Strange days indeed - a 24 x 7 experiment

[Puppyz]

I recall a 'castle' of sorts being down Beenleigh way, maybe Benthania or such? I could be thinking of someones private residence that they tried to build to resemble a castle like building which also ran into legal problems. 

 

[oznl]

Gaahhh!  Another BetterDry-blowout.  I'm wondering if I have a dud packet.

I woke up this morning having slept-through.  Doing my upon-waking nappy security check I discovered that my terries were soaked down one side.  My bum felt wet also which, whilst quite normal for cloth, is usually an ominous portend for saturation in a disposable such as I was wearing.

My beloved wanted a long, lingering lie-in.  I wanted a change before wee wicked through to the lycra on my waterproof pants and I started wetting the bed for real.

Upon changing, I found that yet again, the lower left tape had torn off the covering of the nappy exposing wet padding to my "insurance policy".  There was pee-soaked nappy fluff in my trainers.

It turned out that I'd loaded that BetterDry with a remarkable 1.8 liters over the preceding 12 hours (alcohol).  I could vaguely remember a pee dream that seemed to involve me slowly and deliberately wetting my pyjama pants (nappy free apparently) whilst fretting about getting into trouble for it.  Although I'd gone to bed somewhat wet, there would have had to have been more than one nocturnal pee to bring things up to nearly 2 liters of payload by morning.  I couldn't remember the other ones.

21 hours ago, Puppyz said:

I recall a 'castle' of sorts being down Beenleigh way, maybe Benthania or such? I could be thinking of someones private residence that they tried to build to resemble a castle like building which also ran into legal problems.

It was down in Victoria back at that time:  Kryal castle (which was by the way, completely lame).

[Little Sherri]

On 10/21/2021 at 7:03 PM, oznl said:

Have I somehow mapped the transference of a mother’s affection to new siblings with their reliance on nappies? 

Or something else altogether?

The only thing that seems clear to me is that in my mis-wired mind, my nappies are inextricably bound up with some notion of comfort.

I've often wondered about this. My childhood didn't feature numerous subsequent siblings; I have an older sister (and a couple of older step-sisters), but only one younger brother, and he didn't stay in nappies very long. I actually think that my current preference (one might say 'requirement') to go about my business in a nappy might stem from my experience of being kept in them when my brother graduated, with a ticker-tape parade, at around the normal age for such things. Thus was I left as "the problem child".

However, that said, my mom was very loving. She was busy, and practical, but, I always felt like she was happy she'd had us. My dad was less involved, as was the style at the time, but my memories of him are largely good, except for a couple of instances of corporal punishment, that I'm sure I richly deserved. He passed away when I was not quite 10, and I ended up with a step father who was another story altogether - he trafficked a little excessively in humiliation for someone dealing with children who had just been through some traumatic shit. On the other hand, he ended my time in nappies very effectively - I didn't live in his house very long before I made a concerted effort to put them behind me. 

In linking together commentary from my sister and my mom, I suspect that my parents had been experimenting with a "humiliation light" version of the cure my stepfather ultimately employed, hoping that social pressure would urge me toward overnight continence, as if I somehow had a choice in the matter. So, while she was never punitive about my need for baby's underpants, she was also unapologetic about it, I think perhaps believing that if I "wanted" to enjoy the "convenience" of wearing them at night, then I had to own whatever stigma came along with that. If we were at Aunt So-and-so's place and it was approaching the bedding down hour, I had to be put into diapers, there would be no exception because we were still playing hide-and-seek with the cousins in the basement or whatever. She didn't announce it, but she also more or less shrugged when I urgently whispered that someone might figure it out if I had to return to the pack with Pampers on under my PJ's, hours before we were actually leaving. And, indeed, it didn't take very long for most of my cousins to figure out that "I wore diapers" at least some of the time. My sister probably contributed to that as well. 

So whereas you looked upon your younger siblings as being perhaps more loved, or at least more nurtured, and having less responsibility on their shoulders, while also having nappies on their bums, and perhaps you wanted to be in their position, I WAS the one in the nappies, and perhaps thinking that I would have been more loved had I not been in them. So why your mechanism for coping with your feelings, and mine, align so closely, I have no idea. 

I do have some anecdotal evidence that regimented early potty training can leave some scars, though. I have a nephew who is now in his early 20's and by all accounts thriving, but who was "potty trained" at 18 months old, because my step-sisters make a competition out of everything. That kid, when he was four and five, still wouldn't poop on the toilet, even though he hadn't worn diapers for a couple of years at that point. His parents had to put a diaper on him and let him go do his business, when a requirement for #2 arose. I thought that was maybe an outlier of a situation until only a couple of weeks ago, when a good friend of mine told me about his niece, who is four, and who was in the exact same predicament - she'd been toilet trained at a very young age, allegedly by being whistled to while held aloft over the toilet as an infant, BUT, she was terrified going #2 on the can, and would request a diaper when she needed to. Apparently her parents finally decided to refuse the request for a diaper, and the kid went almost three days before the dam broke, but after that, she never looked back. 

I don't know if I was rushed in that department or not, but it seems likely that you were, and while for you, pleasing your mom involved growing up on her schedule, for your siblings, pleasing her seemingly involved using their nappies without complaint. 

[oznl]

3 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I don't know if I was rushed in that department or not, but it seems likely that you were, and while for you, pleasing your mom involved growing up on her schedule, for your siblings, pleasing her seemingly involved using their nappies without complaint. 

It’s an interesting question for sure.

I’d love to know but firstly, I have an uneasy feeling that “therapy” doesn’t arrive at any kind of objective truth but rather is a way of feeling better by having a moan about something to crystallise a subjective narrative (I’ve never had therapy so I accept this may be a ridiculous preconception) and secondly, I don’t really want to pay for it.

It’s entirely possible my beloved will force my hand as the price of a relationship when she discovers my emerging diaper-dependencies.

[oznl]

Dogs know more than they let on.  Dogs know you’re in nappies and what you’ve done in them.  They don’t judge but they still know.

In my ridiculous uber-economy real estate gig work, I visit a LOT of houses.  Many of these houses have dogs.  The owners are supposed to restrain their animals for the duration of my visit.  Sometimes this happens, more often it doesn’t.  Some owners don’t bother because they “know” their dogs (fine, but their dogs don’t know ME), some owners don’t like to restrain their dogs, some owners just don’t care, disturbingly, some owners profess that they are simply UNABLE to restrain their dogs.  I watch those dogs from behind a screen door as they hurl themselves at me baying, surrounded by shredded toys, bones and dog turds: clearly the ‘alpha’ animals of the household.

Most dogs are ok but I’ve noticed that I get progressively more interesting to dogs as the day draws on.  I like to imagine that this is because I’ve been sniffed, rubbed or salivated upon by a series of prior dogs at prior properties.  I’m less impressed to suspect that it seems that my nappy may also get progressively more interesting to dogs as the day draws on.

Dogs have few inhibitions.

It seems to become more common across the day that shortly after the conventional dog greeting of the hand sniff, they go straight for the crotch.

“Oh Fluffy!  DON’T do that!” the owner bleats ineffectually, disregarded by the large Rottweiler intent of locating the source of an interesting scent.

Yesterday it was a particularly friendly black Labrador.  Labradors are hilariously bad guard dogs by the way.  Even if I use my agency key to let myself into an unattended property, they are more likely to amble up amiably and offer to exchange a guided tour of where the valuables are kept in return for me opening the refrigerator for them than defend their owners’ castle.

As it happens, the owner was present, the dog was inside and predictably unrestrained.  Pleased to have visitors it gamboled up and jumped up to share two muddy paw prints on my already dog-pawed shirt.  I did not respond: in my experience the best way of discouraging a jumping dog.

“Get down Wilfred!” suggested the owner.

Sometime later, Wilfred dropped back to four paws, probably more because he was tired of it than responding to any command.  He then, rather unexpectedly, shoved his black, wet snout directly and deeply into my crotch, working his nose in hard. 

Wilfred! We’ve only just met!

As he ferreted about in an alarmingly intimate manner, I realised that he wasn’t even directly going for my nappy but rather, the elastics of my plastic pants that lurked beneath my jeans, where air might escape.  It was the end of the day, I was reasonably wet and Wilfred was reasonably intrigued.

“Ya gotta love dogs!” suggested the owner helpfully, apparently not a bit discomfited by her fur baby scent-raping a complete stranger.

My love for Wilfred however was fading by the millisecond.

Wilfred, completely disregarding his owner, his face still embedded firmly in the front of my jeans, paused his investigations to inhale deeply and thoughtfully, as if to analyse the stream of olfactory data before him and derive a conclusion.  After a second or so, he stepped back to regard me reflectively with his big, brown, soulful eyes.  Perhaps, he had an anally installed printer and was about to exude a short printed summary of the sampled data like some kind of canine-hosted gas chromatograph?

“I know what you’ve done in your pants” he said…

He didn’t say it using words.   He used dog language but the message was as clear as a head line on a daily newspaper.

“Can I ask you to restrain your dog please?” I replied, directing my words to the owner.

Thusly Wilfred was reluctantly but duly led outside onto the patio whereupon he looked back toward me with a lingering, curious glance tinged with miserable bewilderment at his banishment.

Wilfred wasn’t an isolated occurrence.  I had a worse one earlier where there were TWO dogs.  One at the front of my nappy, the other at the rear (dog #2 was wasting his time, my nappy contained only #1).

Dogs know you’re in nappies and what you’ve done in them.  They don’t judge but they still know.

[Little Sherri]

7 hours ago, oznl said:

Dogs know you’re in nappies and what you’ve done in them.  They don’t judge but they still know.

This installment made me laugh out loud. I have had exactly the same experience. First of all, I have a dog, and he does give me quizzical glances from time to time. Several of my friends also have dogs, including one gargantuan Great Dane - Mastiff cross that could more accurately be described as a carnivorous pony. All of them, at one point or another, have assaulted me as you described, jamming their high-fidelity snouts into the center of my business, as though trying to discern the meaning of life, or, what came prior to the big bang. Luckily, this is not uncommon behaviour within the canine set, so most people either pay very little attention to it, or, they apologize and call the dog off. More of the former than the latter. 

On a side note, this conversation reminds me of the betrayal that I swear I could see in the eyes of our dog, when our children were really young. Imagine things from their perspective - from the moment they stepped foot into their new homes, the prime directives were, one, no killing, none, ever, nor any behaviour that could be interpreted as precursors to killing, such as biting or growling. And, two, no eliminating in the house, ever, no matter how convenient it may seem in the moment, or how far, say, the basement floor seems to be from the eating and sleeping areas. All indoor spaces are sacred, including the ones on wheels. 

But then, the new hire arrives, and he or she is utterly useless, unable even to hold up their head, let alone their side of a conversation, but, apparently THEY can urinate and defecate whenever and where ever they want, while enjoying the unblinking favour of the Gods. Try engaging in even the friendliest of disagreements with them, and see what happens - fire and brimstone descends from the skies, and you spend the day, or possibly the year, in miserable confinement. IF you survive. Truly, truly, a tyrannically-enforced two-tier system.

These developments can be astonishing to dogs that previously enjoyed uncontested rule over their fiefdoms. I am thinking in particular of one pooch that I am related to, by marriage, who lived like an emperor, pushed around a gentrified downtown neighbourhood in a stroller. His servants tended to his every desire. They limited castle visitors to only the most worthy, lest he be upset by their comings and goings. They whispered soothing words as he attacked the ankles of impertinent visitors. They encouraged his premae noctis advances upon newcomers. They paid more attention to administering his precisely-balanced raw diet than they did to their own prescription medications. 

And then... the four prams of the apocalypse galloped across his landscape, reducing his regency to ruins, leaving him begging for scraps on the floors he used to own. 

[Stroller]

On 10/26/2021 at 7:46 AM, oznl said:

Dogs know you’re in nappies and what you’ve done in them.  They don’t judge but they still know.

I'm sure that's right.  Binky can sniff out another dog's lost tennis ball from 20 yards away, so he's going to be very aware of what everybody smells like.  Having said that, he's not interested, and I've never noticed other dogs sniffing at my nether regions either - apart from the 1 or 2 who sniff at everyone's nether regions.  Other dogs want to sniff Binky's bum, not mine.  It annoys him a bit.  Anyone got a use for 2 dozen slightly pre-used tennis balls?

[oznl]

How to get your beloved to bring you your coffee in bed:

With November just around the corner, heat and humidity have settled over Queensland like a stifling blanket you didn’t want and can’t get rid of.  This heat will fluctuate slightly in intensity but basically remain with us until a cool change arrives: possibly next April.

We’ve already had our first “sleeping with the bedroom AC on” nights, more to deal with the humidity than the heat.  To tell you the truth I quite enjoy those oppressive evenings with lightning flickering in the sky and perhaps a few heavy drops of rain to cool the air a little.

The trouble is that going to bed in nappies, I need extra insulation like a walrus needs an accordion.

My status as a bed wetter means that I can’t really afford to “go skinny” with my protection.  Although my night disposable only leaks rarely, these leaks are almost never synchronised with the night before we’d be washing the sheets and as I’m strongly opposed to domestic violence, it’s important for me to avoid giving my beloved the temptation to commit it by delivering her pee-soaked bedding.

The only optional insulation south of the border is my pyjama pants.  Thusly on the hot nights I sleep only in my double-terry lined plastic pants over my BetterDry and a t-shirt.  Nothing else.

For 1960s era nappy fetishists, I perhaps may be, for the only time in my life, visually attractive.  This nappy gear is puffy, bulky, a little crinkly and wrapped in milky-white plastic pants with old school elastic leggings.

I don’t need to be discreet in bed, I need not to leak in bed.

Naturally, having a husband thusly dressed like a giant toddler requires Herculean feats of “not-seeing-his-THINGS” from my beloved.  She does her best.

In case of the event of fire alarms, or more probably, the cat throwing up on the carpet beside our bed, I keep a pair of voluminous pyjama pants beside me.  Whilst they will in a crisis cover the plastic pants, they do little to obscure the bulkiness but I’m assuming in an “emergency-pyjamas-at-2am” moment, I will have some alternate camouflage from darkness, confusion and general panic.

On weekend mornings, it is our habit to take it in turns to brew a batch of coffee and enjoy a couple of cups in bed before seizing the day.  I’m always silently amused by my beloved’s apparent need to visit the bathroom at least twice during the 45 minutes or so it takes to drink these: during the same time, I’ve failed to visit the bathroom several times but I digress.

I’d have to confess, it is kind of nice just sitting in bed wearing a t-shirt, my nappy and nothing else heat or no heat.

We usually take it in turns to trek downstairs to refill coffee cups.

“Would you like some more coffee dear?” I asked.

“No, let ME go!” she said, glancing nervously at the broad swathe of plastic pant covering my nappy-clad crotch.

“No” I replied, “It’s MY turn!” 

We were the only ones at home.  There remains the possibility of trampolining children at the property rear but I could hear nothing, the privacy screen I installed has somewhat obscured this sight line and in any case, there was that emergency pair of pyjama shorts on the floor beside me but clearly she had not noticed these.

“NO!” she replied far too urgently.  “I’ve got to, ah, stretch my back!”.

Thusly, I received my coffee in bed, skipping my turn for collecting it.

As a small bonus, when delivering it, her foot kicked against the open packet of BetterDry that were beneath the bed where I lay.  Her eyes rolled.  She is an Olympic-class eye roller, but nothing was said.  I ignored the opportunity for a quick round of the “What’s wrong?  Nothing!” game before breakfast.

It occurred to me that I almost NEVER have to fetch coffee when I’m clad only in a nappy and t-shirt.

I wonder if I fill it as well, do I then get bacon and eggs in bed or just a letter from a divorce lawyer?

[Little Sherri]

 

On 10/29/2021 at 7:57 PM, oznl said:

“NO!” she replied far too urgently.  “I’ve got to, ah, stretch my back!”.

My wife has no such compunctions. She has sent me down to get her a beverage clad in just a diaper. If there is nobody else home I will do it, but I usually pull on large pajama pants if there's a chance I might run into one of the kids in my travels. No need to add therapy bills to the household finances. Another of her favourite tricks (there's another OU word...) is to head out of the bedroom and leave the door wide open, when I'm sitting on the bed in just a diaper and a t-shirt, so that I have to scramble under the covers if I hear anyone in the hall. Or, she'll wait until I've come into the room, gotten out of the day's clothes, changed my diaper, and am settling in to read or watch a show, before telling me that the dog hasn't been out in a while, so that I have to pull pajama pants and a jacket on and head out into the soon-to-be-frozen wilderness. Once, after I went into the washroom to brush my teeth, wearing only a diaper, she summoned my eldest in for a conference on her academic plans for next year, and I had to wait them out in the bathroom, or emerge wrapped in a towel - my "escape" clothes were on the other side of the bed. 

[oznl]

I’ve been asked more than once how I can get by with only two nappies per day under “24/7” conditions.   Since nothing notable in the nappy department seems to have happened this week, I thought I’d waste a few column inches attempting to explain how the mechanics of this work.

For me, a diet of two nappies per day has actually proved to be the simplest and cheapest regime.

For “simplest”, I avoid all of the dramas of nappy changes at work (such as it is for me these days) or out with my friends or beloved by simply not changing: using instead a high capacity nappy that can complete a 12 hour shift. 

For “cheapest” (a consideration thrown into sharp relief by my COVID-induced redundancy and subsequent massive under-employment), nappies are an expensive thing.  In my market, it costs less to use TWO decent nappies in preference to 3 – 5 el-cheapo products: YMMV.

I run a “day” and a “night” nappy.

The day shift starts after the removal of my night nappy and a quick rinse of my nappy zone with a hand-shower.  This is usually somewhere between 6:30am and 8:30am depending on whether I am working or not.  Assuming it isn’t one of my one or two “cloth” days, I’ll usually change into an Abena L4 + booster pad or, if I’m working “on the road”, the more physically robust, less gravity-affected but more expensive Rearz Hybrid Elite.  Although stunningly comfortable, Abenas have “saggy and baggy” as their specialty subject and nothing accelerates their lust for your ankles like clambering in and out of a car 15 times in a day. 

Regardless of the brand, my day nappies are worn under plastic pants (Gary PUL) and a compression pant (el-cheapo K-Mart “shapewear”).  The plastic panty deals with any minor leaks (remember these nappies will be fully utilised over several hours).  The compression pant I find vital not only for visual stealth but to keep my nappy supported and up where it needs to be.  That nappy is going to get very heavy being on for that long during an active day and without support, an Abena would finish up protecting my ankles.  Upon changing, my disposable day nappy will usually be 70 – 90% wet.  A cloth nappy will usually be 100% damp due to its excellent wicking, the degree of dampness fluctuating in accordance with how heavily I’ve used it.

My “night nappy” goes on after my evening shower, usually around 6 – 6:30pm and is a little different.  If not cloth (the weapon-of-choice for bedwetting but confined to the aforementioned couple of nights per week due to spousal and laundry limitations), it’s usually a BetterDry under a compression pant.  

Just before getting into bed, I’ll ditch the compression pant and pull on a heavy double-terry-lined waterproof pant over the top of my by-then-somewhat-wet BetterDry.  This is quite bulky but visual discretion is irrelevant in bed and leaks are not.  I find that even high quality disposables are prone to minor leaking in bed and my terry-lined waterproofs effectively mop up those small spills.  I usually encounter “wet terries” one or two mornings per week but it’s rarely major and interestingly, rarely smells of pee: it seems that the odour abatement chemical typically added to adult disposables continues to work its magic on any pee that escapes from them.  I’ll usually just allow a lightly-leaked-in waterproof to dry out during the day for re-use, deferring washing until I have a load of cloth nappies at a weekly cadence.

There are some who insist that such precautions are not necessary in bed with modern “super-nappies” but there are two factors here working against me:  firstly, recall that my “night nappy” has actually been on my bum since 6:30pm and consequentially, I’m not exactly dry at bedtime.  (As an aside, there is an abundance of anecdotal evidence that aligns quite well with my own lived experience suggesting that “going to bed wet” radically enhances our proclivity to develop bedwetting: something to think about if that’s a life objective for you…)  Secondly, after 18 months or so of 24/7 nappy usage, I’ve reverted to bedwetting.  This means that I may not always be laying in the “correct” position when pee happens as I might be asleep.

One big thing with the “2-nappy-per-day?” diet is that I’m obviously going to be “wearing wet” for MOST of the time.   I can’t afford to go and change every time pee happens.  With 32 months of 24/7 nappy use under my belt (so to speak), on top of the nocturnal bed wetting, during the day I pee semi-automatically in a “drip and dribble” kind of modality VERY, very frequently.  I’m usually a tiny bit wet within 10-30 minutes of changing and it only goes downhill from there.  I’m probably only dry for at the most, 60 minutes per day and most days, not even that. 

All those horror stories that get recited involving residents in aged care home left to marinate in their own wee for hours on end (curious turn of phrase: would it somehow be better if they were marinating in somebody ELSE’S wee?) do nothing more than reflect my daily lived reality.

People have asked how I cope with this.  

First up I’d say if you have a problem with having a wet bum for extended periods of time you’ve picked the wrong recreational pursuit!

Secondly, I don’t even notice being wet that much these days.  I found that my awareness of “wet” faded quite early on in my 24/7 journey.  If it IS obvious to me that I’m wet it’s either because I’m wearing cloth (cloth nappies DO feel wetter than disposables but even the “wet cloth” sensation tends to fade over time) or strangely enough, I’m only a little bit wet, usually because I’ve changed recently.  It seems that in the early stages of nappy wetting, the “wet” bit is quite localised and there is something of a tactile contrast between the wet patch and the predominately dry nappy surrounding it.  It’s not in any way unpleasant though and disappears within a few hours as I become progressively wetter.

The outlier for me noticing that I’m wet is if I’m leaking.  Evaporative cooling is a thing.  I don’t leak very often these days but it can still happen.

How does my skin cope?  Very well.

I wash at EVERY change.  A quick hand-shower rinse of the relevant areas when changing out of my night nappies in the morning, a full shower when changing out of my day nappy in the evening.  I use a soap-free body wash because a dermatologist told me to, not because I wear nappies.  This may or may not help things.

I am (as far as possible) completely hairless in my nappy zone.  Hair is porous, it absorbs pee, harbours bacteria and generally starts to smell if left marinating in nappies for prolonged periods of time.

I use sudocreme to protect against nappy rash at EVERY change: nappy rash really is one of those things where the best cure is prevention.

I rarely have messy nappies.  A full nappy is an absolute game-changer demanding more or less immediate changing (or immediate social isolation) and dramatically increases the rash risk.  I do not believe I could run a two-nappy-per-day diet if I was messing as well as wetting as I would have to respond to messy events as and when they happened.  For me, wearing wet for long periods of time is viable, wearing messy for long periods is not.

So there you have it.  Two nappies per day for the last 18 months or so.  I think 18 months is long enough to establish that a program has longitudinal practicality.  All I need to do is to use high capacity/quality nappies, augment those nappies with plastic pants and support garments, not worry about having a wet crotch and bum most of the time and take care of my skin.

It’s the internet of course so YMMV.

[Little Sherri]

13 hours ago, oznl said:

So there you have it.  Two nappies per day for the last 18 months or so.  I think 18 months is long enough to establish that a program has longitudinal practicality.  All I need to do is to use high capacity/quality nappies, augment those nappies with plastic pants and support garments, not worry about having a wet crotch and bum most of the time and take care of my skin.

It’s the internet of course so YMMV.

I can attest to the workability of the two-nappy-per-day diet. I'm on essentially the same program, although I drift up to three on days when I have some sort of physical exertion planned, either household related (lawn cutting, snow clearing, bagging of leaves, hey can you help me pull up a tile floor?), or, rarely these days because I'm out of the habit after 18+ months off, going to the gym or otherwise engaging in deliberate exercise. I like to shower after such undertakings, and I always put on a clean nappy post-shower, so I'll throw a low-end diaper into the mix, that I won't lament disposing of, if it still has some gas in the tank when it hits the bottom of my diaper bin. 

This is a change I made about ~15 months ago, when I up-sized a significant portion of my wardrobe, so that I could wear decent plastic diapers out in the world, and not just at home. I used to burn through three cheap, slim-fitting "medical" diapers and one ABDL diaper per day, back when I wouldn't go further than walking the dog in a big plastic diaper. Giving myself the bandwidth to wear decent diapers all the time has saved me money, inconvenience, and grief. Plus, I enjoy it more. 

As to nappy/diaper rash, I can again attest to prevention being by far the best medicine. Rigorous hygiene and liberal use of nappy cream are the keys, although I am uncharacteristically beset by mild diaper rash right now, and I think that it has to do with some lousy low-end drugstore diapers my wife bought me, that I've been using for the aforementioned exertion duty. I don't know why being in a wet Tena for five hours while closing the pool is harder on my skin than being in a wet Elite Hybrid for eighteen hours, but that is my observation. 

[oznl]

A small chink of tolerance broke through the thick cloud cover of my beloved’s disdain for my nappied-lifestyle choice that normally darkens my world yesterday.

Being the latter days of the week, I was in my cloth nappy phase.  I’d changed out of my kite folded terry night nappy that morning, rinsed it (and me) in the shower before dumping it in my nappy bucket in the laundry and changing into two layers of Babykins cotton cloth pull-on nappies and plastic pants for day use.

The day was spent relatively uneventfully, most of it up a ladder painting the side of the house that I didn’t paint this time last year.  Once again, I’d completed a ladder-work day without the ignominy of having my wet nappies cut off me by EMT staff in an ER room after falling off it.

My beloved had come home and we were in the bedroom chatting.  It helps somewhat that I’d spent the day working on the house.  There is something about decorating her nest that ticks some kind of primal box with her.  Pausing our chat, she popped in to use our ensuite bathroom at which point I realised that I hadn’t completely cleared out evidence of my night nappies.  The pins and snappies I’d used to hold it on me had been left carelessly on the vanity.

A tense minute or so later she returned but conversation seemed to resume normally.

After she left for downstairs, I checked.  Sure enough, bright yellow giant safety pins and two large “snappi” elastic cloth nappy fasteners were laying prominently on the vanity counter top next to the basin: a veritable neon sign advertising last night's underwear choice.

She’d managed to use the bathroom in the presence of this irrefutable evidence of my habit and neither move them, throw them out nor descend into a foul mood.

I’ll take that as a win but I will try to remember to clean up after myself.  A sodden giant terry nappy (albeit well rinsed) and plastic pants left at the base of the shower may not have been similarly tolerated.

[oznl]

Of mattresses and confessions:  This week, I tried to inform my beloved that she is now married to a bed wetter.

It was a mattress that triggered this attempt at confession but not in the way that you might imagine.

A few years ago, we replaced our 15 year old mattress (which, in its autumnal days had made a series of alarming “sproing” noises) with a low cost replacement.  According to the sales vernacular, the reason why this “next” mattress was less than half the cost of its predecessor was because mattress retailers are part of an intergalactic conspiracy to defraud customers and that although it cost dramatically less, our “next” mattress was in fact of comparable quality.

Yeah right…

Less than five years later, this “next” mattress stands accused of a range of crimes, principally, both my beloved and I having disrupted sleep and a marked inability to get comfortable in bed in the face of inexplicable hip and back pain.  In the harsh glare of daylight, the “next” mattress was noted to have sunken markedly with two human-body sized depressions, one on each side.

My nappies cannot be blamed for this.  The mode of failure is identical on my beloved’s side of the bed, a side that has remained resolutely dry for a very long time.

On the weekend we bought a “new next” mattress:  NOT a cheap one. This mattress was fabricated on the international space station by astronauts weaving gold-plated unicorn pelt.  At least that’s what its price suggested.

So much for cheap mattresses.

Buying a new mattress raises a number of minor nappy-logistic issues.  I BELIEVE that the incumbent mattress is not actually pee stained but on Thursday morning, in a potential blaze of embarrassment in front of the delivery-and-removal mattress elves, I will find out for certain. I also need to relocate certain amounts of nappy infrastructure that is more or less on permanent display in our room due said elves AND I needed to do something about the ancient waterproof sheet that has semi-protected our mattress from a series of nappy-related incidents over the years.  A simple vinyl/elastic strap affair, it has cracked alarmingly and its stretched elastic straps see it regularly part company with the mattress it is supposed to be protecting.  Although I thank it for its two decades of service, it is time to move on.

A quick google showed that waterproof mattress protectors are pretty cheap, pretty widely available and pretty crinkly, sweaty and uncomfortable.

What do professional bed wetters use?

Consulting the specialist medical incontinence supplier I use for my “daily driver” (non-ABDL) nappies, it seems that the “Conni” waterproof mattress protector is the weapon of choice for the well-heeled bed wetter.  Although four times the price of the K-mart el-cheapo wee sheets, it is fully fitted, breathable and comes floating upon a raft of positive reviews from grateful adult bed wetters.

I ordered one.

Later that evening, sitting outside with my beloved enjoying an end-of-day drink with a spot of cheese I casually mentioned that I’d squandered another $80 of capital to retire the waterproof sheet on our bed in favour of something a little more comfortable to celebrate our imminent return to comfortable repose.

Her gaze hardened a little but nothing was said.  I should have stopped there I suppose but I didn’t.  I WANTED to tell her something.  I’m not a huge fan of marital secrets: those that I have are because I’m trying to keep the peace, not because I like the idea.

“Oh don’t look at me like that” I continued.  “This one should be MUCH more comfortable and anyway…  It really needs to be there.  At this point in time, nappies in bed aren’t really optional for me anymore”.

That was the thing I wanted to get off my chest.  I wanted her to KNOW that I wet the bed now.

She looked at me and said nothing.  A few seconds of silence ticked by.  Each of them 43 years long. 

I threw more words into the conversational abyss that had appeared before me:

“I’ve been in nappies at night for nearly three years now.  I don’t always wake up anymore when I need to go.  It just happens.”

I got my first reply.

“You told me this experiment would be at the most TWO years, WHEN are you going to come out of them?”

I honestly don’t think I DID tell her that.  Giving her a specific time horizon would have been a fairly ordinary piece of strategy for me.  Firstly I didn’t HAVE a time horizon when I started out and secondly, even if I did, providing it would have simply handed her a bludgeon to hit me with in order to conclude my nappied life, probably way earlier than the advertised sunset time anyway.

“It’s been years, it’s gotten a bit past that” I said.

Tears welled up in her eyes.

“I HATE them”

“I know, that’s why I try to keep them out of your face”.

“NO YOU DON’T, you don’t even cover them up in bed anymore”.

That’s true but is simply driven by warm humid weather (outside my nappy) rather than any nascent exhibitionism and I told her this.

“You could just come OUT of them”

“No I can’t, I just told you, I’d probably wake up wet anyway and wreck a mattress”

There’s not much “probably” about it of course.  I’ve already tested myself.  I WILL wake up wet and without my nappy being on, so would she if she were in bed next to me.

“Ok, you could come out of them for the DAYTIME at least” she retorted instantly.

I suspect this MAY have been a counter-offer to accept permanent night nappies in exchange for giving them up during the day.  It’s bait I’m not taking though.  I know from experience that firstly, “8/7” isn’t enough for me and secondly, having re-captured that daytime hill, she’d quickly move on to the next battle objective: night time re-training.

The other challenge there with “daytime” is that things aren’t quite as simple as just taking off my nappy there either.  The evening before, I’d gone to a movie with her.  The first movie I’ve been to since COVID times: 18 months or more.  It was a salient reminder that these strange days, there is NO way I could sit through the two hours of “The Many Saints of Newark” uninterrupted without the comforting insurance policy of the Abena L4 + booster I was wearing but it’s beside the point.

“I just don’t want to do that”.

More silent tears.  I regretted telling her but I couldn’t see how a lie could be anything but worse and the silence seemed like a lie by omission.  I should have stuffed whatever Calvinistic confessional bent drove me to over-share in the first place back in its psychological box and said nothing.  Suddenly, the timer went off in the kitchen and she arose and went inside to turn the chicken that was roasting in the oven for dinner.

When she returned it was all over.  Her mood had re-brightened and the conversational topic was abruptly moved on by her never to return.  

So, I’ve told my beloved that I am now a bed wetter but I’m honestly not certain if the information has hit home.  It’s as though that conversation never happened, that 60 seconds of conversational exchange and somehow been excised from her psyche and memory.

I wet the bed again that night.  I still don’t know if my beloved actually took my news on this topic on-board or has somehow mentally erased it in an Olympian-level feat of denial.

[Little Sherri]

16 hours ago, oznl said:

there is NO way I could sit through the two hours of “The Many Saints of Newark” uninterrupted without the comforting insurance policy of the Abena L4 + booster I was wearing but it’s beside the point.

I apologize for zeroing in on the least salient detail first, but I am curious as to what you thought of it. I saw it a few weeks ago; I liked it, although it felt a bit like half a movie, but then again, I really liked the series, so I may be biased. It was interesting to note that Junior was always a d*ck, apparently. 

As to the rest of what you wrote, I admire your honesty. I have been avoiding speaking more honestly about my "Pampers" (as she sometimes calls them, when she calls them anything at all), primarily because I thought that letting my actions speak for themselves might alleviate the need to articulate exactly what the hell I'm up to, which, to be honest, is something even I don't completely know. But nature abhors a vacuum, and the human mind craves narratives, which explains both the existence of religions, and, the fact that, given no information, my wife has come to a conclusion, nevertheless. Thus, she has latched onto my upcoming urology appointment as being the TSN turning point in this game (a reference, for those who maybe don't get TSN, to a term that network gives to the moment in a professional sports game where the tables turn and someone snatches defeat from the jaws of victory, while someone happier does the inverse). 

Happily, publicly-funded healthcare being what it is, those of us who aren't in any immediate mortal danger get triaged accordingly, so my appointment is in the Spring now. Thus, I won't have to face down my two major concerns about said appointment, for a few months. Those concerns being, #1, wearing a diaper to an appointment with a specialist who 100% guaranteed would be interested in the etiology of my being so attired, and who also probably will want to see "the area", diapers aside (pun there), and, #2, what my wife is going to ask me and what I'm going to tell her, with respect to whatever comes of that appointment. Which, by the way, is NOT to investigate the declining reliability of my plumbing; I more or less know why THAT is happening. The consult is for something wholly unrelated. And, I never actually told my wife that I was going to this doctor because I wear diapers, she just assumed that was the case. It's a narrative. 

So, does she expect me to be cured of all this, and for the towering shelf of diapers in the basement to be repurposed, after I donate all of them to a home for the aged? Who, as an aside, might be understandably perplexed when their PSW comes into the room for the 6 PM change, carrying a cotton-candy scented Lil' Bella diaper, covered in pastel winged ponies, rather than a Tena product designed primarily to burn cleanly, for the ease of the funeral services industry? 

Or, will I come back from the appointment, feigning a downcast aura, and say that the good doctor doesn't think that there is anything he or she can do, and that I now have a prescription for gloriously printed ABDL diapers? 

[oznl]

4 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I apologize for zeroing in on the least salient detail first, but I am curious as to what you thought of it. I saw it a few weeks ago; I liked it, although it felt a bit like half a movie, but then again, I really liked the series, so I may be biased. It was interesting to note that Junior was always a d*ck, apparently.

I am married to a Sopranos tragic, I’ve seen the entire series more than once (after buying her the box set), eaten onion rings at Holsten’s diner, played “Alabama 3” whilst driving her through the Lincoln tunnel, trudged around the base of the Pulaski Skyway, and navigated a rental car to “Satin Dolls” at Lode (the real venue portrayed as the “Bada Bing” and if anything, even more squalid).  I DO like the Sopranos but I have my limits. Those parts of New Jersey weren’t chosen for their natural beauty.

Considering my general awesomeness here, is it too much to ask her to overlook my nappies?

For anybody who was familiar with the Sopranos and liked that series, the success of the movie is a lay-down misere.   I was never bored although the dental scene was hard to watch and I’m not generally squeamish – something about teeth does it to me.

I do wonder how well that movie could stand on its own: too may loose ends without the series context I thought.  I suspect its (large enough) addressable market is Sopranos fans although it may end up jump-starting some kind of spin-off series I suppose.

Yep, Junior was an even bigger d*ck than the original series showed it seems.  It's ironic that by season 5 ("Where's Johnny"), Janice gave it away that he'd relapsed into bed-wetting, presumably an outcome of his advancing dementia.

[oznl]

The new mattress was duly delivered last week.  Like airports and hospitals, an important role of the delivery driver is to remind you that your time is of no consequence.  Accordingly, the “30 minutes advance notice of arrival” text for the new mattress arrived simultaneously with the truck idling at our letterbox.  In strict accordance with Murphy’s law, the delivery happened VERY early in the morning, my beloved having only minutes earlier departed for her office in the city. 

As well as being changed, nappies change things.  Bedrooms become even more private places as they must conceal strange garments and supplies for grown-ups to have.  The much-earlier-than-expected arrival of delivery men who would shortly be IN this bedroom was a source of consternation.

I’d spent that night in wet cloth nappies and so the bedroom smelled slightly of wet cloth nappy.  Expecting an “AM” delivery (just not THAT much AM), I’d already arisen, rinsed off and changed myself into something a little more visually discreet but my albeit-rinsed-wet terry nappy and plastic pant was still marinating soggily on the floor of the shower in our adjacent en-suite.  No time.   I flung open the bedroom windows, sprayed some freshener around, switched on the ceiling fan on and hoped for the best.

I stuffed plastic pants and open packets of nappies wherever I could before stripping the bedding, using it to cover my nappy-hamper in the corner.

Mercifully, the old mattress was NOT visibly pee-stained at all.  The ancient “wee sheet” had done its work (it had a constellation of suspiciously-yellow marks that would no longer wash out) and I stuffed it out of site under the piled bedding.

It was only after the delivery guys left the room that I realised that the opened bags of “BetterDry” and “Abena L4” I’d retrieved from under the soon-to-be-exposed bed were clearly viewable from the bedroom, sitting proudly on our open-plan, walk-in-robe floor  Oh well.

I made the new bed with our new first-class-seating quality “Coni” waterproof fitted sheet under a brand new cotton (not polyester!) mattress protector AND the brand new bamboo sheets that my beloved had somewhat extravagantly purchased to celebrate the occasion of something new to fall asleep on top of.

I’m not a big fan of bamboo bedding.  Allegedly less environmentally injurious than cotton, there is so much chemical processing that is done to the bamboo to transform it into bedding fabric I’m not even sure it’s appropriate to still call it “bamboo” anymore and also, I find that it bunches up far too easily and even more ominously, shows even the slightest hint of moisture as a dark stain: not a great attribute if you sleep in nappies and wet the bed.

That night we reposed in supreme comfort.  It was a mid-week alcohol night so I comprehensively wet the bed but fortunately my nappies did not leak at all and the sheets said nothing.

THAT didn’t happen until four days later.

I’d been feeling slightly out of sorts due to a long standing cardiac condition (mitigated surgically but still makes cameo appearances).  My beloved suggested that I might be dehydrated due to a long series of long days working out of my car in my crazy gig-economy real estate job in some fairly impressive heat and humidity.

This was possibly true.  I’d been changing some fairly dry nappies lately (it seemed I’d taken to wetting my shirts instead).  It also sounded vaguely plausible, electrolyte balances and such.

I decided that evening to drink an entire fish tank’s worth of water to see if it would clear up.

As a consequence of this, over that night somehow I put a massive 2.2 litres into my BetterDry.  Some of this I remember waking for, some I do not.  I must have slept through some of it.  If I’m going to be loading THAT much into my night nappy whilst awake, I’m at least going to fret about it.  No fretting occurred.

Upon waking I felt very, very wet: an ominous portend for a high quality adult disposable but amazingly, there seemed to be no catastrophic leaks and my terry-lined waterproofs were reasonably dryish.  I’ve noticed that this far into my journey, my peeing cadence is such low volume/low speed/high frequency that nappies are far more reluctant to leak than they were a few years ago when subjected to episodic deluges.

Even so, it was a bit much to ask of even a BetterDry: a non-catastrophic leak had still happened.  During the night some pee had crept along the crack of bum (the padding beneath it presumably by then saturated) and seeped out the top of my nappy during the night which was, unfortunately, poking just over the top of my terry lined plastic pants, bypassing their protection.  The BetterDry hadn’t so much leaked as had been overwhelmed. 

The bamboo lower sheet told the tale: a dark, accusing oval shaped mark the size of a dead rat plainly on my side of the bed the next morning.  By a series of magician-styled bedding manipulations upon arising I managed to visually conceal this from my beloved as we made the bed together.

It dried over the day (I drew back the covers after my beloved left and switched on the ceiling fan) but still the bamboo bedding would not be silenced: a distinct and discoloured dead-rat-sized-oval-shaped ring remains on my side of the bed and will so until the bedding is washed on Saturday.

The rehydration campaign did nothing for my condition and I’m hoping that it (like so many previous times) it decides to clear up of its own volition.  A resting pulse of 140 is actually not very good for you.

[BabyJilly_S]

That new bed feeling is great. I just bought a new waterproof mattress protector myself, they have certainly come along way from the sweat inducing plastic wrap I had before. It was so bad I took my chance without it after a couple of days. 

Hope you feel better soon.... 

[Little Sherri]

6 hours ago, oznl said:

A resting pulse of 140 is actually not very good for you.

No it is not. I wish you all the best, my friend, and I hope that you don't end up with a "met some paramedics while in a nappy" story. The possibility of that occurring, as rare as it would likely be, is the only thing that gives me pause when I'm trying to decide if I should leave the house in a plain white Megamax or Rearz Essential, versus a gloriously printed diaper. If I end up having to disrobe in front of medical professionals, my theory is that a white diaper would probably elicit either barely-raised eyebrows, or, a suitably subdued "poor chap" lets-pretend-we-don't-see-this professionalism, whereas pastel cartoon characters might cause them to lock eyes with each other in a "let's-talk-about-this-later" conspiracy. 

Bamboo sheets are off the list - duly noted. My wife bought me a couple of bamboo shirts last year, and those things were not cheap. They're comfortable, but while wearing them, it does not become obvious, at least to me, as to their advantages over cotton. 

[oznl]

7 hours ago, BabyJilly_S said:

Hope you feel better soon.... 

 

3 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

No it is not. I wish you all the best, my friend, and I hope that you don't end up with a "met some paramedics while in a nappy" story.

Thank you for your thoughts.  I am pleased to report that both my chest, fatigue levels and my smart watch are reporting green shoots of cardiac normality this morning: as low as 53 but currently an entirely-satisfactory 71.  I just need it to STAY down there across the day.  It's kind of bouncing in and out but that's better than permanently out.

Visiting a GP with a resting pulse of 140 WILL get you to the ER (most likely by ambulance) so I don’t.  I have a VERY long medical history with this and a cardiologist.  I know where my limits are.  If you are new to the world of cardiac arrhythmia, do NOT follow my precedent.  Get thee immediately to a Dr, preferably driven there by somebody else.  Anyway for me,  I believe the “ER in a nappy” can has been kicked a little further down the road but yes, this thought DID occur to me during the darker hours of this bout.

My personal best (pre-open-heart surgery) was 247 whilst undergoing a cardiac stress test at a cardiologist (there’s those digits again).  That was, only in retrospect, quite hilarious but that story is for another place.

I’d be interested to know what caused that one though (it lasted a few days).  Usual harbingers are onset of a physical illnesss (nope, no sign of that) or stress/anxiety (well, can’t say that has changed much for the year really).

The theory is that bamboo as a crop needs no more love and attention than not parking on top of it nor dousing it with herbicides whereas cotton needs vast amounts of water, environmentally expensive fertilisation, wildlife-slaughtering pesticides and Tuxedo-clad string quartets to play Bach to it quietly day and night in order for it to grow.

Bamboo certainly feels better than polyester, I’ll give it that…

And after a few more days testing, I conclude you're absolutely correct on the waterproof protector @BabyJilly_S, it's the bed wetting equivalent of going from a 1947 Ford to a Tesla.

[oznl]

Some of my antique terry towelling square nappies are starting to show their antiquity: doubtless a few years of 24/7 nappies hasn’t helped.

I still try to spend at least two nights per week pinned into my old school “terries”.  Although a little bulky and mobility-limiting, I’m mainly wearing them in bed as opposed to abseiling or competing in Olympic gymnastics.  Furthermore, in addition to being somewhat-sustainable, they are super-comfortable (wet, dry, clean or messy) and effortlessly leak-proof in bed at night irrespective of what position I may be laying in when nature makes its call.

I think I could abundantly and repeatedly wet myself wearing those things whilst hanging upside down by one leg from the ceiling fan set to “cyclonic” speed and still enjoy dry pyjama pants but for the benefit of family members I try to minimise those kinds of YouTube moments.

I was hanging my increasingly-threadbare terry nappies out to dry last week when it occurred to me how much sunshine was shining straight through them.  As I gazed upon them, landscape remained visible through them, palm trees silhouetted artistically before my eyes through recently-pee-soaked, white cotton terry towelling.

It then occurred to me that I can’t remember when I bought them.  I suspect it was more than 10 years ago.

I have 6 flat 60” x 60” terries rotated through use by virtue of a FIFO stacking system in our walk-in-robe.  They just look like towels: big, white, oddly square towels but you’d have to pull them down and unfold them to work out the oddly-square thing.  They’re just another thing for my beloved to somehow un-see as she navigates our boudoir.

You can still buy adult terry nappies locally but they are frightfully expensive.  An adult 150cm x 150cm (roughly 60” x 60”) terry nappy can be had for AUD51 but is only 2.2m2 which works out as nearly AUD22.68 per m2

By comparison, a packet of 12 60cm x 60cm (roughly 24” x 24”) baby terry nappies can be had for AUD29.95.  That calculates out at about 4.3m2 of towelling so we’ll call it AUD6.93 per m2

Conclusion: for a given area of material, adult cloth terry nappies are more than triple the price of their infant equivalents.

I thought about towels (cheaper again) but they are asymmetrical in shape and don’t lend themselves to my favoured nappy folds.  Perhaps I could make my own?

A quick bit of Google-research showed me that I can buy 1.5m wide terry towelling fabric (in white, pastel blue, or pastel pink as it happens, as if they had the ABDL in mind) from a popular Australian fabric shop for AUD21 per linear meter.  A 1.5 meter “length” of 1.5 meter wide towelling should therefore cost AUD31.50 which works out merely TWICE what I’d pay for the equivalent area in baby’s nappies.

Hmm…  I don’t know.  Is it likely to be somehow “better” terry towel than the unspecified grade of material that goes into locally available adult nappies?  Do things like “thread count” even matter when their purpose in life is to absorb pee (not that “thread count” is even provided as a specification to the adult nappies on sale)?

But THEN, I have to do something mysterious-and-artsy-craftsy to the material edges to stop them fraying.  Google says an “overlocker” is the answer but more Google says an el-cheapo overlocker is about AUD250!

Apart from the devastating blow to the underlying business case for DIY nappy construction, its acquisition would also make for a VERY awkward conversation with my beloved.

“Why have you bought an overlocker dear?  Are you going to take up sewing or is this some ghastly venture to advance your ludicrously mad choices in underwear as opposed to finding a psychiatrist and/or psychotropics to fix your deep and embarrassing flaw?”

Maybe not.

Can you overlock by hand?  Even then, it would be entirely possible that I’d end up creating a sub-standard product that would disintegrate from the edges the first time I washed it and save only AUD20 per nappy.

I’m still pondering this from the warm embrace of a slightly wet but-of-dwindling-bulk terry night nappy.

Trainspotting would have been a cheaper hobby and probably cause less marital angst as well.  Or perhaps I could borrow a leaf from my Beloved’s book of life and just collect shoes.

[WetDad]

Look for an overlocker at yard sales, there is no need for a new one. New ones are often lower quality, too.

[Little Sherri]

On 11/25/2021 at 6:09 PM, oznl said:

Google says an “overlocker” is the answer but more Google says an el-cheapo overlocker is about AUD250!

Apart from the devastating blow to the underlying business case for DIY nappy construction, its acquisition would also make for a VERY awkward conversation with my beloved.

But for the part where you'd have to explain it to your beloved, my first though was that you've identified a gap in the marketplace. If you can find a bulk supplier of the terry material, and buy the overlocker, you could put together a web page with Shopify, and voila, Oznl's DownUnder Nappies is born. Then you partner with someone who already makes plastic pants, and offer them as accessories. Eventually you'll be travelling to Vietnam to find a garment shop that can meet your demand without you having to sit at the overlocker 7 days a week, and you will have taken care of your gig economy economics, while at the same time improving life for your fellow man. When you buy your wife a Tesla, she will begin to overlook the fact that you've made yourself the Cloth Nappy King of the Southern Hemisphere. 

Hell, you could also make ones for actual infants, why not? And maybe target the bedwetting contingent's parents, much to their displeasure... "Do you know that it takes 500 years for one disposable pullup to break down in a landfill? How many does your child use per week? Is that the kind of legacy you want to leave to their children? No? Try Oznl's Pin-On Terry Bedtime Totally Underwear. When your child has outgrown them, send them back to us, and we will use them as bedding for endangered shrews." 

[oznl]

A series of minor nappy-related feaux pas this week punctuated what was otherwise another week of drifting in the 24/7 doldrums: those protracted periods where everything seems to be staying the same and nothing much seems to change…

Putting my threadbare terry nappies into the mental “too hard” basket for now, I’d ordered another case of Abena and booster pads to tide me over the Christmas period (this will be combined at some point with one last smash-and-grab raid at LittlesDownunder which should take me through summer).  I obtain my Abena from a legitimate, grown-up medical supplier.  Since their profits go back to supporting the disabled (they are a non-profit organisation), I have no more moral qualms in purchasing nappies for them that are not (or more accurately, WERE not) strictly necessary than they do in taking my money.

They are also highly reliable although in these COVID-times, the couriers they use less so.  Delivery services remain in mayhem and the threat of industrial action hovers as transport companies attempt the “uberfication” of their workforces into insecure, low paid contractor roles (a bit of a theme here).

Having ordered on the Wednesday, the normal course of events would have been they would have duly arrived on Friday, being in stock and their warehouse being in the same city in which I live.

This was not to be.  This was a shame because I was home Friday.  Instead, they turned up the following Monday when I was NOT home.

This isn’t normally any biggie.  They are packed anonymously in cardboard boxes and there is no external clues as to their contents.

It seems however that this courier decided to throw one of my boxes to his pet grizzly bear to play with: it arrived lacerated, crushed, crudely re-taped but worst of all, partially open whereupon it was collected in my absence by my daughter and brought upstairs…

This was an unanticipated scenario on many levels.

My teenage daughter, although indirectly aware of the concept of “doors” by virtue of their usefulness for slamming to express her grievances at the injustices I mete out to her on a daily basis, was not to my knowledge aware of the “front door” or indeed the doorbell connected to it.  She doesn’t “do” answering the door.  There are staff for that.

I can only conclude she was expecting some other kind of delivery for herself and would therefore have been righteously outraged to be disturbed by a delivery that was for somebody else.  I’m surprised she just didn’t slam the door in the driver’s face and go back upstairs to Instagram the depth of her misery to her fan-base.  Instead, she accepted it and carried a carton-of-nappies sized box up to the kitchen table.

This eventuality was secondarily unanticipated as the delivery was tagged for “signature-not-needed” drop and go.  Delivery instructions were to abandon the boxes under our carport.  Hitherto, delivery people cheerfully obliged as it was less effort than ringing a door bell that either doesn’t get answered or slightly worse, gets answered by a hostile teenager.

The “Abena” package was clearly visible through a 1.5” wide gash at the top of the box.  It is debatable if she knows what “Abena” is or could be bother googling it.

The second feaux pas of the week related to a wardrobe malfunction.

It had been a bad week on the work front.  When you’re eking out pocket money in the gig economy (which is really just a hipster label for “wage theft”), most weeks are bad but some are badder than others.

This one was bad because the “runs” I had to work were all high mileage outer-suburban destinations each of which was miles from the other: we’re talking 60 – 150 miles of driving in a day to 10 or 12 locations across a day.

We don’t get paid for mileage.  We are “self-employed contractors” remember?  Cars just happen.

It was also raining cats and dogs for most of the week.  My shiny new car was awash with mud inside and out and the odometer hummed as mile after mile flew by.  Unpaid depreciation mounted and mounted as the miles slid by whilst for most of the days, my nappy remained the driest garment on me in the constant heavy rain.

And then, around lunchtime (not that I have time for lunch), the belt so critical for holding up my baggy jeans decided to break.  This is a thing since belt buckles are now apparently all made in China and come factory equipped with a “use by” date.  No more throwing them out after they fall to the back of the wardrobe and go mildew after a few years, they just break by themselves now, overwhelmed at the Atlassian magnitude of their task.  I heard a slight “pop” as I bent over to check an item, the gentle tap of half a belt nudging my thigh and a cool breeze at my upper rear waist band.

I completed my house call as discretely as I could, hauling up my over-size jeans every few seconds to try to conceal a pair of blue plastic pants over a nappy.  It was hard, it was as though my jeans only had lust for my ankles.  They just wanted to be with them.

I have a “crash kit” in the car but it consisted of spare nappies and spare jeans, not a spare belt.

I ended up having to stop and buy a belt at a gift shop of all places (the closest venue that sold cheap tourist-tat stuff including “Crocodile Dundee” style apparel) from an otherwise pleasant Indian shop-keeper trying to stifle his grin as I attempted to pay without my jeans falling down.

This unexpected shopping diversion put me behind schedule and soon I was phoning my supervisor to try to get some air cover for showing up late to later houses.  At least he didn’t ask why.  I’m sure if I was to wash together my hours, my vehicle depreciation and energy costs and a new belt I didn’t want to buy, I probably went fiscally backwards this week.

At least the shop keeper got a laugh.  It’s good that somebody should get one.  The cardiac thing is ongoing.  For now I’m continuing to apply a therapeutic dose of ignoring it.  It’s not getting any worse…

[Little Sherri]

12 hours ago, oznl said:

The “Abena” package was clearly visible through a 1.5” wide gash at the top of the box.  It is debatable if she knows what “Abena” is or could be bother googling it.

This is one identified risk that I haven't figured out how to mitigate yet. So far, I've been home almost every time a case of nappies has shown up at my house, or, I've found it on my front porch, which, first of all, is covered, and, second, goes entirely unused because our side door is off of our driveway. But, every once in a while, the intrepid deliveryperson decides to leave it on the side door porch, which is not protected from the elements, and which is used by everyone for ingress and egress. I have not had a box show up with the contents visible, yet, but, my kids order fantastical amounts of clothing from the other side of the world, are always awaiting something, and might tear into a carton with abandon, only to be confronted by neat rows of colourful plastic nappies, under a shipping label with my name on it. My only salvation might be that everything that arrives more or less has my name on it, so maybe they'll think they're for their mother? That will please my beloved to no end.

I rescued a bag containing diaper shirts from my daughter's grasp last week, saying that since it's December, all incoming parcels must be left unopened until inspected by the Postmaster General. I have no idea what she would have made of a packet of sober black t-shirts, with snaps along the bottom. 

As I start venturing away from the home office more often for work, the risk will trend upward. Another unidentified danger was illustrated by my finding a soaked envelope sitting in the pouring rain on the side porch last week. In it was a packet containing small electronics, the box for which had also become soggy. Luckily, the devices themselves were ensconced in Styrofoam and plastic. Were that a big box of diapers, one assumes the plastic bags they are arrayed into would provide similar protection, but, if one of the kids saw what they thought might be something for them, sitting in a soaked cardboard box... perish the thought. 

On a side note, it would be interesting to throw a carton of Megamax's into the pool and see what happens as they quadruple in size... I see a YouTube sensation brewing. 

[oznl]

I accidentally spent 24 hours in the same nappy this weekend.  This will require some explanation.  It’s not your everyday kind of oversight.

I’d spent Friday working outdoors in high heat and humidity.  The wettest garment I was wearing was my t-shirt.  My Abena L4 had largely disintegrated inside my plastic pants over the course of the day more due to the physical activity and sweat rather than pee.  I suspect I’d used it a bit here and there but not to any great extent.

That evening we were to go out to a friend’s place for a few beers and dinner.  This friend has the good fortune to live only 500 meters from our house so there’s no need to negotiate designated drivers, we simply walk there.  At around 6:30pm I showered and changed.  I’d decided that a Rearz Elite Hybrid (aka “Barry”) might be my weapon of choice.  Thin enough to be discrete, it might also cope with a few beers and still have capacity to perform the overnight shift, saving me from embarrassing nappy changes in front of a still-awake beloved.

By 7pm, I was into my first 8.8% imperial IPA and cheese.

As is usually the case with these friends, we partied on long into the night at it was 1am by the time I was back home.  Oddly, my nappy seemed dry and I had no clear recollection of using it.  This doesn’t automatically mean that I did NOT use it these days.  Sometimes I can forget.  I was still hot though.  If it WAS wet, it was so minor that there was zero question that it could deal with the rest-of-the-night shift.

Partially disrobing, I ditched the compression pant and Gary waterproofs, pulling on a puffy terry-lined pair of Babykins plastic pants whilst my beloved lay in the adjacent bed staring fixedly at the ceiling.  We went to bed with the AC running.  Oddly, I didn’t feel ANY need to pee at all so I didn’t bother and as far as I know, fell asleep dry.  I assumed that things would most likely take care of themselves overnight and I’d find myself wet upon waking.

The next morning, this didn’t seem to be the case.  I SEEMED fairly dry.  I might have a bit sweaty down there inside Barry but it was hard to tell.  I could tell I needed to pee a little.  It was a bit unusual, a faint rusty signal from my bladder that I’d not heard in a long time.

For some reason, it was HARD to pee though.  It was like my body really didn’t want to.  Eventually, an anaemic dribble appeared but it hardly seemed worth the effort and felt like battery acid going into my nappy.  I estimated at that point, it had been 14 hours since I could last actually remember wetting.

It was so little, I decided that a morning change would be a waste of a perfectly good Barry.  Instead, I peeled off my terry-lined waterproofs, pulled on some Gary waterproofs and a compression pant over my “night” nappy and went about my day.

Presumably, I was eventually wetting myself here and there but these days those events are quite unmemorable and I swiftly lost track about how my nappy was holding up.

By afternoon, I was aware that I was a bit “saggy” down there (especially for a Barry) and an hour or two after that, I felt the first hints of cool wetness appearing at my plastic pant leggings: press-out leaks.  I also wasn’t that comfortable, VERY aware that by now I’d been marinating in the same nappy for nearly 24 hours, was close to leaking and I worried that it might be starting to smell.  It’s not often that my nappy annoys me but this one was starting to.

It was nearly time for a change anyway.  I decided to bring forward events by 45m or so and headed to the shower at around 5:30pm.

As I pulled down my plastic pants, I saw immediately that Barry was carrying a full load: swollen and a suspiciously dark shade of yellow.  As I peeled the tapes, it fell off me, landing on the floor with a dull “thud” and immediately, the strong smell of ammonia struck me.  The interior of my nappy was almost tan coloured.  I’d peed alright but the colour suggested significant dehydration.

I’m wondering if I HAD actually wet myself at some point either the previous evening or overnight but not enough for it to be obvious.  Barry smelled just like a nappy that had been wet a LONG time.   I could also feel the faint “sunburn” sensations from my nappy zone hinting at imminent nappy rash. 

I thanked it for its service and swiftly binned it.  A burial might have been a better idea.

I still intend to try a 24 hour shift in a nappy but using a product designed for just that.  Whilst the Tykables “Camelots” are still (according to the proprietor of Littles Downunder), sitting on a foreign dock waiting for a shipping container to Australia to become available (a very COVID-times thing it seems), he does have Rearz “Mermaid Tales” available which advertise a similar capacity.  I just need to figure out if I should go for “Large” or “Extra Large” as the sizing guides seem quite confusing.  Barry in the “Large” seems fine to me so that’s probably what I’ll do.

Any "real world" battle experience feedback on the suitability of "Mermaid Tales" for a 24 hour shift appreciated.

I’ll have to keep the “Mermaid Tales” VERY well-hidden.  “Meilani” (Pink Tail/Pronouns she/her) and “Sam” (green tail/Pronouns they/them) as they are described by the Rearz website are likely to be the stuff from which spousal lawyer’s letters are wrought.