24/7 startups, and unexpected pitfalls?

[Little Sherri]

Well, I'm back. Thanks to everyone in the US for their hospitality over their Thanksgiving weekend. A great time was had. There were a couple of developments, which I will have to delve into more later, because I'm pressed for time right now as I'm playing catchup on all the work I missed while I was away. 

First, I managed to once again get waived through the metal detector on the return trip, so I did not have my diaper spotted on a scanner. The person three or four spots ahead of me in line went through the scanner, and then they took it out of service because it needed calibrating, apparently. I do seem to be perennially lucky when it comes to this. That, or the scanners are made by Alfa Romeo. 

There was one extremely momentous development, which was thrust upon me by circumstance. I was staying with a very good, lifelong friend of mine, and his family, in a house they'd just moved into, and they were operating on minimal infrastructure in the trash department... you can see where this is going. They were in the midst of renovations and were using the kitchen trash can for everything. On top of which, my friend is very environmentally conscious, while his kids and his contractors sometimes are not, so, he complained loudly and removed recyclables from the trash bag a couple of times a day. He has a son who wears pull-ups to bed, and his pull-up bin comprised the only other functioning garbage container in the house, but it was tiny, and lived in his bedroom, so my jamming an adult diaper into it a couple of times a day would not have gone unnoticed. 

His outdoor trash container was being used to dispose of broken up trim pieces and such, bristling with brad nails, so the bagged trash was not being thrown into it. I resorted a couple of times to making a James Bond-worthy excursion to the garage in order to sneak diapers into already tied-up bags of rubbish, but my opening the garage door caused their alarm system to beep loudly, which then caused either him or his wife to inquire as to if one of the kids had gone into the garage. 

I had no car and was miles from the nearest public trash can. I was out of options, short of burying diapers in their garden by moonlight (which their dog would probably have dug up), so, reluctantly, and with a great deal of trepidation, I considered the option of last resort... telling him that he might find something "unexpected" if he continued mining the garbage bags for reusable plastic and paper products. An opportunity presented itself when he asked me, apropos of nothing, about a long-stable but once worrisome health condition, the same one that I leaned into, early on in "this", when I spilled the beans to my wife about living my life in baby knickers. 

I swallowed, took a breath, and said that everything was good, my health was excellent, but.... there was one somewhat inconvenient issue I was dealing with. And then I said it. 

Specifically, I said that I'd had incidents of bedwetting, and he know of my childhood history in that department, so he immediately said "It's come back, then?", and I said yes, and floated a plausible theory about why. Then I said, don't worry about it, your bedding is not in danger, I'm wearing protection. 

Then, it got interesting... without missing a beat, he said "And during the day as well, eh?" ("Eh?" is a Canadian way of turning a statement you already know the answer to into a question, such as "Cold one out there, eh?") 

"Eh" indeed. I think I stumbled through that moment fairly smoothly, although my mind lit up with questions I couldn't ask him. So, I just said "Yes, yes, it's fine though, not as bad as I thought it would be... getting along fine. So I thought I should just give you a heads up... when I've visited in the past with the dog, or when the kids were younger, of course I always asked about where you wanted their 'disposables' placed... and now I guess I have to ask that question about, er, myself." 

He very politely and considerately put a garbage bag into a lidded bin in the garage that had been used for something else, and from that point forward, nobody asked why the garage door was being opened. On my last day there, I tied up the bag and put it with the other bags.

This is already longer than I'd intended and I have some work to do so I will come back and muse about this more maybe later today or tomorrow. But, one thing to keep in mind if you are developing theories as you read along... this is the same person I visited way back, pre-pandemic, at the dawn of 2020, who's precocious little daughter asked me at the time, apropos of nothing (I'm liking that expression today, eh?), if there "Was any such thing as adult diapers?"

We were sitting at a table with several people, so I could not ask her why she was asking me that, at the time. I just laughed and said, yes, dear, I guess there is. 

That, after I'd deposited a suitcase into their guest room that contained a bag stuffed with... adult diapers. I was known to bring his family gifts from the homeland, and so I'd always suspected that her or her older brothers had gone into by suitcase to see what I'd brought... and found what they found. 

So my friend launching smoothly into "And during the day, eh?", immediately had me leaping to conclusions. That they'd told him, 2+ years ago. That, armed with that knowledge, he'd perhaps noticed things he otherwise might not have... baggy trousers, long shirts, an errant bulge here or there...

[NoIllDL]

@Little SherriI only hope that when my secret comes to light (other than to my spouse, who is in on the secret) that I am able to handle it with such aplomb.  

[oznl]

19 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Then, it got interesting... without missing a beat, he said "And during the day as well, eh?" ("Eh?" is a Canadian way of turning a statement you already know the answer to into a question, such as "Cold one out there, eh?")

I was greatly amused that the same linguistic nuance would have worked perfectly in Australia.

Darting off at a distracting tangent (“Oooh!  Squirrel!), the Macquarie Dictionary of Australia defines “Eh” as an Australian (but particularly Queenslander Australian) term inviting assent (implicitly, to a prior mutually understood fact).

For bonus points in QLD, you can use the full form “Eh but!”  This can be added to the Australian sense of irony to achieve an inversion of meaning for bonus points.

For example, if on Wednesday, it was 28 degrees Celsius and sunny, it would be appropriate to say “Nice day eh?”.

If however, it was 450 degrees Celsius and raining molten lead, it would STILL (paradoxically) be ok (using the ironic inversion) to say “Nice day eh?” or, going for gold, “Nice day eh but?”

Two nations divided by a common language.

Kudos for handling that dead end in the only way possible, what Barry Humphries (google THAT) would call "steering into the skid".

[Little Sherri]

2 hours ago, oznl said:

If however, it was 450 degrees Celsius and raining molten lead, it would STILL (paradoxically) be ok (using the ironic inversion) to say “Nice day eh?” or, going for gold, “Nice day eh but?”

This is exactly what happens here when it's -20 degrees and the snow is coming in sideways at 15 cm per hour. You look out the window and say "Nice day, eh?" We don't have the "but" adder, but now I am going to try and integrate it. Let's see if it goes viral. 

We have a very similar self-cancelling turn of phrase in "yeah, no" or "no, right?", meaning "obviously", essentially, but to an outsider, it sounds like you are disagreeing. 

I guess I did steer into the skid. I can't believe that after traveling the world, and even sharing hotel rooms with mates, the wall I ran into was an absence of garbage disposal options in a giant house my buddy was rebuilding. I had my choice of 5 washrooms, but the only place to put rubbish was a bag tied to a cabinet in the kitchen, that was subject to repeated inspections. Luckily, the person I revealed this to is a very good friend, more like a brother, really, and I also get on spectacularly with his wife, who, I'm sure, also knows I wear diapers now. It was interesting being there and wearing diapers and knowing that people (outside of my immediate family) knew about it, and, everything was otherwise normal. We still drank great wine and beer, we still talked about renovations, and cars, and family life, etc. I still took the same care with how I dressed - even though his kids might in theory "know" something, I wasn't about to get lazy regarding being discrete. 

[Babygeebee]

4 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

We have a very similar self-cancelling turn of phrase in "yeah, no" or "no, right?", meaning "obviously", essentially, but to an outsider, it sounds like you are disagreeing.  

There is also the way we Canadians say no. As in "yes, but... ". 

[Little Sherri]

Another day, another diaper... I once again find myself sitting in my office in a diaper and a golf shirt, solving the world's problems. I ended up spending an unusual amount of time running around the house last night, thusly-clad. Elder daughter remains away at school, and younger daughter went to bed early, because she was tired, leaving my wife and I with the house to ourselves by about 9:00 PM. As is my usual practice, off came the afternoon's diaper, on went the evening diaper (Bambino Skooldoodle, still in it), I pulled on a sweatshirt, and settled in to do some month-end stuff on my computer while on our bed, while my wife watched a show and knitted. 

Then, she asked me to go look at some books she'd unearthed while organizing boxes and a bookshelf in the living room, so I got up and went down with her... and then we ended up chatting and organizing, putting books on shelves and designating some of them for donation, some to be given to a particular person, and some keepers. We were down there for a couple of hours, and it was totally "normal", her in her pajamas, and me in mind... which in my case means a top, and a diaper, and slippers. Then, we headed up to bed, watched part of a show, and turned out the lights. Oh, I did have to pull pants on and take the dog out - maybe someday I'll be in a position to do that in just a diaper, too. But not likely in November, unless we live in Florida by then. 

I thought once again about how my doing "this" is "taking back" some of the experiences I had as a kid, that I wished I could have enjoyed, but that were weighted with anxiety and shame. A memory sprang to mind at one point of a moment that evidently stayed with me, when we were all, as a family, making breakfast in the morning, probably on a weekend, and music was playing and my brother, sister and I were unusually cooperative as we went about it, even cleaning as we went - I remember feeling like we had a good assembly line going, and were playing like we were running a restaurant, with her cooking, me cleaning, and my brother running things to the table, and I felt really good, really happy... and then my step-dad, as we were about to sit down to the table that we'd proudly prepared, ordered me to "get out of that diaper", and I had to run off, red-faced, and when I came back, the mood, at least for me, had been broken. 

Last night, the mood was not broken, and I did not "get out of that diaper." 

[jeremy12312]

On 11/30/2022 at 8:40 AM, Little Sherri said:

We have a very similar self-cancelling turn of phrase in "yeah, no" or "no, right?", meaning "obviously", essentially, but to an outsider, it sounds like you are disagreeing. 

Ha.  I was just going to bring up Midwestern US dialect of:

• No, yeah = yes
• Yeah, no = no
• Yeah, no for sure = definitely

[BabyJilly_S]

"And during the day as well, eh?" would have very much worked here England too the same as "And during the day as well, yes?", unsurprising I guess considering our shared past...

[Little Sherri]

I've been experiencing an interesting new development in the diaper dreams category... I've dreamt a could of times that I'd wet myself, but then when I woke up and felt around a bit down there, it doesn't seem to have been the case. Which is the opposite of what usually happens; usually, when I dream I'm wetting my diaper (or peeing in a bush or whatever), I'm wetting in real life. Conversely, I woke up a couple of times in a wet diaper, not having dreamt anything. The unconscious mind is a strange thing. 

Also, I have had two dreams in the last two weeks or so in which I had the thought that "I'm wearing a diaper so I might as well just go..." - as in, #2. And both times, lights came on in the executive suites and I cried "No!" across the shop floor. I did not, as far as I can tell, even come close to doing it, but I'm a little spooked now because of my earlier experiences. I definitely don't want bedwetting to bleed over into bed-messing. That would be deeply inconvenient. 

I had a moment this afternoon where I wanted better clothing, as well; my wife texted me and asked if I'd come over to the kitchen for a moment, to discuss some blinds she wants us to buy, and I answered, sure, no problem, be right over. I was wearing a sweater and a diaper at the time, a Critter Caboose, which is not a small diaper, but I had my backup trackpants, which I pulled on and then quickly sauntered over... only to realize that she had a lady in there with her, who was showing her samples of blinds. There I was, in a big puffy diaper, poorly hidden under light track pants, crunch-crunch-crunching into the room... I stood behind the island and nodded and agreed and waited for them to start talking about if the blinds should be motorized ("Oh, you definitely want that...."), and then I made good my escape. My theory is that, if she likes something, it's probably fine with me, and if she doesn't like something, it probably doesn't matter what I think. 

She could have given me a little warning, though... I don't know where that lady hid her car. Normally, a car on the driveway is a sign that people are about, and I should go pull heavier pants on if I want to wear a big plastic diaper. Maybe she teleported in. 

[Little Sherri]

I'm back from my first trip back to the home office in quite a while - I think it's been 3 years. I've done some business travel in that time, visiting clients, but I have not been back to the mothership. I was there for most of the week, enduring meetings and making presentations and going out for dinner and getting ill-advisedly intoxicated in the evenings at restaurants, all the better to make the 7 am group breakfasts painful. 

The hotel we stayed at is huge, and they very conveniently had a public washroom on the floor where the conference rooms are, that has a large lidded trash bin right inside the door. Ergo, I had a place to put diapers, so that I didn't have to leave them stuffed in the smallish rubbish can in my room. When I'm paying for the room myself, I'm less concerned about such things; so long as everything is packed up hygienically, the room attendant needn't face the grim reality of why the trash bag weighs 3.5 lbs everyday, and, I leave a tip to provide silent gratitude. But, when the room is booked by the corporate elves, I always have a slight concern that someone in administration might get a puzzling request that "heavier items not be deposited into room trash bins", something like that. It's unlikely, but that's how my mind works. 

The bin worked flawlessly most of the time, except when I ran into colleagues in the elevator on the way down, while carrying a laptop bag with something the weight and bulk of a dead racoon in it, and I had to beg off and run into the washroom, and then wait out anyone who came with me, in order to have a private moment to "make the drop". 

This trip took me back to the dawn of my 24/7 "career", because the last time I went into the office in person for an extended period of time, I'd only been wearing diapers professionally for maybe 7 months or so, and being clad thusly in those environs and situations was novel. These days, doing most of what I do wearing baby pants is not novel, but I have to say that making presentations and drinking with colleagues afterwards, had that feel again. 

I leaned heavily on my slim "gym diapers" for daytime use, and wore nice plastic ABDL stuff overnight. I'd shopped for a few pairs of oversized work pants some months ago, and at the time I'd worn day-weight plastic diapers, but regrettably, those pants have now become "right-sized", and they didn't look right over a Rearz Lil' Monster or a Northshore Supreme Lite. I generally had the ability to run back to my room during breaks, so a diaper rated for 3 - 4 hours of service would suffice. There were a couple of times while out drinking that I went into the washroom, unsnapped my onesie, and returned some of the beer we were drinking, so that I wouldn't have to worry about changing myself in a restaurant bathroom with coworkers coming in and out. 

One semi-humourous incident occurred - I'd gone to my room mid-day to change, but then ended up looking at some emails on my laptop, after I'd pulled a diaper out of my suitcase and tossed it on top of a towel on the counter in the bathroom in preparation for changing. Then, the room attendant knocked on the door, so I said "come in" from my chair, without thinking about it, and they opened the door and asked if they could do the room. I said it didn't need much, no worries about making up the bed or anything else. She said "Just towels, then?", and I offhandedly said "Sure." So she did that thing where they turn the door latch in and it blocks the door from closing, and she went back to her cart and got some towels, and then she came into the room and went and refreshed the bathroom, and then she left. After the door closed behind her, I got up and locked it, then turned toward the bathroom... and saw my new diaper, folded neatly, on the counter, NEXT to the folded towel that it had been on top of. There is no question that she moved it, the only question is if she knew what it was or not. Ah, well. I'm sure she's seen worse. A friend of mine who's worked in hotels for 30 years and risen through the ranks to upper management has told me many stories.... adult toys, every conceivable biohazard, dead people... it's like working in a hospital, really. So a clean, folded diaper probably doesn't move the shock needle, I'm assuming. 

My bedwetting ticked up notably, but with this caveat: I woke up on two of the four nights I was there, already in the act of wetting. On the third night, I just woke up wet when my alarm went off, and on the fourth night, I woke up needing to pee in the wee hours, and did so. It was easy to confirm that wettings took place overnight because for the most part I was putting my overnight diaper on only an hour or so before going to bed.

I put a nice plastic diaper on under my jeans before I checked out, and chanced seeing anyone I knew as I crossed the lobby to the parking elevators, because I had about a 5 hour drive ahead of me, and I wanted to just relax and put the peddle to the floor. I escaped without an encounter. I even contemplated digging my pacifier out of my suitcase for the drive, it being dark out, but I thought that might increase the likelihood of my falling asleep and waking up suspended upside-down in my rolled-over car, or worse. 

Arriving home, it was nice to be back in a place where everyone knows I wear diapers, and I could go put comfortable pants on and take the dog out and crinkle around as I unpacked and put laundry on. Getting showered and changed for bed and then sitting, watching TV with my wife in just a Rearz Lil' Splash, I felt like me again, and it reinforced how grateful I am to be happy to be home, rather than eagerly anticipating my next business trip, so that I could get a few days "in the saddle" (in the diaper) again. 

[Little Sherri]

I was looking at a Rearz advertisement this weekend for their "Size 7" pacifiers... $82!?! That, down from $89, as they're having a sale. I was astonished. I buy their size 6 ones for like $6 each or something. I tried one size 10, but I found it way, way too large - it was like trying to fall asleep with silicon banana in your mouth. If the size 7's were around the same price as the 6's, I'd probably try them, just on a lark, although the size 6's work fine for me. I like that they're cheap as dirt, because I can own dozens of them and strip them down and clean them every couple of months, and they seem to last forever - even my oldest ones still look new. Making sanitizer by the gallon while brewing helps - I take them all apart and soak them in food-grade sanitizer after a few uses, and I rinse them under hot water and let them dry after every use. 

I'm hanging out in my office right now, in a Rearz Inspire+ "overnight diaper" that I wore overnight but did not get much use out of. Comfy diaper, though, and I won't have to think about this thing until after lunch, in all probability. I have a little heater under my desk to keep my legs warm. Some days, I'm almost living a pants-free existence... I sleep in a diaper, put pants on to walk the dog and walk over to my office. Pants come off and hang on a railing by the stairs. I head back to the house to get lunch, pants go back on for the trip across the driveway. Afternoon in the office... pants off. Typically, there will be a few hours around dinner where we're running errands or my younger daughter is around, when it's pants on, then she goes to bed, and it's pants off again. Last week when she didn't feel well, due to a cold that I now have (not Covid, I tested), she went to bed one night at like 8 PM, and I believe I spent 20 hours out of 24 just in a diaper below the waist. 

I'm not sure why that mode of operation is so compelling to me; maybe it's because I didn't dress like that very often as a kid? I tended to sleep in just a diaper in the summer, but very rarely left my room like that, because my brother and sister were always around. There was the odd Saturday morning where I'd watch cartoons like that, but not frequently. I can't really remember my state of mind back then - we're talking decades ago - but, I suspect that I liked the feeling of being in just a diaper... but didn't like the anxiety it provoked, the fear of ridicule. And that was long before kids all had high-definition cameras with them constantly. NOW, I'd imagine I'd have been terrified to appear dressed (or undressed) thusly, and risked becoming part of my sister's Instagram feed or whatever. I've had to be careful when my wife is Facetiming her parents, not to waltz across the background in a big printed diaper, lest either of them has strokes in response. 

[oznl]

15 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I was looking at a Rearz advertisement this weekend for their "Size 7" pacifiers... $82!?! That, down from $89, as they're having a sale.

Uh, wait a minute…  That’s CAD82 for a crate of them or something right?  Surely not just ONE pacifier (unless it’s got some amazing feature such as infinitely dispensing 8.8% iipa to the wearer in which case, I’m breaking another social taboo and buying myself a pacifier).

Or are they amortising the injection molding setup costs over a production run of "several" or something?

15 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I'm not sure why that mode of operation is so compelling to me; maybe it's because I didn't dress like that very often as a kid? I tended to sleep in just a diaper in the summer, but very rarely left my room like that, because my brother and sister were always around. There was the odd Saturday morning where I'd watch cartoons like that, but not frequently. I can't really remember my state of mind back then - we're talking decades ago - but, I suspect that I liked the feeling of being in just a diaper... but didn't like the anxiety it provoked, the fear of ridicule. And that was long before kids all had high-definition cameras with them constantly. NOW, I'd imagine I'd have been terrified to appear dressed (or undressed) thusly, and risked becoming part of my sister's Instagram feed or whatever.

Yep, I also find some kind of weird hedonism in just going about the house doing my thing but only in a t-shirt, a nappy, and nothing else.  The trouble is that we’re in the midst of a post-pandemic e-Christmas shopping bonanza and right now, a courier is at the door every 90 seconds…

[Little Sherri]

Well, it's amateur night up here in the frozen North, apparently. Now, it's not entirely my fault, because I am stoned on cold medication (not Covid, checked that), but, apparently this afternoon during a series of meetings, I tucked my shirt into the front of my diaper at some point. I realized midway through hour 2 of a 4 hour marathon that dampness was wicking up my tummy, and a cursory feel around, conducted so as not to be visible in the Teams meeting, confirmed that, yup, my shirt was wet for some reason. When we had a quick break, I was able to go off camera and figure out that I'd tucked my golf shirt, and my undershirt, into my diaper. This normally would have been prevented by the fact I usually work in just a diaper, below the desk, but today, my wife was expecting someone to come by and buy something she was selling, and there was the off chance that I might have to get up and go assist them, so if I was called upon to stand up in the meeting, I wanted to not have to knee-walk off camera before rising to my full height. A onesie also would have helped, but I only really wear those when I'm going out. 

What sucks about this development is, our laundry machine has packed it in, so right now, anything that gets pee on it is sitting in laundry bags and allowing fermentation to take its course. So I'm trying to avoid that outcome as much as possible.  

[Little Sherri]

I have a contractor working on the house who is using my garage to make cuts, because of the frozen precipitation coating everything in ice outside. We're supposed to then see 15 - 20 cm of snow (~8 inches). The media has been on about it for two days, so I am expecting to see the four horseman of the apocalypse come down my street at some point. Come on, people - this is Canada. This should not be a big deal. 

The funny thing is, and I believe that other Canadians will back me up on this, the first snow event of the season is always a complete sh*t show on the roads, with cars spun out all over the place. Then, we get the same amount of snow a week later, and... it's mostly fine. Everyone has adjusted. Darwinism has weeded out those without winter tires. BUT, then, if we get a few week stretch with no snow, and then it snows again... we're starting over. Cue the claxons, hug your loved ones, and brace for death, we're getting another 5 inches overnight. 

I'm vexed because I have pants on, is what's going on. I shouldn't complain, I'm still diapered, I'm living the dream. But last week was taken up with in-person meetings at a hotel (ergo, pants were mandatory), and this week I was supposed to be able to go back to my normal operating mode of mostly just wearing a diaper down below. 

This marks a sort of anniversary for me, I guess - it was around now, or, actually, just toward the end of November, two years ago, that I threw out the last of my big boy underwear. I hadn't worn them for maybe 18 months prior to that, but they'd lived in a bag on a shelf in my garage, behind my winter tires, which is probably why this topic just occurred to me. I'd taken down the winters in October, but had delayed putting the summer rubber up on the shelf, and I was straightening the garage... and, on impulse, I tossed the bag of underwear. It's now been two years since I even had any in the house. 

Which should be cause for gratitude. I believe that I have now eclipsed the length of time that I spent 24/7 the first time around, which was, legend suggests, about the first three years of my life. I was 12/7 for another 6 or 7 years after that, more or less - half the time in diapers, half the time, not. My diaper usually came off almost as soon as I got up, on school days, so let's say 7 AM, and, my diaper usually went on more or less after dinner on school nights - probably around 7 PM. My parents liked to have us kids bathed and dressed for bed before the hour or so of television we were permitted after dinner began. 

That transition was an interesting demarcation point within my day, more so at night than in the morning, in terms of its psychological weight. In the morning, it was self-directed - tabs torn off, diaper in the trash, underwear goes up, and away we go. I had rejoined my cohort. I sat at the breakfast table with my similarly-dressed younger brother and older sister. 

The evenings were different. I took my bath or shower after dinner, dried off, pulled out my pajamas, often pulled the shirt portion on, and then I would open my bedroom door and summon a parental figure. They'd come into the room, pull a diaper from the box on the floor in my closet, and I'd lie down on the floor or on the bed, fold-rip-tuck-stick, and then I was up and pulling on my pajama pants 30 seconds later (unless it was hot out - we didn't have A/C back then, so I tended to sleep in just a diaper). Then, I would head to the living room to join my siblings on the couch... but now, I was the different one. The bulk, warmth, and the very quiet crinkling when I shifted about, served to tap me on the shoulder and whisper, "you're wearing a diaper." My brother or sister might jump up during a commercial and run to the washroom. I did not. For the next 12 hours, I had rejoined a rank from which they'd been promoted, little kid, toddler, baby. 

But at the same time, as I've mentioned before, I had a love-hate relationship with that time of day when my "rank" changed. Although I couldn't articulate it at the time, I didn't mind wearing diapers. I couldn't say that, but, I could live it. I just didn't like all the other feelings that came along with it... shame, embarrassment, the resignation I felt I could detect in my parents' loving but slightly-exasperated, semi-automatic motions as I was put "back" into baby pants. The feeling as I descended the staircase in my plastic underpants that my siblings knew I'd been demoted for the evening. 

Which is part of the reason why I eliminated that transition from my life. That, and the ennui that I used to start feeling, as an adult, as soon as I put a diaper on... the understanding that I felt so right with myself, and that, the feeling must end, the diaper must come off. I've eliminated that from my life, as well!

[Babygeebee]

5 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

The funny thing is, and I believe that other Canadians will back me up on this, the first snow event of the season is always a complete sh*t show on the roads, with cars spun out all over the place. Then, we get the same amount of snow a week later, and... it's mostly fine

That is certainly my experience here in Alberta. In October the roads/drivers are nuts. By the time Christmas rolls around everyone is an expert again. 

[oznl]

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

The funny thing is, and I believe that other Canadians will back me up on this, the first snow event of the season is always a complete sh*t show on the roads, with cars spun out all over the place.

Lacking snowfall at 26 degrees latitude, we do this with rainfall instead.  Here in Queensland we have a distinct dry/sunny season over what we call "winter" with most rain appearing with storms and occasional monsoonal events between October and May.  The first decent wet day generally means a Darwinian demolition derby on our roads.

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Then, I would head to the living room to join my siblings on the couch... but now, I was the different one. The bulk, warmth, and the very quiet crinkling when I shifted about, served to tap me on the shoulder and whisper, "you're wearing a diaper." My brother or sister might jump up during a commercial and run to the washroom. I did not. For the next 12 hours, I had rejoined a rank from which they'd been promoted, little kid, toddler, baby.

This intrigued me.  My own, direct lived experience was quite different.  As the first child, I was toilet trained very, very early: shamed out of nappies by 20 months of age – I suspect something that’s left me where I am today.

I suspect another part of my puzzle is that every other sibling remained an inveterate bedwetter until at least 7 or 8 and were kept diapered at night.  They HAD something that had been taken from me.

Like yourself, the prevailing parental strategy, wrought from convenience was to diaper them no long after dinner and like yourself, I never noticed ANY of them express any interest in a bathroom break after that. 

Did you have to “go” between at some point between being diapered and going to bed and if so, what went through your head?

How come your parents did not anticipate this?

On an operational basis, how did a 1980s disposable diaper cope with a dusk-to-dawn shift?

My own siblings were placed into pinned terry cloth and plastic pants – a combination I know from personal experience is effortlessly capable of a 12 hour shift but my personal experience also tells me that a disposable requires modern ABDL engineering to duplicate that feat.

[Little Sherri]

15 hours ago, oznl said:

Like yourself, the prevailing parental strategy, wrought from convenience was to diaper them no long after dinner and like yourself, I never noticed ANY of them express any interest in a bathroom break after that. 

Did you have to “go” between at some point between being diapered and going to bed and if so, what went through your head?

I've mused on this phenomenon before; I don't have any concrete memories of specific moments. It's almost like trying to remember a time when you brushed your teeth when you were 7. Presumably it happened at least 730 times that year, but, can I summon anything? Generally speaking, though, I remember an overarching impression that once I had a diaper on, other than brushing my teeth, I didn't have much use for the bathroom. Part of that was the one-and-done nature of diapers back then - the tabs were not repositionable, without potentially tearing the cover, until later in time. 

I was definitely encouraged to "go" before getting dressed for bed, and my parents tended to police my liquid intake after dinner for obvious reasons, so I probably didn't have a lot of instances where I used my nappy "deliberately" before going to bed, but I'm sure it happened. I do recall doing it consciously in the middle of the night on occasion, first, because I had anxiety about going into the dark hallway for some reason, and, second, because for a time, my parents used to lock us in our bedroom, due to my brother's tendency to sleepwalk, and a couple of attempts he made in the middle of the night to escape from the house. 

There was a pivot point in my bedwetting career, after my brother's jailbreaking tendencies declined, where I was specifically told that it was okay to NOT use my diaper, that I was "allowed", indeed, encouraged, to get up and pull the front of it down and use the toilet in the middle of the night if I needed to. I recall that, because I remember getting up after we were put to bed, and being excited that I could open the bedroom door whenever I wanted to. It was a new privilege, and it felt like getting a drivers license or something. My God, I could go to the kitchen and get milk at 2 AM? 

16 hours ago, oznl said:

On an operational basis, how did a 1980s disposable diaper cope with a dusk-to-dawn shift?

This became an issue, as far as I recall, only later on in my "career", when I had really outgrown them, and my parents were employing Scotch tape because the tabs were barely making it to the front panel. I think, again, this is due to my having my beverage intake curtailed after dinner (while my siblings quaffed with abandon), and the daily entreaties to "Try one more time" before my diaper went on. I suspect the interplay between the capacity of large toddler disposables, relative to the bladder size of a school-aged child, may have inadvertently served to keep me in diapers longer, because as the bedwetting started to taper off, I'd sometimes go for days where I'd wake up dry, but then, when I did wet, the diaper would often leak, and the exception proved the rule, so to speak - dry nights didn't tend to make headlines, but me descending the staircase with a handful of sheets suggested that we needed to stay the course on my bedtime attire. 

I also recall, on weekends, when I tended to stay in my diaper longer if we weren't heading out someplace, occasionally trying to calculate if I could chance a pee, while I was riveted by Saturday morning cartoons, the better to not miss any of the action (pausing TV at that time being the technological equivalent of establishing a base on Mars). Again, this was later in my "career", when I'd become aware of the reality that I liked wearing a diaper, and I started trying to get away with staying in them in the mornings. So, I'd run to the washroom and pee, because a wet spot on my pajamas or on the couch received very negative feedback from the Gods. It was understood that what happened overnight was beyond my control, but if I went and sat on furniture in wet pajamas, that was unforgivable laziness. They never, as far as I know, considered the possibility that I might have knowingly wet myself, or if they did, they didn't say it aloud. 

But, to your point about the dubious absorbency of 1980's disposables, I've spoken before about the Christmas Eve church incident, where we drove for about an hour to meet an aunt and cousins who took religion more seriously than we did, for a midnight mass, and I was wearing the rare combination of dressy clothes, and a diaper, because I was expected to fall asleep in the car and be rushed into bed afterwards. The church was packed, we were in the center of a pew, and I asked my mom if she could take me to the washroom in the middle of the service, so she said, in one of the only instances that I can recall of this occurring, "Use your diaper." So I did. And it leaked at the back of my thighs and I ended up being changed into my pajamas in the washroom of the church at the end of the service. That was an "unregulated release", rather than a predawn "restricted intake" slip. 

 

[Little Sherri]

Well, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and went and taught a short martial arts class at the gym. I got asked to fill in for an instructor who was off, even though I haven't really taught in two years - I was slated for one class last year but then got Covid and had to back out. It was a short recreational class, so not very hard-core, and I was able to instruct and only minimally participate, so I didn't have my usual concerns about ending up grappling with someone and they somehow make tactile contact with my puffy bottom. 

I put on a Rearz onesie and a Prevail gym diaper, and my gi, and I went and I did it, which is good, because if I don't want to continue getting fatter, I need to get back to the physical activity that I used to engage in. This also has a pragmatic aspect to it... I used to feel comfortable wearing "day-weight" plastic diapers under my jeans almost anywhere, but my jeans, at the time, were oversized, whereas now, they're correctly-sized, or even a bit snug, which is causing me to use more and more of my slim diaper stock, and to confine the diapers I like best, good-quality plastic ones, for household use. 

So, if I lose weight, I get to wear better diapers, and use fewer of them. Everybody wins. 

[Little Sherri]

Uncharacteristically, I spent some time yesterday doing chores in "just" a diaper. I always have a diaper on, of course, and often it's just a diaper down below, but, I'm in some kind of shirt 99% of the time. However, our laundry machine broke and we were waiting for a part for it, and the part finally came, so we started a marathon of washing laundry and drying and sorting it, because it had been about two weeks... and I was more or less out of shirts that fit me. I had taken to trying on shirts from the depths of my drawers and then tossing them into a donate pile, or into the laundry, because even the ones that fit were a bit musty from lack of use. 

It was interesting to spend a few hours motoring around the upper floor of my house, emptying and sorting and transferring baskets of laundry, wearing just a diaper (a Bambino Skooldoodle). I don't think that's going to become my new mode of operation, but I guess the novelty of it was attractive, at least to me. Probably less so for my spouse... but, she had help, so I guess she wasn't going to complain. 

Maybe someday complete the necessary landscaping construction and plantings, in order to be able to go work around the pool in a just a diaper, out in the sun. I'm not sure why that idea is so attractive to me - I burn almost immediately in the summer unless I'm slathered up in sunblock, and I almost never go without some kind of shirt on. And, back when I only wore underwear, I was never compelled to work outdoors in just those. But here we are. 

[DiaperboyEddie12]

@Little Sherri what about your kids?  I know you have told us that they know.  
 

 

[Little Sherri]

15 hours ago, DiaperboyEddie12 said:

what about your kids?  

Eldest is away at school, youngest was out at a friend's place. They wouldn't want to see THAT; I'd probably have to pay for therapy for years to erase the images from their minds. 

I've spoken before about the fairly rare interactions between my long-suffering spouse, and my diaper collection. The "rarity" component has been on the decline of late, as she's taken to treating them like any other aspect of our household supplies. Case in point: last night, I came into our bedroom to discover her, and my daughter, experimenting with vacuum-sealable clothing bags that they purchased, in pursuit of being able to pack more things into suitcases for the beach trip we're taking after Christmas. My wife loves gadgets. 

Her: "Oh good, you're here. Get me some of your diapers."

Me: "Hmmm.... why?"

Her: "I want to see how much they compress in the vacuum bags. How many do you think you'll need for the trip? Two per day? Three?"

I hadn't given it a lot of thought, and I'm still not entirely sure. I'll be spending good parts of the day on the beach or by the pool, but there will also be outfit changes, for dinner, nightlife, etc... I spitballed 21 diapers, 3 X per day, with one of them being a bigger plastic overnight diaper, and two being slimmer daytime diapers, one plastic, one cloth-backed. 

So she asked me to give her 21 diapers. I basically emptied my diaper drawer onto our bed, and she began putting them into the vacuum bags. At first, she tried compressing them flat, and to her credit, the bags did reducer their volume a bit. But, she wasn't satisfied with the result, so then she tried to roll the bags up, to get more air out of them. That would probably have worked with cloth diapers, but rectangular disposables that were already pretty tightly packaged when they were manufactured... no.

I had to call a halt to the experiment, after she mangled a couple of Northshore Supreme Lite's and Rearz Active Air's by rolling them into into tubes the size of paper towel rolls, roughly. It won't matter what size the diapers compressed down to, if I have to throw them out when we get there. 

It was interesting, though, to have a stack of my diapers on the bed with the bathing suits and the summer clothes, while packing up for a family trip... it felt strangely "normal". My diapers are now part of the routine. The whole scene harkened back to my childhood, and the box of Pampers that went into the back of the station wagon with the suitcases whenever we went on a road trip or went up to the cottage. "Suitcases.... check. Dog food.... check... shoes, books, cooler full of drinks, diapers, check, check, check, check." 

[Little Sherri]

My brother reminded me with an offhand remark of someone who's plight, I believe, informed at least some of my emotional landscape as a kid. We were discussing a case that's in the papers where the local Child Services department got called on the carpet during a government audit for a case where a kid was left in abusive circumstances despite warning signs, and the police eventually became involved. One of the things referred to in the case was the kid, who was 10, sometimes coming to school in pull-ups, and, he ended up suffering a major UTI that spread to his kidneys and left him in a catatonic state. When the cops went to the apartment where he lived, they found squaller, including soiled pull-ups all over the place. The kid was put into another foster placement and now seems to be doing fine.

In the process of discussing the case, my brother asked me if I remembered Nick Paul. Nick Paul was a kid we went to school with, who was in my class in maybe grade 1 -3. Here's the thing - Nick Paul was playing in the schoolyard and he bent over and someone said that he had a diaper on. Another kid then tried to pants him, which was prevented by other kids, but not before his pants got hauled partway down, which appeared to suggest that he had a diaper on under underwear. The kids involved got dragged down to the office and yelled at, and Nick Paul went home, and came back a day or two later. But, from then, onward, until I lost track of him - I'm not sure if he moved away or if we just weren't in the same class anymore - people whispered "Nick Paul wears diapers" behind his back. 

That was during a time when I wore diapers to bed, and, my brother and my sister, both of whom attended the same school I did, knew about it, of course. So, I was terrified of meeting the same fate. The idea of being "outed" generated dramatically outsized anxiety in me. I lived in fear of my brother having a friend over to our house, and deciding to dig through my closet for a toy, for example, because of course there was usually a box of diapers in there. Or, if one of my friends dropped by, I'd leave them standing by the door awkwardly while I streaked upstairs to throw blankets on top of the diaper box. I'd take the bathroom garbage can, if it had a diaper in it, and put it in the bathtub and pull the curtain over it. I'd threaten my brother with violence if he made any wisecracks. My sister I couldn't intimidate, so I'd beg my mom to please, please warn her that she'll be in trouble if she tells anyone. Nick Paul's living example dominated my psyche for a couple of years. So, when my brother asked me if I remembered him, I immediately did - and, when I thought about it, I became fairly sure that I'd never mentioned him here before, so now I am. 

Nick Paul of East York, if you're out there, and you're reading this, I'm sorry for what happened to you. I didn't really participate, but I didn't throw you a lifeline, either - I was just glad it was someone else. I hope you turned out okay. If I could go back, I'd like to think I'd stand next to you, rather than gawk from the sidelines. 

[Little Sherri]

Merry Christmas everyone. This will be a quick post because I have to start cleaning up in preparation for guests coming later, but I wanted to say how much I have appreciated everyone's observations, advice, and mostly kind words this year - you've all been a tremendous source of support and occasional inspiration. 

I also waned to note how nice it's been to wear the goofy Homer Simpson pajamas that my kids bought be while we unwrapped presents and ate breakfast, without worrying about if anyone could see the outline of my diaper. It was very relaxing and normal. I hardly thought about wearing a diaper at all, which is as it should be - I just enjoyed my morning. 

Take care, everyone, and the best of the holidays to you. 

[Vulpix77]

Merry Christmas Sherri! Thanks for sharing your stories this year, reading your experiences has been really insightful this past year!

[FretaBWet]

Merry Christmas @Little Sherri! You are inspirational for many of us here.

Hugs,

Freta