire tankful between bathroom breaks. This would no longer be an option. I did elect to wear a nappy to my doctor's appointment, but hurriedly stripped it off and hid it. My doctor is in his 60's and currently, my plan is to wait for his retirement, and then, when I start fresh with a new one, to strut confidently into his or her office on day one, in a diaper, and just pretend that my previous physician had considered the situation thoroughly, and there was nothing further to be done. 

 

6 hours ago, oznl said:

He also asked a novel question amongst the usual:  “How’s your bladder?”  Maybe he was ruling out a kidney issue, maybe it’s an age thing.  I replied that it is functional (true) but range and urgency were becoming a thing as I age, as it did for my own father (also true).  He just nodded and asked “So no catastrophic failures then?”  I replied “No, just some near misses” (somewhat true for daytime at least) and we moved on. 

I feel like the Gods may have been smiling upon you... I'd have been damned tempted to say "Now that you mention it, I have resorted to wearing nappies..."

But I have no idea how common or uncommon that is. A perusal of the nappy section of a supermarket or drugstore suggests that a reasonable number of people are dealing with issues of this sort (and are sorely dissatisfied, for the most part, with the products on offer...). So, if I tell a doctor, hey, I'm in my mid 40's and I wear diapers, is he or she going to say "I'm glad you've found a solution that works for you", or, are they going to say "Jesus - I'll summon an ambulance." 

Question... do you and your betrothed share a doctor? Just curious. My wife and I have the same doctor. I have no idea what, if anything, she has said to him about me. I sort of assume that there is a strict firewall between patients, even those who are closely associated, but, at the same time, he has prescribed her anti-anxiety meds before, so, obviously, she's spoken to him about things more psycho than somatic. I have no idea if she's asked him why I'm wearing diapers. He has given me no reason to suspect he knows anything about it, but then again, I have only seen him once in the last two years, and she has seen him probably half a dozen times. 

[oznl]

4 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

@oznl, do Australians pay to go to the doctor? Forgive me - I've never looked into it. I had assumed you guys had basically the same deal that Canadians and the British do - exorbitant taxation, but, free healthcare.  

Theoretically, we do, but practically, we don't (despite both free healthcare and exorbitant taxation).  There is a standardised  "Medicare rebate" applied against a Dr consultation for which the Government will pay.  The thing is, the amount of the rebate parted company with the amount MOST (not all) practices will charge many years ago as the Government froze the payment amount.  Practices that "bulk bill" will see you for free but these practices tend to be in lower socio-economic areas only and often use casual, lowest-bid practitioners.  In the relatively well-to-do area I find myself in, bulk billing practices are unheard of and it is common for the Government rebate to be less than 50% of the cost of the consultation.  As an added twist of lemon, private health insurance (which I have) is legislatively inhibited from paying this "gap payment" because the thinking is that this prohibition keeps a lid on general practitioner fees.

In some senses, this is the "worst of all worlds" but there is more service available than say, the NHS, if you can pay.

It's a LOT better than the USA though.  I have many US friends and have spent a lot of time there.  The US has many wonderful things but I'll pass on the medical system.  I don't think it's possible to be medically bankrupted in Australia although penury is ok.

4 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I feel like the Gods may have been smiling upon you... I'd have been damned tempted to say "Now that you mention it, I have resorted to wearing nappies..."

I suspect that would have been an instant-referral to a urologist and a whole bunch of (pointless) "gap payments" that I can ill afford right now.  Once, I tried to steer my doctor towards a surgeon "friendly" to my health insurer and got the medical equivalent of the "death stare".  They care nothing for our bills.  I stuck to strict clinical truth.  Urgency IS a thing.  I know my father had something similar at my age.  It may not even be my nappies at play here.  It could be genes.

4 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Question... do you and your betrothed share a doctor? Just curious. My wife and I have the same doctor. I have no idea what, if anything, she has said to him about me. I sort of assume that there is a strict firewall between patients, even those who are closely associated, but, at the same time, he has prescribed her anti-anxiety meds before, so, obviously, she's spoken to him about things more psycho than somatic. I have no idea if she's asked him why I'm wearing diapers. He has given me no reason to suspect he knows anything about it, but then again, I have only seen him once in the last two years, and she has seen him probably half a dozen times. 

We don't share a doctor but we do share the practice (there aren't many practices around in my area).  I did think about this though.  In fact, she's been avoiding seeing her doctor for more than two years now so I don't thing she's had the opportunity to raise this.  I am the one with a number of chronic conditions (not super serious) so I'm bound to regular visits for prescription renewals and specialist referrals.  She isn't.

I do wonder if she may have confided in somebody.  Since I post here, I guess I'd have to suck that up if she did.  I have no moral authority on the topic.

[Sarah_Hillcrest]

12 hours ago, oznl said:

 

Dashing upstairs, I briefly considered using the toilet but no.  That somehow seemed like cheating.  Instead, I grabbed a Molicare and speedily stripping off my pants, unfolded and fluffed it before pulling it up between my legs as I leaned my bum against bathroom door.

Last spring when I first started was experiencing this exact same feeling.  At the time I was unable to sleep in a diaper at night, so I was changing out around 10:30.  I would wake up with a massive urge around my pervious "work wake up" at 5:30 and head to the toilet, but freeze in my tracks.  I never made any kind of anti-toilet promise it just felt wrong.  I get diapered up then spend the next few hours wet. 

Eventually I would change out for a cycling workout and a couple hours later start to feel a strong urge to go and again get that feeling that it wouldn't be right to use the toilet. 

Eventually that feeling went away for me though and was replaced by a pragmatic toileting principle.  I would pee in toilet before diapering and  even if it was coinvent while diapered.  Thinking back this was one of the be most comfortable times I've had in regards to the diaper obsession, and when I started finding it easy to fall asleep diapered.  I was almost always in diapers, and few times just forgot about it.  I was wearing 2-3 thin diapers per day/night and wetting very frequently, about half in the toilet and half in my diaper, only using the toilet whenever it was convenient. 

[oznl]

With redundancy came free time and with my beloved remaining at the coalface for toil, it seemed only fair that I should renegotiate the balance of domestic work in her favour.  In addition to my usual tasks (usually relating to garden and household maintenance), I’ve taken on cooking along with most of the cleaning and at least some of the laundry.

Vacuuming and mopping floors sucks, every Friday it sucks…  Ok, I get that vacuuming SHOULD suck but for mopping, the suckiness is strictly metaphorical.

There was a time (when our children regarded our house as a home rather than a combination drop-in centre/ convenient source of free food) that having a house over three levels and 270m2 (that’s nearly 3,000 square feet for those using medieval measurement) seemed like a good idea.  If you’re stuck with teenagers, it’s nice to send them to a part of the house where you can’t see or hear them anymore.

A house this size does NOT seem like such a great idea from behind a vacuum cleaner, or a mop.  A full dust, vacuum and mop is practically half a day’s work.

Still, on days where my beloved is at work and remaining-teen is doing whatever they do at a mall to fund Amazon purchases (assuming classes are out), I can work alone with whatever music I want from Spotify cranked up.

Last cleaning day I woke up in a wet, pinned terry nappy and plastic pants and a t-shirt.

To be honest, those pinned terry nappies can take a LOT of punishment and this one didn’t seem THAT wet.  It was SO comfortable, it seemed a shame to take it off.  So I didn’t.  I decided I’d do the vacuuming and mopping before changing later.

On a roll for deciding things, I went on to decide that since it was warm, I’d not bother to dress.  When you’re alone in a warm climate, clothes are overrated.

So, I spent a couple of hours vacuuming and mopping wearing nothing but a dachshund-motif t-shirt and a very large pinned terry towelling nappy under opaque baby-blue plastic pants.

It was a bit of a giggle but not quite as idyllic as it might sound.

I guess babies don’t have to think about how they are going to perform domestic maintenance in heavy, wet nappies and as they tend to roll around on floors a lot, they’re also not thinking about bending and stretching.  I guess those pictures we’ve all seen of ABDL models parading about the house in heavy cloth diapers and plastic pants under their maid’s uniform (or is that just me) don’t reflect the operational reality of diapered domestic duty.

Heavy cloth nappies aren’t great for personal mobility and flexibility at the best of times. As my nappies got heavier as the morning wore on, they also got saggier.  Constant bending and kneeling was not helping either and before long, I found myself repeatedly hauling them back north over my hips to keep my nether area warm and comfortable instead of damply exposed to the less-then-pleasant sensation of evaporative cooling.  I think I’ve made mention previously that I suspect that wearing nappies is actually a mobility inhibitor.

At quarter-time, I gave up on infantile visual integrity and found some tight compression pants to keep my soggy underwear in place.  With the sagging largely cancelled thus, things felt comfortable again despite being by then pretty wet and the odd subtle ammonia note starting to appear.  It’s fortunate in my case that windows can’t be seen into from the street.  Somehow, the vacuuming and mopping time seemed to pass quicker attired thusly but eventually, sagging returned and I was pleased to change.

The only other noteworthy event for the week was that at some point in my frenetic round of housework, I left my used night BetterDry (neatly balled up and taped of course) in our en-suite.

Oops.  That’s twice in a year.

Nil desperandum.  Beloved found it before I remembered it.  Oh, did I say NIL desperandum?  I returned to the bedroom that evening to discover that she had placed it in the middle of my pillow on our bed.  Nice…  I imagine she used my favourite beer brewing implements as tongs to pick it up.

Every time I imagine that some seeds of accepting tolerance might be taking hold, something like that happens.

[Little Sherri]

3 hours ago, oznl said:

Every time I imagine that some seeds of accepting tolerance might be taking hold, something like that happens.

Sometimes I think that I might be a little further down the "spousal acceptance" road than you are, but then I get reminded that not all is bliss in nappy-land. That said, a balled up 4-lb wet nappy placed on your pillow is not a shot across the bow, it's a shot AT the bow. My beloved is slightly less overt about it; she has variously taken it upon herself to empty the bathroom trash can into a thin, opaque white plastic bag, and then leave the bag tied up, printer diaper characters peeking through, in the hall to our side door, where pretty much everyone traverses, OR, on a couple of occasions, she's texted me to let me know that she's assigned our youngest to empty the trash cans, which used to cause me to bolt for our bathroom as well. 

I solved these problems, I thought, by installing a lidded stainless steel trash can in my closet, and using it as a dedicated diaper pail, however I discovered the other day that she'd left a can of Lysol (a heavily-perfumed disinfectant spray) on the floor in front of the can. I get the point - that can does stink - BUT, only when you open it, and also, it's in MY closet. 

I also don't know if the kids know I now have a trash can in that closet or not, and whether or not, if assigned trash duty again, one of them might think to put it on the rounds. Of course, to say, hey, NEVER empty that trash can in my closet, would be to call attention to the thing that I don't want to call attention to. But leaving it to fate could be bad, as well... I could see someone pulling a muscle trying to wrestle a bag full of diapers, each roughly the weight of a deceased raccoon, down the stairs.

I could put it in the garage, ostensibly for brewing debris, where it would be ignored eternally, but then I'd have to schlep wet diapers out to the garage 2 - 3 times a day, which would result in my occasionally needing them to have a layover in the bathroom trash can, until I'm ready, and the coast is clear, to head out to the garage with them. Which would put me back where I was, leaving dead soldiers in the trash, to once again be seized upon by my spouse. Maybe I should just cremate them with a torch in our shower stall as I go. 

[Stroller]

I feel for the both of you.  Mind you, I never leave my wet nappies anywhere I shouldn't.  I suspect I care about that more than my other half does.

[oznl]

On 2/26/2021 at 3:10 AM, Stroller said:

I feel for the both of you.  Mind you, I never leave my wet nappies anywhere I shouldn't.  I suspect I care about that more than my other half does.

Thanks.  I'm pretty careful for the most part.  I think I've failed to remove a used disposable twice, perhaps thrice in over two years.  Each time it was because I got distracted and it was "out of sight" in our en-suite bathroom, a place I only go to very occasionally these days...

Nothing was said about it and I'm not interested in starting a fight over it.

[Puppyz]

On 2/27/2021 at 5:17 PM, oznl said:

Nothing was said about it and I'm not interested in starting a fight over it.

I personally would take that as a win if nothing more was said about it. To me it seems more like a "this is your hobby, you deal with everything about it" kind of statement. If she were to put it in the bin, to me it would be like admitting defeat (which she doesn't seem to want to do) and also she didn't want to just leave it there and have to verbally remind you to dispose of it. 

Any luck on the job front? I've often considered applying at Bunnings to fill the gaps sometimes but that's out the window now due to physical limitations over last few years.

[oznl]

1 hour ago, Puppyz said:

Any luck on the job front? I've often considered applying at Bunnings to fill the gaps sometimes but that's out the window now due to physical limitations over last few years.

It's been a bit grim.  I applied for a few at varying points above, at, and below my level on IT competency and got zero response on ANY despite 20+ positive years at a tier 1 global IT vendor.  It seems that once you hit 50, you're dead to my industry (IT).

My world is becoming very grey-scaled of late ?  I'm trying not to think about it too much.

I'm actually out tomorrow to do some "contracting" work for a couple of hours which although in my field, is probably a fool's errand and the ATO doesn't want to give me an ABN so I don't even know if I'll be paid for it.

 

 

[WBxx]

Don’t know what ATO’s and ABN’s are.  But in my experience things that appear to be dead ends sometimes open up whole new opportunities.   Just hold your head high and keep trying, something positive will come along.

[Stroller]

49 minutes ago, WBxx said:

Don’t know what ATO’s and ABN’s are.

They're TLAs.  ?

[oznl]

6 hours ago, WBxx said:

Don’t know what ATO’s and ABN’s are.  But in my experience things that appear to be dead ends sometimes open up whole new opportunities.   Just hold your head high and keep trying, something positive will come along.

 

6 hours ago, Stroller said:

They're TLAs.  ?

Oh it's part of the Australian Taxation Office's "war" on the gig economy by making it bureaucratically difficult to be a contractor (they prefer employees, even though the likes of Uber don't put that on the table).  It's all very tiresome and I've no interest in any of it.

Back on topic, I woke up this morning with a near-empty bladder in a BetterDry that was soaked all the way up the back.  I've no idea how/when that happened.  I wasn't that wet when I went to bed.

[Little Sherri]

@oznl, I purchased brewing equipment from your side of the globe this week, via kegland.com.au. I should have suspected that you guys would have a well-developed home brewing scene. I have flooded your economy with a couple of hundred Canadian dollars. Interestingly, the pricing you guys pay for this stuff isn't far off what it costs here. Have to watch the electrics - 240 V. Nice wattages on the heaters, though - we're limited to about 1500 unless we want to either go 20 amp, or, 240 V as well, but, for us, 240 V is for the ovens, air conditioners and the clothes dryers. Everything that uses a common receptacle is 120 V 15 amp.  I use propane for heat when I'm brewing, but I am very attracted to the set-and-forget potential of heating elements. "HAL, give me 67 degrees C for an hour." "Your wish is my command." 

The shipping, I imagine, would have been bananas, but I went through a local distributor that must consolidate shipments. Or, the whole business is a front for something illicit. Either way, I win. 

Charting a global supply chain sometimes boggles the mind... brewing equipment from Australia goes to Canada, where it assists in the production of a Belgian-style beer that is eventually drained into a diaper that was (likely) made in China, for a company in Germany. 

[oznl]

7 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

@oznl, I purchased brewing equipment from your side of the globe this week, via kegland.com.au. I should have suspected that you guys would have a well-developed home brewing scene. I have flooded your economy with a couple of hundred Canadian dollars. Interestingly, the pricing you guys pay for this stuff isn't far off what it costs here. Have to watch the electrics - 240 V. Nice wattages on the heaters, though - we're limited to about 1500 unless we want to either go 20 amp, or, 240 V as well, but, for us, 240 V is for the ovens, air conditioners and the clothes dryers. Everything that uses a common receptacle is 120 V 15 amp.  I use propane for heat when I'm brewing, but I am very attracted to the set-and-forget potential of heating elements. "HAL, give me 67 degrees C for an hour." "Your wish is my command." 

The shipping, I imagine, would have been bananas, but I went through a local distributor that must consolidate shipments. Or, the whole business is a front for something illicit. Either way, I win. 

Charting a global supply chain sometimes boggles the mind... brewing equipment from Australia goes to Canada, where it assists in the production of a Belgian-style beer that is eventually drained into a diaper that was (likely) made in China, for a company in Germany. 

Congratulations on getting new stuff!  I've only bought hops from Kegland.

You've probably got more gear that I have.  "Old school" brewing for me  involves making wort by making a hell of a mess in the kitchen and using a giant boiler on the stove with a temperature probe.  Brewing happens in what you'd call a "carboy" (but really a kind of plastic barrel) in a modified fridge.  I care about cooling, not heating for fermentation down here.

Lately, I've been using the "lazy" home-brew system that with dry hopping, still makes a pretty good beer but with nearly zero mess.  It's also an Australian thing.  Google "Brewart Beerdroid".  If you're going to make your own wort, you're still going to goop up the kitchen but at least the fermentation/hopping cycle can be largely automated.

240v has its conveniences, like being able to do light welding off a domestic circuit...  I suspect the real reason we have it is to lower network costs.  I think the Govt. is actually turning down the wick to 230v to try to have appliances tuned for European 220v suffer a little less.

[Little Sherri]

That thing is slick! Do you have both ends of it - the brewer and the server? I take it the beer self-carbonates during fermentation? What becomes of the trub? I don't know if this is a Canadian word or a universal brewing term, so I will add, for anyone wondering what I'm talking about, that I am referring to the yeast that settles out when fermentation has completed. I couldn't figure out based on the quick look I had at a video on their site, how (or if) the yeast remnants are separated from the beer.

I like the idea of being able to have a few styles on the go, in the fridge, and to quickly swap between them. I have a keg fridge with two taps on it, so I can have 2 X ~ 18.9 L/5 USG batches on at the same time, but when one kicks, if I have been foresighted enough to have a batch in a fermenter ready to go, I still have to transfer it and give it a couple of days to carbonate. 

I have a fermentation chamber made from a freezer and a heating blanket, both tied into a thermostat, because I need to worry about heating and chilling, depending on what I'm making, and what it's doing outside. What I actually bought from your countrymen is a pressure fermenter - I want to play around with pressure fermentation because of the promise of shorter fermentation periods for lagers. Other than that, though, I'm pretty much a luddite when it comes to the equipment I employ: a mash tun made from a modified picnic cooler, a pot over a propane ring for both HLT and kettle, a drop in immersion chiller made out of a coil of copper pipe, and some glass and stainless carboys. 

Long-term, one things I want to add is a temperature-controlled mash tun. Right now I rely on that cooler to hold temperature, so I'm fighting the laws of thermodynamics the whole time, and, I can't fly-sparge, only batch sparge. Plus stepped mashes are a dog's breakfast. 

I have to do all my brewing in my garage, because my wife can't stand the smell of it, so I've never tried doing it in the kitchen. I could see mashing in a pot over an electric element adding some capabilities in terms of temperature control. I guess I'd have to pour the mash into my mash tun afterwards to separate the wort and sparge. Do you have a mash tun with a false bottom that you can put directly on an element, or do you heat the works in a pot and then filter it afterwards? 

I think that the smell of brewing divides the population more or less along gender lines. Every adult male of the species that enters my garage says something like "Mmmm, beer...." or "What is that wonderous aroma?", whereas every female, adult or child, says "Ewww, what's that smell?". Male children tend to sniff the air and withhold comment. They don't know what they're smelling, but, they know instinctively that it portends something good. 

All of the above assumes that my nappy-stuffed garbage cans have well-seated lids on them. 

[oznl]

I personally don’t have their kegging/pouring system.  Partly because I like to pick and choose which beer I want to be drinking in units of less than their 5 liter tiny-kegs and partly because the system uses a bunch of single-use plastic stuff that I don’t like much.  I just use swing-top glass bottles with a “carbonation drops” (sugar) to boost carbonation further at bottling.

Most programs I run through the ‘droid will cold-crash at the end of fermentation (which is electronically detected) and the trub drops to a small fermenter space below the tap.  There’s a little more trub in the bottle after secondary but I just don’t pour the last 5mm or so of beer.  Bottle-fermented beers are available commercially here (Coopers sparking ale is a good example) and people are used to that.

If I’m making my own wort (hardly ever do that lately), mashing and sparging (assuming I DO bother to sparge) are old-school and manual for me (read: PITA).  I don’t have THAT much equipment and although I now have the time, spending a load of money on brewing equipment would be poor optics.

The ‘droid is a very lazy (and incredibly convenient) way of building a high quality beer for peanuts but you can do better, but with vastly more equipment and more effort.  The ‘droid also attracts zero complaints from my beloved.  I can make a recognizable, 7.5% ABV west coast IPA for around AUD30 for 10 litres.  At a store, that would cost AUD80 – AUD100 thanks to the extravagantly high nanny-taxes placed on beer for our own good.

[Little Sherri]

16 hours ago, oznl said:

I can make a recognizable, 7.5% ABV west coast IPA for around AUD30 for 10 litres.  At a store, that would cost AUD80 – AUD100 thanks to the extravagantly high nanny-taxes placed on beer for our own good.

The math is similar here in the Frozen North (although, as an aside, it has been gloriously "warm" this week - IE between 3 and 6 C during the day, which, after a February of -20, has me wanting to wash the car in a t-shirt...).

10 L of your average 7%+ IPA would run me $80 CAD in 473 ml cans. I can make 18.9 L of it for about $45 in ingredients, although that totally ignores the cost of all the equipment I had to buy to be able to do that. But, consumables only, $23.80 for 10 L. Thus, my theory is, the more I brew (and drink), the less my equipment costs add to each litre I consume. At some point, the slope of the curve approaches zero. As the odometer on my liver approaches throwing an error message. 

I also am not buying ingredients in the most cost-effective manner I could; I tend to design recipes online and have exactly what I want milled and bagged for me, along with hops in 1 oz packets (lots and lots of 1 oz packets). If I started buying bags of un-milled grain and larger quantities of hops, I could drive the cost of a good beer down to maybe $30 for 18.9 L, and a watery lager could be made for pocket change, if I ever decided to do that, which I probably will not. But I made 5 gallons of what I think is a pretty convincing Pilsner for $27 in ingredients a few weeks ago. 

And if I didn't spend money on brewing equipment, I'd probably have killed myself on a motorcycle by now, or, I'd be racing radio-controlled helicopters or something. Then dropping $3.75 CAD a can for IPA to drink while talking about the helicopters. You have to do something. 

[oznl]

Pillow fights: they’re a thing now.

As a kind of follow-up to last week’s art installation of the used BetterDry I’d inadvertently left on the walk-in-robe shelf (pointedly placed on the middle of my pillow), my pillow has been leveraged further as a kind of presentation-plinth of dissatisfaction by my beloved on further occasions.

It’s still oppressively hot here.  Although technically autumn, the high heat/humidity combination generally pushes on until mid to late March.  It remains warm after this through until at least mid-May but with the humidity gone, it’s far more comfortable and the nights can be cool.

But not yet.

The possums know that it’s nearly autumn as their tiny possum minds turn from shitting on our rear deck towards constructing future possums.  Potential mates discuss procreative proposals noisily on our metal roof throughout the night.

But I digress.

When it’s hot and humid, having a nappy and plastic pants under your pyjamas is far from helpful.  I’ve been offsetting this discomfort by minimising my bedtime attire.  For the most part lately, I’ve been sleeping just in a t-shirt and my nappy, nothing else.

Thanks to the vagaries of photo-electric smoke detectors (oh for the lethal simplicity of ionising radiation), it’s not been unheard of for our fire alarm to go off during the night.  Mercifully rare, it still happens.  As a kind or insurance against this misfortune, I generally leave my short pyjama pants close by the bed.  In the event of having to patrol a three storey house covering nearly 300 square meters at stupid-am.  If it WAS on fire, at least I’d be dressed “appropriately”, albeit only on the outside.  But still, lately by default, I do not wear them.

Not just a river in Africa however, my beloved has been a long way into denial for quite some time about my underwear.  She does NOT like to see ANYTHING about her betrothed’s dreaded nappies, least of all him parading about in puffy, milky-white plastic pants (it’s the terry lining that makes them look like 1967 infancy) in her boudoir.

Normally, this isn’t really as big an issue as it sounds.  Our diurnal patterns are quite dissimilar, her being of the “early to bed, early to rise” persuasion whereas I regard 11pm as a bit early for repose but put up with it in the spirit of marital compromise.  Consequentially, by the time I get to bed, she’s already been there for at least 90 minutes and is completely out cold.   As she is a swift and heavy sleeper, I suspect I could enter the marital bedchamber with a mariachi band wearing a chicken suit without attracting her attention.

But still, there’s morning and if it’s a weekend (she sleeps in) she has to pretend she’s still asleep as I pull on pyjama pants over my bulky (and by then fairly soggy) nappy.  If our remaining at-home child is at her student-job, I may even pad downstairs and make coffee clad only in my nappy and t-shirt because I can’t be arsed getting dressed. 

Sometimes I cannot be ignored.  The other morning, I got out of bed (after a day painting awkwardly up a ladder in heat) only to be instantly launched into such an agonising hamstring cramp.  The kind of deep, inconsolable muscular spasm that makes one, if only transiently, crave oblivion.  Thus pole-axed by pain, she had no choice but to “wake up” and watch me as I cavorted around the bedroom, summonsing the magic incantations in both a particularly drenched BetterDry under plastic pants and acute muscular agony.  As the throbbing subsided, I actually found myself in the highly unusual situation of conversing with her directly thusly attired.  Hiding my nappy simply was NOT an option.  I was in so much pain I couldn’t think.

She made no comment on THAT but for the last few nights, I’ve come to bed to find my pyjama pants, retrieved from wherever they may have been lurking laid out carefully on my pillow whilst she sleeps alongside.

I just put them on the floor and clamber into bed.  I suspect I’m supposed to put them ON, not back on the floor besides me.

If she can’t bring herself to use words, then bad luck.  I’m not going to start interrogating her about it because that’s an invitation to a round of the “what’s wrong?  Nothing!” game and that game sucks.

To be fair to her, there’s no point engaging me verbally.  I’ve made my position clear.  Whilst respectful of preserving her peace, I am the king of me these days and I’ve not interest in her sumptuary laws.  Still, she could just keep her own counsel.

In nice hotels I’ve stayed at back in the day when I had employ and corporate travel, they used to leave chocolates on my pillow.  These days I get symbols of complaint.

Pillow fights…

[Little Sherri]

A somewhat unfortunate, but also interesting development. She is communicating on the topic, just not verbally. My betrothed hasn't specifically stated that she does or does not prefer me to wear something to bed. When it was deeply cold out, I tended to favour pajama pants, but now that we're getting into the (low) positive temperatures, I'm tending to sleep in just a diaper and a t-shirt, which is my preferred sleepwear. She has a couple of times served warning that she expected one of the kids, generally my oldest,  to drop in for something or other, when it's past the time that such a visit would be expected. She'd generally say "you should put something on, child A is coming in to discuss X". I normally don't operate in just a diaper until probably 10 PM or so, when youngest is asleep and oldest is on an all-night video chat, and YouTube, and Netflix.

As a side note, I remember saving up to buy walkie talkies as young teen, so that I could chat with my buddy, who lived a couple of houses over, without concerns about either of our older sisters demanding to use the phone, or, restrictions about how late we could be on the phone, etc. How quaint. As an added bonus, sometimes we'd end up intercepting communications among commercial truckers. Who would have imagined back then that our children would someday be able to communicate at will with strangers in Belgium. 

[oznl]

Dehydration (noun): A harmful reduction in the amount of water in the body.

One of the lesser-known benefits of wearing nappies is that they serve as a constant, worn reminder of how hydrated we are (or more poignantly, are NOT).  I’ve spent a few days doing manual gardening work outdoors based on the somewhat theoretical notion that it is now autumn and thusly the “Mad dogs and Englishmen” rule no longer applies.

My long habit of using just two high capacity nappies per day affords me the luxury of relatively fixed changing times driven by operational convenience rather than imminent leak avoidance. 

I think therefore the first clues may have been removing my used nappy at a number of consecutive changes and reflecting that it really could have stayed on for a few more hours.

The second clue should have been the colour of used bit in the removed nappy: dark yellow, almost tan.  It’s a testament to odour control technology in modern adult disposable nappies that other than being apparently merely tea-dampened, there were no other cues.  Not so with cloth however.  Removing my damp-but-not-saturated terry toweling pinned night nappy the other day in the shower, the ammonia fumes were such that I really should have declared our en-suite as a haz-mat zone and found a respirator.  It was a good thing it was a work day and my beloved had left.  I had to air it out!

And then, there were the mysterious headaches, an ongoing sense of fatigue, some truly agonising morning hamstring cramps and lastly, prolonged bouts of tachycardia: something I am prone to with physiological stress.

I didn’t even need to look at Monday morning’s BetterDry.  I greeted the dawn with a fluffy, light dry bum and little more than a faint, dark damp patch at the front of my crotch.  Despite a number of rather nice beers the evening before and a 14 hour tour of duty, I felt that faint pang of regret at a good nappy wasted as I undertook my morning change.  I could have stuffed a pocket handkerchief in my plastic pants overnight and gotten away with it, maybe even a Depends!  Ok, that’s going too far, probably not a Depends but the pocket handkerchief was definitely a viable option.  Measurement showed it had seen no more than 400ml or so of pee-action despite the application of at least 2000ml of beer.

Where does it all go?  E=MC2 tells us that 2000ml of beer would dissipate as a noticeable quantity of heat if indeed my body has developed the capacity to destroy matter.

It seems like a conscious resolve to spend more time OUT of my study working outdoors and do sweaty work outdoors in a warm, insulating nappy has a risk that must be mitigated.

Sustained dehydration isn’t good for anybody, let alone late middle-aged males.  I’ve already endured hideous BBQ tales of friends who formed kidney stones with persistent dehydration nominated as a leading cause.  Kidney stones are remarkable and not in a good way.  One minute you’re thinking about mowing the lawn, the next minute you’re writhing on the floor in acute agony hoping that somebody coherent gets the hint and phones an ambulance. 

If the embarrassment of arriving at the ER not only in unspeakable pain but wearing a very-slightly-damp-and-salty nappy wouldn’t be enough for me, then there is the vaguely diminutive experience of being diagnosed with a relatively unglamorous affliction and after a bewildering array of fees and charges (our local ER is not "public"), getting sent home to wait nervously for them to “pass”.

Today I have resolved to keep a glass of water fully charged with me at all times and give the garden a rest.  I’ll know I’ll have achieved some success if I can manage a minor leak before my evening change.

 

[sparklezBear]

I see this is one of the distinct advantages of nappy usage, particularly with consistent changing times. We can see precisely how dehydrated we are. I know on several occasions my nappy has indicated dehydration before I've realised by another means.