24/7 startups, and unexpected pitfalls?

[Little Sherri]

I'm not sure if it was my recent travel, or "the change", or the fact that our puppy remains a puppy, or, having our eldest back from school, now used to autonomy and managing her own affairs, and hence chaffing against once again being under our actual roof, rather than just our financial umbrella, but, whatever it is, my wife has been in a vile mood for most of the week.

I'm a long-fuse, big-bang kind of person; I really let a lot of stuff roll off my back, I don't like fights, but, I can only be pushed so far, before I say, okay, if it's the grievance airing hour, let me know when it's my turn, and, you might want to buckle up. 

I try to take solace in the fact that get to wear decadently comfortable big plastic diapers for most of it. Although I will restate again that while diaper rash and an excess of laundry and carrying a diaper bag everywhere and having a corner of my basement taken up by boxes, and the associated expenditure, are all on the list of putting-yourself-back-in-diapers downsides, the number 1 entry on that list is trying to have a serious conversation with someone, while clad in an absurd diaper and a t-shirt, something that happens to me with some frequency, because often the time that her and my schedules overlap are also the times when we're getting ready for bed. 

While we're listing off grievances, I'll add that she loves to toss a conversational grenade at me at such times, and then say that it's too late in the evening to discuss it, because she needs to wind down or she won't be able to sleep. 

"You have too much beer making equipment in the garage."

"Three quarters of the garage is currently taken up with old furniture that you said you were going to sell, but you haven't done anything in that direction. At least I use my brewing stuff."

"I do not wish to discuss this right now or I'll get upset and won't be able to sleep." 

Sigh.

I'm in a Rearz Inspire+ right now, enjoying it's cloud-like embrace while waiting for it to fail. These diapers theoretically hold a lot, but their common failure mode veers towards "catastrophic", which makes them somewhat inconvenient. It would be akin to if your car could tow 1000 lbs, but if you try to tow 1100 lbs, the engine drops out. And, you don't have a scale. You'd probably tend to avoid towing with it. 

Thus, this lovely diaper will expand and comfort me until such time as it decides not to, and then, a garden hose of high-pressure liquid will shoot directly down my thigh. Something like that. But, in the meantime, I'll pace around my office in just my big white diaper, solving the world's problems. 

[Little Sherri]

I had a weird diaper dream last night... not that there's really a "run of the mill" diaper dream, but this one was interesting. I wore a Bambino Skooldoodles to bed last night (I always misspell that, feel free to correct me, I'm tired of Googling it...), went to bed mildly inebriated - I'd had a few high-octane IPA's, but, spaced out over a few hours. In my dream, I kept feeling pressure in my intestinal tract, and I was saying the following to myself: "Just aim to keep your pelvic floor open and relaxed..." - it was like I'd bought one of those subliminal "incontinence training" CD's or something, which, again, is interesting, because I've never owned or even listened to one of them, but my mind had a script for what they probably emphasize. I may be totally off-base, but apparently my subconscious thinks it already knows what would be on one of those recording. 

So, I'm lying there in bed, in a semi-conscious state, saying to myself "just keep your pelvic floor relaxed, it's fine, whatever happens, happens, you're wearing a top-tier diaper....", and I can feel myself periodically wetting in small amounts, which rings true - that may have been happening. Then, every once in a while, I'd experience a notable incidence of flatulence, which I was totally leaning into - just be open, just be relaxed, right? That went on for a good while, and finally, I drifted close enough to consciousness to recognize that I'd been farting a lot, and, to look at the clock... it was about 6:30 in the morning, and, my wife wasn't in bed with me... oh, right, she'd stayed overnight with one of my daughters at a friend's place. Interesting that that wasn't part of the dream... but anyway, fart with impunity, good sir, only the dog is there to witness your corpulence... I drifted off again (I think), and then, I woke up suddenly, and it was 8 AM, and the only way to explain what was happening is that I was crowning - I was just about to fill my diaper. I'd eaten a "Southern Barbecue Heat" wrap at a restaurant the night before, and it was about to revisit me. 

The ephemeral dream-silk that was draped over the moment evaporated in an instant, and I jumped out of bed, startling the dog, and sprinted for the bathroom, and the delivery was instant, and occurred as it usually does, IE, not in my plastic underpants. 

Once again, I sat there marveling at the fact that somewhere within my subconscious there exists a prankster which I cannot trust, who wants me to poop my diaper while I'm sleeping. 

[Little Sherri]

It's nice not to require emergency pants anymore. Not that it would be unwise for anyone who wears diapers professionally to carry backup pants with them, although I don't often do that these days. But what I'm referring to as "emergency pants" is the pair of pants (or shorts) that I used to always have at the ready beside my bed, in case the smoke alarm goes of or the dog starts throwing up in the middle of the night. 

The dog actually did start throwing up in the middle of  last night, bless his furry little heart, and I did have to jump up out of bed to get him off of his bed and over to tiles, where whatever he returned to sender would be easy to clean up. However, I no longer sleep with backup shorts or pants at the ready, because it's not necessary. If I need to run down to the kitchen and grab the disinfectant cleaner, I can do that in whatever I'm wearing, which usually means a diaper and a t-shirt. Word to the wise - don't let your dangling pacifier land in the mess when you bend down to clean it up. However, I can't chew gum in the bathroom, and I can't keep a soother in my mouth while I'm smelling dog barf, so I usually detach the rig and throw it on my bedside table, if I remember to do so, or else I drop it down the front of my shirt. 

Last night's episode reminded me, though, of how much risk I was willing to take, when I'd just committed to putting myself back in diapers permanently (whatever that meant or continues to mean... all I know is that today, I'll wear diapers, and tomorrow, it seems likely as well...). I used to alternate between wearing a quiet diaper under shorts or heavy track pants, and just sliding into bed in them next to my wife, and then extracting the shorts or pants once the lights went off, but keeping close at hand. Or, I'd wait until she fell asleep, and then get up and put on a plastic diaper, and tiptoe like a burglar back to bed, again, with emergency backup pants within my immediate grasp. I'd been wearing diapers to bed by that point for a while, but I generally had underwear on, otherwise, so I could drop my trousers and go brush my teeth or whatever, in boxer shorts. But, once I started changing my diaper, rather than changing into diapers, at bedtime, it became a more covert process - there was no "cover story" available via waltzing  around in boxers anymore. 

All of which is to say that while it definitely got my heartrate up, and it could be a bit of a thrill wearing "secret underpants", I much prefer the way things are now, where I'm up in my office in a diaper and a golf shirt, and my backup shorts are at the bottom of the stairs, because they're only for sparing the neighbours any potential PTSD, if I have to walk outside. 

I don't plan to ever actively "reveal" my diapered status to anyone outside of my household, with the exception of my one buddy whom I had to tell because I needed to abuse his garbage stream while staying with him, and, inevitably, some medical professionals. But, I plan to gradually stand down my high security procedures, and just treat my diapers like underwear. I didn't go out of my way to show my friends my underwear, in the before times, and I will not go out of my way to show them my diapers, either, but, neither will I treat them like a nuclear secret. 

An emergency plumbing repair at my buddy's place, discussed here before, which I strongly suspect caused a breach of national security in the diaper department, when I was bent over behind a water softener with both of my hands tied up, seems to have confirmed for me what I had long hoped would be the case, and what some of you have said many times: polite people won't say anything, won't ask, won't act differently, and, for the most part, won't care, as long as you appear to otherwise be in good health. 

So, "backup pants" may always be a good idea, but "emergency pants" may at some point become completely obsolete. 
 

[Little Sherri]

It's been a rare two-compliment day for ABU's Little Kings in my household. It opened with my wife saying "Nice Pampers" while I was brushing my teeth this morning. I didn't have a lot to say, with a mouth full of foam, so "thanks" was about all I could spit out. I don't know if she was being sarcastic or not... statistics suggest there is about a 95% chance she was. Ironically, this Little Kings I'm wearing is supposed to look like a vintage Pampers Cruiser. So, she hit the nail on the head. 

Compliment number two came courtesy of whoever delivers our local bird-cage liner, the newspaper full of fliers that contains very little news. I'm pretty sure the internet also offers lists of what's on sale at the local superstores, but, bigger brains than mine are undoubtedly on this, so, presumably, it somehow still makes sense to harvest trees and pulp them and ship them to printing presses where they are emblazoned with ink, bagged, shipped to some local depot, and then thrown into the ditch in front of my house by a guy driving past at 80 km/h. 

I was trying to retrieve the paper without stepping into the bottom of the ditch, because the ground down there has the consistency of chocolate pudding right now, and I would probably have sank to my shin. In my sandals. So, I straddled the softest part by standing on either side and bent almost dangerously forward to get my hands on the paper. My eldest daughter had walked over with the dog, and I guess as I was leaning precariously down into the ditch, the back of my diaper did a peekaboo over the top of my shorts.

"Nice diaper, Dad." 

"Uh, thanks." 

Hers sounded more genuine. She's been volunteering in a healthcare setting and has actually had some hands-on experience with medical diapers, so maybe she appreciated the whimsey that ABU brings to containment briefs.

[Little Sherri]

Well, it's been a crazy few days around here. My stepdad had some kind of cardiac event; the thought was that it could have been a heart attack, but that appears not to be the case now. BUT, apparently, test results suggest that he may have had a "mild" heart attack a while back, and seemingly brushed it off. I can entirely envision how that might happen - I might not be related to him by blood, but I have similar tendencies to avoid seeking medical attention, with a general reliance on the adage that if you ignore something intently enough, it will go away. 

This has resulted in my temporarily moving into my parents' place, in order to help my mom out, and, to be proximal to the hospital. My sister is now also here and plans to stay intermittently as well. My younger brother, wisely, lives on the other side of the continent. SO, here I am, living at my parents' place with my sister again (kind of), and wearing diapers. It's a bit of a head-trip, really. At 11 PM last night, I was sitting on the couch across from my sister, watching TV, with a diaper on under my pajamas, just like the year was 1986. I assume that, this time, she does not know about the diaper, whereas in 1986, she did. 

I once again had a chance to briefly (pun there) interact with the latest in wearable hospital cost-saving technology, because I believe the had my stepdad in a diaper at one point - there were a couple of them sitting on a side-table in his room. Awful, cream-coloured things about the weight of a 1/4 inch stack of fast food napkins, and capable of absorbing about the same amount of fluid. Part of me wanted to know nothing about it, but part of me wanted to say, "Hey, man, it's not that bad - just relax and get better." But in THOSE things, it probably is "that bad." And in any case, I will not be having THAT conversation with my stepdad, the guy who found my diaper stash when I was 13 and yelled at me about it in front of my family. Sensitivity is not his strong suit. 

A hospital's typically casual approach to preserving people's dignity was on display in the form of those diapers on that side-table in the room; I saw the same thing when my mom was ill last year, and, when I was walking into my stepdad's semi-private room, the guy in the other bed had a new diaper sitting on a chair as well. His was blue for some reason. 

Being a "diaper person", maybe I'd adapt to that and revel in being able to "legitimately" wear them, but, thinking about my perspective from back when I was not a "diaper person", I used to be absolutely mortified if my mom put a new diaper on, say, the bathroom counter, and I stumbled upon it later, and then became terrified about who might have seen it. Or, when I opened the kitchen garbage at my aunt's cottage as a kid, to throw out the the remains of my lunch, only to see the diaper I'd been in earlier balled up and completely uncovered in there, as my cousins milled about. Stuff like that.

So, much as it might not bother me (or it might), I think maybe they should have a protocol where, for patients that are mentally intact anyway, dignity-compromising products are maybe kept in one of the cabinets by the bedside, which never seem to be used for anything, because almost nobody unpacks and hangs up their clothes in a hospital room, just in case doing so could be seen as signaling the Universe that you're in agreement with the trajectory that brought you into the room in the first place. Best to operate out of a duffle bag, and the smaller, the better. Leaving plenty of room for diapers or enema kits or whatever to be tastefully hidden from plain sight when visitors come with flowers and magazines. 

[Three Rivers]

Hope thing go well with you and family, I enjoy reading your stories and the challenges with family and friends at times. Best to you in the upcoming days ahead.

[Little Sherri]

Things are going "okay" with my stepdad. As with taking an old car to a mechanic, anyone of his vintage who spends a few days getting medical tests and imagery conducted will inevitably end up with a list of exciting new findings. None of them really register on the Richter scale. They've had him up and moving around, and he seems to be trucking along pretty well, all things considered, but it's going to be a few days at least until they let him escape. 

Living with my mom & sister continues to be interesting. It's fine, for the most part. I can get back to my house within 20 minutes, so I have some reprieve. I went back last night to retrieve my toothbrush charger, some more clothes, and more diapers, since I'm apparently staying here for a few more days at least. My wife offered to bring me diapers on one of her visits, and I almost took her up on it, just to see what she would have brought, but I needed to check on some things at home, anyway, so I decided to make the trip. Maybe later this week, if I'm still here, and if she's coming this way in any case, I will entertain myself by asking her to bring some diapers. Although if I end up with eight Rearz Alpaca's or something like that, they won't be very useful - I can't bring myself to wear giant, crinkly diapers in a tomb-silent apartment, while hanging out with my sister. 

Condo living has its pluses; having a garbage chute down the hall is convenient for obvious reasons. Also, their balcony, which is on an upper floor, has afforded me a place to go sit. It overlooks a natural area and a neighbourhood, and there are no other buildings of similar height on their side of the building, plus the balcony railings are at waist height - you can probably see where this is going. Yes, one can sit out there and have a beer or a cup of tea in just a diaper, and only the birds will know. Assuming one's sister is asleep. 

[Little Sherri]

I'm normally pretty much a diaper pragmatist; whichever diaper suits the situation is fine with me, and I value performance over aesthetics when performance counts. But tonight, sigh, I want to put on a nice ABDL diaper. I've spent a good part of the day at a hospital, around sad people wearing sad diapers, and I just want to be in something joyful. But, alas, knowing I'd either be at a hospital, or, hanging out at my parents' silent apartment with my mom and my sister, I went with low-key diapers, mostly high-performance, quiet, breathable products like NorthShore's Air Supreme's and InControl's Active Air. I did bring some white, plastic-backed NorthShore Supreme's with me. Maybe I should take a sharpie to the cover and try to draw, what, Mickey Mouse? A mermaid? The Pampers logo? 

I'm definitely being tested by the Universe here. "So you like diapers, eh? Well, here's a day of seeing people shuffle about in awful ones. Enjoy." Despite that, I soldier on. I don't have any other underwear options with me, anyway, and going "commando" to a geriatrics ward just seems fundamentally wrong. 

One of my main adversaries here is boredom. There's not point staying at the hospital much past the dinner hour, because the nurses are changing shifts and trying to get a lot of things done, and the patients are exhausted. Back at the apartment, my sister wants to watch awful TV; I don't mind the renovation stuff, of which there is endless supply, but I draw the line at 90 Day Fiancé; I briefly considered throwing myself off the balcony rather than watching that. So, I'm situated at the island in the kitchen, back to the wall, composing this, while my sister watches a celebrity gift a new kitchen to her housekeeper, and my mom snoozes in her bedroom. It would be great to be in just a nice diaper right now, as I would be at home, but I have a feeling my sister wouldn't agree with that sentiment. I'm going to try to spend a good part of tomorrow evening at home, even if it's just to mow the lawn. 

[oznl]

20 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Living with my mom & sister continues to be interesting. It's fine, for the most part. I can get back to my house within 20 minutes, so I have some reprieve. I went back last night to retrieve my toothbrush charger, some more clothes, and more diapers, since I'm apparently staying here for a few more days at least. My wife offered to bring me diapers on one of her visits, and I almost took her up on it, just to see what she would have brought, but I needed to check on some things at home, anyway, so I decided to make the trip. Maybe later this week, if I'm still here, and if she's coming this way in any case, I will entertain myself by asking her to bring some diapers. Although if I end up with eight Rearz Alpaca's or something like that, they won't be very useful - I can't bring myself to wear giant, crinkly diapers in a tomb-silent apartment, while hanging out with my sister.

Interesting indeed.  I'm wondering just what I'll do when faced with my almost inevitable encounter with the same scenario.

Apart from the commute being 1700km instead of 20 minutes, there are quite a few siblings and probably as a consequence of my own mother’s habit of running her brood in a kind of perpetual emotional “Hunger Games”, relations between siblings range from awkward to outright hostile.

 

[Little Sherri]

I had a very real conversation with my stepdad tonight. He seems to have come to terms with being in diapers, temporarily. There were two horrible beige diapers, a box of "maceratable" wipes, and a bottle of spray no-rinse skin cleanser on his bedside tray next to his dinner. There was no hiding it. Despite having to move the diapers in order to get his dinner closer to him, I said nothing - I wasn't going to rub his nose in it, even though, as many of you know, he certainly rubbed my nose in my diapers, back when I was a kid. 

It was he that brought the topic up. He related to me that after the shift change at night, they didn't have enough staff to safely get him up out of bed and to the toilet, so, the previous night, when he'd needed to go to the bathroom, they'd told him to use his diaper. He had a Foley catheter in, so he was talking about the second of nature's callings, not the first. 

I had to assume that was a terrible moment for him, and also for his nurse, who would then be undoing what had been done, under a large man. He seemed to want to talk about it, although, as much as I talk about diapers here ALL the time, I did not, in that moment, have any questions. I would have been content to let the topic go. But, he offered that it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. I could relate, although I didn't say so. I don't use my diapers for that very often, but, "not very often" isn't the same as "never." The difference being that the, to borrow a term from @oznl, "agricultural" cleanup is mine alone to contend with. Even then, it isn't fun, but, it isn't freighted with much in the way of guilt or humiliation. I can only assume that the nurse did a good job of making the transaction feel professional and detached and par for the course, because he was remarkably nonplussed about the whole thing. The fact that he spoke of it suggests that it wasn't deeply humiliating, which is a mercy. Or, did he want me to say that it was "okay"? Was he asking for absolution, in a manner of speaking? I told him he'd had no choice and that it was wise to do the safe thing and not try to get himself out of bed if they didn't want him to. 

I haven't been diapered by someone else, or had my diaper changed, in a really, really long time. And even the events that I can recall did not involve solids. My parents undoubtedly wiped my arse thousands of times, but mercifully, I have no recollection of that - I'd stopped pooping my pants by the time I started laying down concrete memories. The same could not be said for wetting. 

In my later, clearer memories, I tended to take wet diapers off myself, because I didn't need help with that after I was maybe four or five years old. There was an incident when I was about 7, that I've related here before, where I wet my pants in church on Christmas Eve, at midnight mass, after telling my mom in the middle of the crowded service that I needed to pee, and being told to "just use your diaper", and this memory immediately sprang forth in my mind, because my parents did not often ask me to do that. My diaper failed me and I soaked through my pants, and my mom ended up changing me in the bathroom for perhaps the last time - after that, I think I pretty much always did it myself. It was a standing change, there was nowhere to lie down, and I remember the thick layers of chunky white paint on the old radiator in that church's women's bathroom as I stood beside it, terrified that someone else would come walking through the door, while my mom threaded a diaper up between my legs, and my suit pants lay in a wet heap on the floor. My aunt had gone running to the car to fetch my pajamas. 

In that moment during that service, when my mom said I should wet my diaper, I did not feel guilty, although once it had obviously leaked into my pants, I started feeling embarrassed, and later, when I was essentially the "patient" in that washroom, being tended to by my mom and my aunt, I started to feel a bit humiliated. So, I wonder if it was the same for my stepdad. Being told to use his diaper, he didn't have a choice, so he might not have felt badly about it, but, when it was time for the cleanup, was that hard on him? I hope it wasn't. Maybe that's why I'm wired the way I'm wired, and he's wired the way he is - I'd have deeply internalized such an event, whereas maybe he was able to adopt more of a "When in Rome" attitude. 

So, yeah, that happened. 

[Little Sherri]

Now for some lighter faire... this is extracted from a reply I posted to @Enthusi's 6000 Diaper post, where he noted that someone somewhere has estimated that babies use about 6000 diapers in their "career" before being potty trained. 

Separately, I had intended to try and figure out the math on when I'll have been in diapers longer the second time 'round than the first. I'm 4 years 24/7 as of the end of March, but, while I was out of diapers full-time by around age 3, I wore diapers to bed until I was about 10 and a half, so doing this calculation using time as the measure requires a bit of mental gymnastics... I guess I was getting into a diaper sometime before I went to bed, so let's call that 8 PM most days, and I was getting up and taking my diaper off by about 8 AM most days, so, if we say I was in diapers half the time from age 3 to age 10.5, that's, uh, 7.5 years, divided in half, which is 3.75 years... plus my first 3 years of 24/7 as a baby... ergo, I wore diapers for 6.75 year-equivalents when I was a kid?

Doing that by estimated number of diapers, rather than by time, is interesting... I was using one diaper a night on average once I graduated from wearing them during the day, so if we accept the number 6000 as being realistic for early childhood, and then add 1 per night for 7.5 more years, that's 2737 + 6000, so, 8737 total diapers worn as a kid. I'd throw a few more on there for the times when I wore them in the car on vacations and such, so let's say 8800. 

However, the math on my ongoing 24/7 stint as an adult gets harder, because there are some days where I only use 2 diapers, and some days where I use 4. A lot of days end up as 3 diapers days - one "super-duty" overnight diaper that often takes me from bedtime until noon the next day, then an afternoon diaper that could probably hold more than I give it, but I'll change out of it at around the dinner hour because I'm often out and about and don't want to run the kids around or shop or visit friends while wearing a diaper that's close to expiring, so diaper number 3 comes into the lineup and carries me to bedtime. If I do something sweaty or dirty like cutting the lawn or going to the gym, diaper number 4 might come into the picture, though it would usually be a lower end product only good for a couple of hours. 

Let's say I'm wearing 3 per day on average: 365 X 3 is 1095, X 4.166 (4 years and 2 months) = 4561.77, so let's say 4562 so far, since I've never worn a fraction of a diaper. At that rate, I'll need to have been been 24/7 as an adult for 8.036 years before I eclipse my original term in diapers. 

[Little Sherri]

Well, I haven't posted for a bit, because everything has gone sideways over here. Both my parents are in the hospital. Busy times. I guess this is a test of my unwavering commitment, because if anything is going to euthanize the excitement of wearing unconventional knickers, it would be seeing your elderly parents also wearing those knickers. Yet I soldier on, quietly wearing my diapers. 

Two things happened last night that haven't happened in a while, although as far as I can recall, they didn't coincide. Or maybe they did. The first happening was going to bed in a dry diaper, a gloriously comfortable Critter Caboose, and waking up at 5 am, pretty wet. I don't know if I woke up right after the incident occurred, or if it had happened earlier. I'd had a few beers with a buddy at a pub right before bed, and that always seems to grease the wheels of nocturnal enuresis a bit. It's been weeks since the last time I wet overnight, without waking up at least a bit first, so perhaps this is a sign that the tensions of the last few weeks are finally loosening a bit. 

The second happening was a diaper dream, something that I haven't had happen in quite a while, either. I don't think it related to the above, because in the dream, I didn't use my diaper, as far as I can recall - it wasn't a wetting dream. 

In the dream, I was at a house with a bunch of people I know - some family, some friends, extended family, etc. I couldn't tell you who was there, only that in the dream, I recognized all of them. There might have been a dozen people. They were all sitting on a very large sectional couch - we're talking airport lounge size, or hotel lobby. They seemed to be in the basement of a large house - it felt like something we'd rented, or it did not belong to me, anyway. 

In the dream, it happened to be the case that my bedroom was across the hall from the entrance into the cavernous room where everyone was seated on the enormous couch, watching a large TV. I was making my way from my bedroom to a bathroom down the hall, acutely aware that just behind the door, were a lot of people that I knew. I was wearing just a diaper and a shirt, a strange choice, because I have been in more or less that exact situation before, at cottage rentals, etc, and I always threw at least a pair of shorts on, to traverse the hallways, no matter what time of day it was. But dreams don't have to make sense. They seem to prefer not to. 

Suddenly, people in the room started calling me over, saying that I had to see something that was on the TV, and that if I didn't come in right away, I was going to miss it. I'm not sure what "it" was, but it felt very important in the dream. I was frozen in the hallway just outside the door, because, of course, of what I was wearing. Then, in the dream, I made a decision, and I opened the door and walked into the room. The corner of the couch was only a few steps away from the door, and there was a blanket on the couch, so I entered the room, took a few quick strides, sat down on the corner, and pulled the blanket up over my lower half. Then, I watched whatever they wanted me to watch, which seemed like the conclusion of a sporting event, but, that part remains unclear. Afterwards, people discussed what they'd seen, and then at some point I excused myself, stood up, and exited the room, pulling the door closed behind me. 

I stood in the hall, relieved and exhilarated a the same time - everyone had seen me in a diaper, and nobody seemed to care. The cat was out of the bag, and it seemed very likely that life would just go on. Then, I woke up. 

[oznl]

22 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Well, I haven't posted for a bit, because everything has gone sideways over here.

Awesome: if only from the perspective that my spidey-senses had told me exactly this.

22 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Both my parents are in the hospital. Busy times.

Once again, you are tracking out in front of me.  I'm not entirely sure what I should do in your circumstances but I'm only too aware that I will find myself there soon enough!

Hope it all works out reasonably and you can kick the "biological inevitability" can down the road again.

 

[Little Sherri]

I debated whether or not to journal this, because I haven't had time to process much of it yet, but I've decided that maybe writing about it will help me process it. There are two dimensions to this, one which I won't get into very much right now, and another with I will. First, it seems likely that I won't have two parents for much longer. This is an inevitable outcome for anyone who ends up outliving their progenitors, but, I'd hoped to put this off for a bit. I think my parents would agree. Quite the couple of weeks this has been. 

Next, and more central to the topic at hand... it seems that the cat may be out of the bag? Maybe my subconscious had some inkling of this already - go back and read about my last diaper dream, where I entered a room fleetingly, which contained a lot of people I knew, wearing a diaper. I didn't walk to the center of the stage and do a cartwheel, I just slipped in on one side and almost immediately covered myself, but, the point is, I knew people would see me and I decided to proceed. 

My mind is boggling right now, so this is not a polished "article" I'm penning (if they ever are), this is more of a stream-of-consciousness discharge. Things unfolded thusly: my stepdad, who's been in the hospital for three weeks with cardiac issues, and who had surgery last weekend in an attempt to mitigate some of the condition, has had a foley catheter in for the entire time, as well as wearing what the staff euphemistically refer to "briefs", which are a sad, beige, fast food napkin-weight "purchasers delight" product that has to be the scourge of the linens supply industry. 

He hates the catheter, and wants it out, however the medical staff said that in his current condition, he can't get up and go to the washroom without two assistants, which would be difficult to muster, particularly at, say, 2 AM. He asked about using a bottle, and they said that he would probably be best off just to "use the brief", if help were unavailable. I'm picturing them picturing him trying with shaking hands and difficulty sitting up, to excavate the area from under his gown and the "brief" and the spider's web of IV lines and "am I still alive" telemetry connections, and then to reliably dock with a vessel, and I have to agree - he'd surly spill it everywhere. At least when his diaper inevitably leaks, it will occur on top of the absorbent pad they have under him, and there will be markedly less possibility of "fountaining". 

In the process of having this protracted conversation with the nurse, who clearly just wanted to leave the catheter in, because it would make her life easier, when she was talking about how he'd have to accept "just using his brief", he turned to me and said "You know something about that, too." 

I suppose he could have been referring to when I wore diapers to bed as a kid, but that's a reference more than 30 years in the past, and, he came into my life just as I was graduating from needing to wear diapers (although I did not graduate from wanting to), so it's not as though he dealt with that aspect of my existence very much - it was definitely mostly between my mom and I, at that point. I did not want her then-new man friend's input on my still wearing baby diapers under my pajamas. 

He has never, in the intervening three-plus decades, ever mentioned my wearing diapers as a kid, as far as I can recall, and, mercifully, neither has he mentioned finding my homemade cloth diaper stash a few years later. So him looking at me in that moment and saying "You know something about that, too" seemed a current reference. And in the reality of what he was facing - death, possibly, and dependence, almost certainly - I felt it would have been cruel to feign ignorance as to what he was talking about. It was a moment that was very real, and I had to be real, within it. I nodded slightly. 

He's not the most observant individual I know, either. So, is it possible that, substantively, most of the people I know, now know that I wear diapers, and nobody cares, and here we are? That, as stealthy as I thought I was being, the clues have amassed to the point where people have reached their own conclusions? This is something that I thought might happen by the time I was, say, 60, when the veil might drop completely, at a time when it felt that it might be reasonably socially acceptable.

Not that this changes my standard operating procedures in any way - I have no plans to "celebrate" this suspected situation with a big reveal party. And, "that fellow wears nappies" is not the same as "that fellow is INTO wearing nappies", the latter being potentially more cringe-inducing, on both sides. 

I have a lot to think about, and little time to do it. 

[dribblez]

I lost my father almost five years ago, and it was a traumatic and protracted process. I hope you are spared that, but to have both parents in hospital at the same time must be very difficult. Stay strong.

Obviously I can only guess what your stepdad meant, but I would have thought it unlikely that he was referring to an incident 30 years ago. I strongly suspect that my wife said something to my mother a couple of years back. I have never been hospitalized and am a very infrequent visitor at the doctor's. Unlike my wife whose favourite reading is the long lists of possible side effects which come with medications and googling smallpox every time she detects a skin blemish.

I was chatting to my mother and said something like, "oh well, you know how obsessed my wife is with docotors and hospitals", to which she replied, "perhaps you should go to see a doctor". The air froze before I changed the subject.

Not long after my wife said she was going to ask our sister-in-law for advice on mattress protectors because she is caring for her father who is in the late stages of dementia.

I made it clear that I did not want my bedwetting or underwear preferences discussed with anyone, and I think she has respected that. 

Which is a long-winded way of saying that your mother may have noticed something and had a woman to woman chat with your wife, before discussing it with your stepdad. Or perhaps your wife asked your mother if you had a history of bed wetting. 

Who knows? But my advice would be to try to put all of that at the back of your mind and operate a don't ask, don't tell policy. People will find out, but as I think we both now know, life goes on, albeit with a small elephant in the corner of the room.

[Little Sherri]

4 minutes ago, dribblez said:

But my advice would be to try to put all of that at the back of your mind and operate a don't ask, don't tell policy. People will find out, but as I think we both now know, life goes on, albeit with a small elephant in the corner of the room.

Good advice. it's certainly possible, I guess, that my wife has discussed "this" with my mom at some point. My mom isn't in a state right now where I could ask her about that, not that I would be inclined to, in any case. Sigh. I did tell my wife about my history of bedwetting, back when our kids were young, because while our older daughter pretty much potty-trained herself, my younger daughter followed more in my footsteps, with respect to bedwetting. But once I started wearing diapers full-time, I could see her wanting more information, and not wanting to ask me for it. So maybe, maybe, he didn't 'deduce' this for himself - maybe it was pointed out to him. In which case, maybe it's not as widely known as I'd immediately concluded. But, as you pointed out, you can never really know - I can't start polling people on it. 

[oznl]

4 hours ago, dribblez said:

 But my advice would be to try to put all of that at the back of your mind and operate a don't ask, don't tell policy. People will find out, but as I think we both now know, life goes on, albeit with a small elephant in the corner of the room.

I agree with this although I run with three tenets, not two:

• Don't ask
• Don't tell
• Don't lie (it's usually wrong, it complicates things and I'm lousy at it anyway.  I'll wear it if I have to)

I think sometimes we make the mistake of assuming that people WANT to be told stuff, have it dragged out before them, when in reality, they've learned their preferred path of leaving cousin Hugo in the attic and pretending he can't be seen or heard. 

There are aspects of my own kid-ults lives that I'm dimly aware of but I simply don't want to know.    I can't change those aspects irrespective of what I might think of them and dragging them into consideration and judgement is therefore unhelpful.

I am at once amused and disturbed that we may not fly as below the radar as we imagine.  This reminded me of an ageing local rock star's ageing song theme: “I used to go about fully believing I was invisible”.

Have a 7'52" break from it all with Dave Graney (assuming YT doesn't geo-block you):

 

[Little Sherri]

1 hour ago, oznl said:

There are aspects of my own kid-ults lives that I'm dimly aware of but I simply don't want to know.    I can't change those aspects irrespective of what I might think of them and dragging them into consideration and judgement is therefore unhelpful.

True of me as well, and I hope they don't judge me as studiously as I don't judge them. 

That was cool to watch - it reminds me a bit of Ball and Biscuit by The White Stripes, the guitar and the spoken word quality it has.

 

 

[oznl]

2 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

True of me as well, and I hope they don't judge me as studiously as I don't judge them. 

That was cool to watch - it reminds me a bit of Ball and Biscuit by The White Stripes, the guitar and the spoken word quality it has.

 

 

There's more than a passing resemblance there!  I had to do some homework.  As suspected, the Dave Graney track pre-dates the White Stripes track (rel. 2003) by anywhere between  8 and 18 years.  The Dave album of the same name was released in 1995 but the song he claims to have written about an East German post-punk band in the 1980s.

It's entirely possible that both artists have synthesised content from much earlier blues artists.

Irrespective of who sues whom, I'm glad they both exist and I will organise some "White Stripes" on Spotify whilst I vacuum our empty nest.

[Little Sherri]

10 hours ago, oznl said:

I will organise some "White Stripes" on Spotify whilst I vacuum our empty nest.

There's gold in there. If you like it, also check out Jack White's later solo work. Some of it gets kind of weird, but there is some good stuff in there. Also the Raconteurs, one of his side projects - I like pretty much all their stuff. 

[Little Sherri]

In addition to the ongoing medical drama with respect to my parents, one of whom seems like they're gaining ground, while the other decidedly is not, I have been, for some reason, beset with diaper rash. I thought that I'd slayed this demon a while back - I had a good stretch going where all I was using was diaper cream, nothing medicated, and I seemed to be bullet proof. Then, we had a stretch of humid days, and I decided to go on one of my medium-length hikes (about 5 km) wearing a NorthShore Supreme Lite. These diapers, which rumour has it, have been discontinued, at least via my usual supplier, are not a common pick for me, but I do have some, and their light (lite?) weight seemed perfect for a hike on a hot day under light (lite?) fabric. Also, NorthShore products have never really given me any trouble in the rash department, and they usually punch above their weight in terms of reliability. MegaMax aside, it's not so much that the other products have phenomenal capacity, as that they let you get to closer to the edge before you're putting yourself at risk. This is the case with the Supreme's, and it is the case with the Air Supreme's, as well as the Supreme Lite - I can get them to 80% and still be reasonably sure of containment. Ergo, they're a good "out in public" diaper. 

However, the Supreme Lite did not agree with my terms of use, and by the end of that walk, things were chaffing ominously. I binned the diaper, although it still had some life in it, took a shower, plastered the area with diaper cream, and put on a Supreme for no particular reason - it's not that I was beholden to NorthShore that day, it's just that one of them was at the top of my drawer and it fit the mission - stop-gap diaper to get me from 6 PM to bedtime. I could have gone, say, Critter Caboose, and rode it out until noon the next day, but I had to back to the hospital, so I wanted something that conceals well under oversized cargo shorts. Hanging out with my sister has returned some of the self-consciousness that had decayed like timbers under a dock. That, and my stepdad's offhand comment that suggested he knows something. 

Going plastic, it turns out, was not the correct move. Areas down there started stinging by the end of the night, necessitating another shower, and then, two decisions: 1, to go back to medicated cream post haste, and, 2, to wear a cloth-backed diaper to bed, not my favourite thing to do. I even considered going to cloth diapers and plastic pants, but ground zero was right where the elastics would have been riding, and sawing at the rash with plastic-encased elastics seemed like I'd be poking the bear. 

So, I've discovered what cloth-backed, "breathable" diapers are for - this. I'd thought they existed mostly for their monk-like silence, but I have to say that, having now spent three days wearing only air-this, and breathable-that, it does seem to be helping. A second side "benefit", such as it is, to having raging diaper rash, it that I've enjoyed probably the longest stretches I've spent in just a diaper, since I was a toddler. I've been working entire days in my office in a diaper and a shirt, throwing shorts on for the walk back to the house, then cruising through the rest of the evening in a diaper of one sort or another, and then going to bed thusly attired. The reasoning in simple - the more "breathing", the better, less heat, less contact, and, these things leak more often. My eldest has been working - I can tell by the absence of my car - and my youngest has been at dance most nights (recital season), so it's just me and my long-suffering spouse, and the dog, who doesn't seem to care. My wife raised an eyebrow when I started cleaning the kitchen in a somewhat pendulous Prevail big enough for the tabs to touch in the middle of my belly, and I shrugged and said "diaper rash", and she rolled her eyes, and that was that. 

I am, however, burning through 4 to 5 diapers a day, granted, cheaper ones, but still, I look forward to being able to don a decent plastic diaper again, and forget about my underpants for several hours. 

[adhb]

I also rarely get a diaper rash. But when I do, I’ve found that athletes’ foot cream heals it faster than anything else.

[Little Sherri]

15 hours ago, adhb said:

But when I do, I’ve found that athletes’ foot cream heals it faster than anything else.

Entirely true. It's nearly always fungal in nature (lovely word, that), and not bacterial, if it lasts more than a couple of days or gets beyond red skin and into "raw" sports. The exception would be something that looks like pimples - that would tend to be more likely bacterial in nature - follicles becoming infected. I never really get that, though. 

I'm on day... what is it, four? Of wearing only cloth-backed products, and the diaper rash is subsiding, although antifungals, like antibiotics, should be continued even after symptoms abate, because if you stop using it before the root cause of the rash has truly been eradicated, it will come rushing back. These products don't actually kill the critters causing the problems, they just inhibit their reproduction, allowing your skin to regain ground, but, as a result, it is possible to be lulled into declaring victory prematurely. 

Part of the impetus behind (pun there) this is an upcoming medical appointment involving the diaper area. I plan to wear a diaper to the appointment, but will be able to take it off before the examination (a follow-up scan), as I'll have to be bare down there in any case, so I see no advantage to pointedly wearing embarrassing underpants that I would have to take off in front of the unfortunate technician, when everyone else does that in the changerooms where the gowns go on. I can hold it for half an hour. However, I also want to present them with a clean field, not one beset with a rash and covered in diaper cream. So, I really want this dealt with. 

I'm missing my plastic diapers, though. I've learned to live with the lower-grade security that cloth-backed disposable products provide, and the slight clamminess of their surfaces after a stretch, for some brands. The air exchanging feature is not always a "benefit", because breathable diapers can get bad breath, but the products I'm using seem to do a decent job of halting the Satanic chemistry that occurs when wee is held at body temperature in the presence of oxygen for a period of time. Plus, I'm changing them more frequently. This has resulted in my being more "religious" about stocking and carrying around my diaper bag, which is a nondescript black backpack. I pine for the days when I wore a diaper for 8 or 12 hours at a time, and could leave the house and run a few errands with nothing but the not-often-resorted-to crash kit in the trunk of my car as backup. 

I guess I can console myself in communing with the modern diaper-ati, as outside of the pros within the AB/DL and "discerning incontinent" communities, by far the vast majority of the diapered populace, at least in North America, wear cloth-backed products. Practically all the baby, toddler, and kid diapers are cloth-covered and hook/loop fastened, and the low grade, store-stocked adult tabbed diapers are all cloth, except Depends with tabs, the lone holdout. 

[Little Sherri]

Something I thought of yesterday, fixing a curtain rod, while wearing a Rearz Active Air... why is it necessary for my diaper to announce to the world that it is a size "Large"? I get the convention - a caregiver or a wearer can identify a product easily, in a setting where there might be a few sizes around, or, it would help a person reorder if they just needed to look down in order to remember what size they buy in a particular product. And for a lot of people, diapers are "underwear", so it doesn't matter what they say on them. 

However, for those of us who wear a diaper as pajamas, or casual wear, and who wear them in front of other people, is it really necessary to spell out what size we wear in block letters? Rearz deals with this cleverly elsewhere, for example on their Critter Caboose model, where each size gets a different character on the cover. I know when I reorder that I need the panda one, but someone looking at me doesn't know that the purple panda on my diaper denotes "XL" (Rearz has shrunk their large sizes in some models, pushing me up to an XL, although for a bulky diaper, the physical size doesn't matter as much, as I'm not going to wear a Critter Caboose in any size under a business suit, for example...). 

I suppose the same can be said for wetness indicators... if I'm not bedridden and being cared for, does my diaper need to advertise how much mileage it has on it?  Again, I will compare the Active Air to the Critter Caboose - the Air has yellow dashed lines down the front that discolour with wetness, whereas the Critter Caboose has coloured dots on the cover that subtly disappear. Someone who hasn't studied the Caboose's carefully would not catch the change, whereas the dashes on the Air's could be interpreted by a Golden Retriever. I don't need my wife to know that my diaper is at the halfway point...

[justforfun]

10 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Something I thought of yesterday, fixing a curtain rod, while wearing a Rearz Active Air... why is it necessary for my diaper to announce to the world that it is a size "Large"?

Well, I primarily wear cloth for 'real' usage, which, for better or worse, means that the black bin o' disposables has a fairly varied, and random, collection of single bags of disposables I've bought or tried as travel options, or because they looked interesting, or just because.  What this means is that I have a pile of generally white disposables that I don't know where to file... I know that that Megamaxes have a 'NS' on the tabs... but many of the incontrol, rearz, foresite, and whatever else I bough a bag of are sometimes a random grab-bag if they're not in their branded packing.  This means that sometimes I have a "Hey, that worked great!  I didn't leak!  What the heck was it?" moment.

So... having at least a subtle brand and size indication on each diaper is pretty helpful for those of us not familiar enough to know by feel for every random white plastic diaper...