24/7 startups, and unexpected pitfalls?

[tuffy]

I always heard them called plastic pants when I was growing up, but then, I'm the youngest, my sister is the oldest with a brother between us. I figured out by the time I was 5 or 6 that my interest in diapers wasn't something I should talk about with my mother and she was really my only source of information until I had kids of my own.

My wife was also the youngest in her family and by the early 1980s, cloth diapers and plastic pants weren't even in her vocabulary.

[oznl]

Plastic pants: growing up in a large family, the "nappy period" of history extended from the mid 1960s until the late 1970s.  Mostly it was cloth (pinned flannel or terry) but with the youngest, the tactical use of disposables had appeared to support travel.

I've heard both "pants" and "panties" used down here though, just not in the house I grew up in.

All nappy-related infrastructure was communally owned/used by all children there so presumably the feminine connotations of "panties" was avoided to navigate the inevitable protest that would have ensued from my younger brother.

Plastic pants were typically pastel yellow or blue.  Pink seemed to be avoided (again probably to minimise gender wars).

My beloved dislikes the inevitable "wet nappy" smell that ensues by morning with cloth but she puts up with it.  She doesn't have to see the cloth nappies themselves as they are concealed by stretch pants (pinned nappies can get terribly saggy up out of bed once wet) and pyjamas usually.

This morning (being Saturday), I just changed out of an overnight pinned terry nappy.

[Little Sherri]

I'm having another throw-back moment; those Tranquility diapers I bought on a lark for half price do not really fit me. They were medium sized, and the only other size they had was 2XL, which allegedly would fit someone with a 70-inch waist. These are supposedly able to accommodate waistlines up to 44 inches, however I am not 44 inches around, and these things barely fit me. Only the top tabs are usable, and only at the outside edges. Which is fine - I plan to mow the lawn and clean the pool and sweat in them, so they're now my most throw-away of throw-away diapers. But they are plastic backed with small tabs, and because I have the lower tabs folded up under the rear edges rather than engaging a front that they can't possibly reach, I'm once again wearing white plastic single-tab diapers where the tabs JUST reach the cover, way out at the edge of my hips. Ergo, I am once again a kid wearing a toddler diaper that barely fits.  On a Saturday morning, under "daytime clothes". The only difference is that I have no concerns with anyone realizing I left my diaper on when I got dressed. 

[Little Sherri]

My brother is here from the other side of the country; it's been interesting hanging out with him and my sister, and a bit of a throwback, because when I was a kid wearing diapers, they were generally my primary company, outside of my parents. I'm always slightly more "on guard" around them, now, because I know they both knew that I wore diapers back then, and they were both there on that fateful day when my stepdad found my diaper stash when I was in my early teens, and he yelled at me about them in front of everyone. My thought is that it would be a shorter journey for them to add two and two and get four, than it would be for most people, if they stumbled upon a couple of twos lying around. 

I have no idea what they made of the events of that day, 30+ years ago - I've never asked, and I don't intend to. I *think* that they probably thought I'd started wetting the bed again, and was hiding it, and that's what our stepdad was upset about - no other explanation really makes sense. "DL" was not in their vocabularies at ages ~16 and ~10, because it wasn't in mine, and I was one, although I didn't have the words to explain it. But since then, their minds have expanded, and anyone with internet access now knows that the universe is speckled with strange and exotic planets, in terms of "preferences", so I have no desire to bring that moment back to the forefront all these years later, for them to turn it over in their hands, and maybe come to new conclusions. 

Back then, they were the people I had no secrets from - we all lived in my parents' house; my brother and I shared a room for years. I stood in the bathroom brushing my teeth with them, wearing a soggy diaper, and they threw their overnight bags next to my box of Pampers, in the back of the station wagon, when we went to the cottage or on vacation. Thus, I really want to avoid giving them any help with connecting the dots, lest someone notice... something. So I've been wearing my slimmer diapers, and changing more often.

My brother and I are leaving for a few days to go golf with some of our extended family; my sister doesn't care about golf and so she's going to hold down the fort with respect to my ailing parents, with some help from my wife. As an aside, I appreciate that she volunteered to do that, acknowledging that I've been the one doing most of the heavy lifting on the file for years. When my brother and I first floated the idea, I'd been concerned that she'd go in the opposite direction, philosophically, and declare us uncaring and selfish, which would then be justification for her to be... uncaring and selfish.  

I made the arrangements myself, so we will have separate hotel rooms, unlike most of my recent journeys, where the rooms were booked by a friend who works in the industry. Ergo, they were shockingly cheap, but, I had to share a room with a buddy and sneak diapers into the bathroom rolled up in a towel or whatever. and sleep with shorts on. On this trip, I look forward to golfing badly, then pickling myself with red wine and/or IPA, and then locking the door behind me and falling asleep in glorious plastic diapers, on top of the linens, if I so choose. 

[Little Sherri]

It's been a while since I wrote because I've been travelling, and I also had my brother staying with me, which was cool, but did put me a little bit "on edge", only because he, like my sister, somewhat knows my history with diapers, so wearing them around those two always makes me a little more cautious. 

He left yesterday, and today, I enjoyed breakfast in a wet Critter Caboose. It was wet because I had an honest to goodness unrecalled bedwetting incident last night, which hasn't happened in a couple of weeks. I'd expected to wet the bed at least once or twice (well, to wet my diaper), while I was drinking heavily on a daily basis during our travels, but it didn't come to pass. I always woke up when I needed to wet. Until last night. 

Alas, my enjoyment at being able to be openly in diapers again was fleeting... and its conclusion brought me to an interesting conclusion as well. I was (and am) still in that glorious Critter Caboose, however I decided to pull some light running shorts over it so that I could go clean up the pool. We've had days of rain and a lot of debris from trees was in it, plus some settled fine silty precipitate that is best off dumped rather than vacuumed into the filter - it tends to make it through and reappear as cloudy water. Nobody had been in it, and the stuff had settled, so I decided to spend 45 minutes vacuuming. The sightlines from my pool to my neighbours' houses are blocked with trees and sheds and such - we don't have privacy fences out here like the houses in the city, but we have hundreds of feet and dozens of trees to obscure the silhouette of a puffy man in a puffy diaper cleaning his pool, for example. That said, I won't go work out there in just a diaper - sometimes a neighbour comes walking along the fence line, gardening or chasing a dog or an errant kid's ball or what have you. 

My wife was outside with me, admiring her gardening, and then she walked inside, and, a half hour later, came out again... with her parents. Now, admittedly, I had told her I was going to be out today, and those plans got postponed, so I imagine that when she cooked up plans with her parents, she didn't appraise me of them because she thought I wasn't going to be here, anyway. And her parents coming over is not an uncommon event - it does not require much consultation. HOWEVER, she knew I was standing on the pool deck in a big plastic diaper under thin shorts, and presumably she knew that her parents were coming over shortly, and she said nothing. Nada. 

SO when I heard her dad say high to me as he crossed the yard towards the pool area, my heart sank. I was in the middle of vacuuming the pool, however, and would have either had to just let hundreds of gallons of water dump into the yard while I dashed off to get changed, or, I would have had to stop in the middle of what I was doing, shut it all down, and then dash off. Both would have been conspicuous. 

I took a deep breath, and sucked in my stomach for some reason (I felt like maybe it thinned my silhouette a bit, although the problem was clearly not in the stomach area...). I continued vacuuming while my mother-in-law and father-in-law said hi, shook my hand, and then went over to look at some stuff they had planted in the garden on their last visit. My wife ambled past and gave me a wave and then went over and chatted with them. They sat down on chairs and made small talk. I finished vacuuming and checked the pool chemistry and emptied the pump basket and added some acid to the water, and just went about my business... in a big plastic diaper under very light, slightly snug running shorts, while my mind turned over my situation, their response to it, and the complete nonchalance of my wife. 

I cast a glance at her a couple of times to see if I could get a read on her thoughts, but she just smiled and went about her business. Eventually, I made my way to the garage, which is where I'm stationed now. I will have to walk past them again in order to close the shed up and go back to the house. 

I assume this means they know?!?  Does everyone know? Is this just not a big deal? Or am I putting myself on dangerous ground by thinking that way? Not that I'm going to start running around in just a diaper or deliberately wearing giant diapers under my clothes in public - no, that's not for me. But, can I just forget about who knows and who doesn't, and accept that after four years of doing this, no matter how stealthy I thought I was being, a number of people have added two and two, and they just don't care, and it's no big deal, and here I am, back in diapers?

That thought feels, curiously, both a lightening of some load I didn't know I was carrying, but also, nerve-wracking. One should never ask questions one doesn't want the answers to, but I feel compelled to ask my wife... do a number of the people in our circles know? 

Of course, she might use it as an opportunity to gaslight me... "They're not idiots, I imagine they've figured it out..." isn't the same as "Yes, we've discussed it, I know you think you're James Bond with your toddler underpants, but a lot of people have figured it out." 

Do I want to know that? And will it make me feel better, worse, or indifferent? 

[tuffy]

5 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

My wife was outside with me, admiring her gardening, and then she walked inside, and, a half hour later, came out again... with her parents.

Yes, a heads up from the wife would have been nice.

I suspect situations like that are what fuel your dreams (nightmares?) about being in a crowded room while wearing only a diaper. I have similar dreams and probably for the same reason.

 

[Vulpix77]

It might also simply be that it's much more noticeable to you because you know it's there. I've been in very similar situations with my partner and they swear it's not as obvious as I think it is.

[Little Sherri]

My wife had difficulty sleeping last night, and in the quiet darkness, her ire developed a focal point... me, apparently. Once again, this morning, she mused in an exasperated offhand soliloquy about what it's like to sit there, bathed in the glow of the bad news from her phone, while watching me sleep, somewhat literally, like a baby. Although I will state again that anyone who uses the "like a baby" comparison, has probably never had a baby close at hand overnight. They're not the most restful companions, generally. But when they do sleep, they sleep hard, carefree and unplagued by thoughts of what tomorrow might be like at the office, I guess. 

"Meanwhile, you're lying there in your diaper, sucking on your soother, dead to the world, and I'm watching the minutes tick by on the clock..."

One of the above is in no way related to the other, but you can see how the one inflames the other, even if they have no causal relationship. I guess I do cut a peaceful, if absurd, picture, as much of it as is visible in the shadows. I suppose a white diaper glows somewhat, probably reflecting the blue light from her phone. I usually sleep under the covers, but apparently, I'm prone to kicking them off my lower half, and just hauling them over my shoulder like a cape, on occasion. And she has sent me a picture of my having pulled the coversheet over my eyes, so that just a pacifier and a nose show, probably because of the light from her phone. 

What can I do about it? I sleep well, most of the time. Definitely, the toddler gear helps with that. I've had to skip the pacifier while sharing hotel rooms on several occasions, and while I can fall asleep like that if I have to, it definitely helps me tune out the world. Sleeping without a diaper is a no-go - I would have difficultly falling asleep, because of the very real possibility of waking up in the middle of the night in a damp tangle of linens. It might not happen on any given string of nights, but sooner or later... it will. 

Perhaps I should suggest that my wife drink more wine? 

[oznl]

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Perhaps I should suggest that my wife drink more wine? 

I have no doubt that as a wife, she would be immune to your suggestions although my experience is that alcohol will promote rapid, early deep sleep but actually inhibit sleep at the latter phases of the cycle.  I think that's why booze will often see me wet the bed AND simultaneously wake up and notice that I have a few hours later.

You probably already know this but the biggest thing to put the brakes on melatonin (the "fall asleep" hormone) is light.  In particular "blue-ish" light at higher colour temperatures.  Something like the 5000 - 6000K LED light from a device screen backlight source is nearly perfect for this.  For the optimal "kill your melatonin" experience, try staring at a backlit smartphone for an hour or two before trying to fall asleep.  😆

[Little Sherri]

34 minutes ago, oznl said:

Something like the 5000 - 6000K LED light from a device screen backlight source is nearly perfect for this. 

I've told her this. As with the wine, she is immune to my suggestions and irked at my fountaining what is, to her, useless knowledge. You know, knowledge that could be helpful, but you never intend to use it. So, useless. 

[Little Sherri]

It wasn't the diaper's fault... a "be careful what you wish for" tale. 

Remember all the times I said that unconsciously wetting the bed doesn't happen very often for me? 

I fell into a deep sleep last night, in a Bambino Skooldoodle (may have butchered the spelling of that), and at around 2:00 AM I had a very comfortable diaper dream. Usually, my diaper dreams are uncomfortable - they often center on my being in some absurd position, wearing a diaper, and being forced into involuntary exposure by the circumstances... I've related the most memorable one before, where I went for a drive to a mailbox wearing a diaper (only) for some reason, and a dog I had with me escaped from the car in a parking lot, and I had no choice but to go after it. 

This time, I was laying on my belly, at the edge of a cliff or steep hill that overlooked a scenic vista. The grass smelled fresh, the air was warm, the sun was setting, and I was deeply content... but then, I had to pee. But wait! I was wearing a diaper, an epiphany that thrilled me in the dream, just as it does, now and then, in real life. (I was in a building supply store the other day and was reaching for a drill bit on a high peg, and I felt my onesie pull my diaper up against my backside, and had a moment of gratitude... damn, I wear diapers, don't I? But I digress.)

So, I did what comes naturally, and relaxed, and let nature take its course... but then, the front of my shirt started feeling wet. I reached down with my hand and found... not just dampness, but sodden wetness. The dream was over. My eyes opened in the darkness, and I found myself laying on my belly, as I was in the dream, and reaching under myself. I felt around... had this been real? Yup. I'd been peeing over the front of my diaper. Stopping the flow was not going to happen, so I rolled over onto my back and waited for it to peter out. 

Once events concluded, I got up in the darkness and took off my shirt. I had to wrestle with the pacifier tether, eventually just unclipping the paci from the tether and leaving it tangled in the shirt. I went and fetched a towel, folded it, threw it on the damp spot, and climbed back into bed. I found the towel itchy and I'm not used to sleeping without a shirt on, so my slumber after that was fitful, but I was loath to wake up my wife, who actually seemed to be in a deep sleep, so I drifted in and out until my alarm went, and then I got up and put a shirt on and went downstairs to make coffee. 

I still have to survey the damage, but I suspect I'll be laundering the sheets, that shirt, and that towel. 

What's interesting to me is how infrequently something like this happens - even though I'm a front/side sleeper, I generally seem to manage to roll onto my back before unrecalled wetting incidents. This has led me to develop a theory that I used to wake up at least somewhat, roll over and pee, while drifting back to sleep, and then that process started automating itself so that I didn't have to drift up into full consciousness anymore. However, this flooding happened in the midst of a dream, so presumably, during REM sleep, and sleep paralysis, hence, no drifting up and no repositioning. 

I may need to make plastic pants a more frequent companion at bedtime, although I still have a strange aversion to wearing them in front of my wife. Maybe I should buy some more unprinted ones... my current crop of clear plastic pants are getting brittle, and my new ones all have absurd (but cute) prints on them. 

[Little Sherri]

I yet another diaper dream last night, although the dream featured no diapers. This was a weird one - in it, my wife was sorting laundry, and she had laid out three pairs of boxer shorts she'd found, which blew my mind a bit - I know that our laundry stream has it's backwaters and eddy currents, and that once in a while, a sock that's been missing for six months washes up on shore, but... it's been four years since I threw a pair of boxer shorts in the laundry, and I was pretty sure that I'd purged all of them quite a while back. But there I was, looking at three pairs of ratty old boxer shorts. 

My mind immediately went to the implications... having somehow discovered these in the laundry, did she think that I was going back on my 24/7 "commitment"? Did this mean, in her mind, that my wearing diapers would now be negotiable... "Can you please just take a break for the trip to so-and-so's cottage...?" etc?

In the dream, I contemplated what to do with them. My first thought was, maybe stuff them into a drawer, then - you never know when they might come in handy. But that idea caused some anxiety, so, I gathered them up, and walked into the closet as though I might be putting them away, but then I put them in my diaper can, and resolved to empty it right away. I didn't actually do that in the dream, because I woke up, but I recall that it was my intention to do so. 

[oznl]

On 7/20/2023 at 12:16 AM, Little Sherri said:

I still have to survey the damage, but I suspect I'll be laundering the sheets, that shirt, and that towel.

I cannot speak highly enough of the value conferred by my dual-terry-lined Kins waterproof pants.  Although I leak less than I used to, every few weeks they will "take one for the team" and save the day.  My position in bed is irrelevant.

They can be a bit visually confronting (one takes on a distinctly toddler aesthetic) but I moderate this by pulling on some short pyjama pants over the top.

9 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I yet another diaper dream last night, although the dream featured no diapers. This was a weird one

I'm noticing a similar thing. I'm wondering if it's some part of the acceptance phase.  This might be the diaper equivalent of the heliopause being reached on our journey.

[Little Sherri]

We're into the "testing of your will" phase of the summer weather here in the previously-frozen, now largely burning North. Although while there has been a lot of smoke drifting over my area from thousands of miles away, causing air quality scores that ricochet between "pristine" and "Mumbai in a heatwave", we've had so much rain that nothing around here is on fire currently. Indeed, I found my diaper collection sitting in a puddle in the basement recently. Thankfully, the bottom tier is in plastic totes. My in-laws had helpfully dislodged a downspout extension while gardening alongside my house, so that rainwater filled the garden box, and then found its way into my basement, rather than being sluiced harmlessly onto the lawn. But that part of the basement is unfinished, so it was, at worst, an inconvenience. 

But back to the will testing - it's supposed to feel like 40 C today with the humidity. I know the Australians among you chuckle at calling that extreme heat, but for us pasty Northerners, who sometimes see -40C, it's quote the number. For the diapererati, this can be a test of one's commitment - wearing essentially a greenhouse over your equipment doesn't help to reduce the feeling that one is wading through a fetid swamp. My office is air conditioned, but my lawn is not... and my lawn badly needs to be cut. Every time I've had a break in my schedule, it's been raining, and every time there has been a break in the weather, I've been dealing with something or other related to my parents' decline. Sigh. 

To console myself, I bought more diapers... and now I've officially filled all my allocated diaper shelves, and have spilled over into territory claimed by my beloved. My latest box of ABU Pampers look-alikes is sitting on top of the suitcases, so that it isn't in contact with the floor (see the note about flooding, above). I'm waiting for her to notice this. 

Have any of you ever run a diaper through the laundry? I mean, a disposable diaper? It is deeply inconvenient. This "experiment" was not conducted by me, personally, but, I had to clean up the results. My daughter left a pull-up balled up with pajamas that she threw into the washing machine along with some of my work clothes. The result was a snowstorm of swollen polymer beads in the washing machine, with more of them, now smaller, showing up in the drier lint filter. Sigh again... 

[oznl]

7 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

But back to the will testing - it's supposed to feel like 40 C today with the humidity. I know the Australians among you chuckle at calling that extreme heat, but for us pasty Northerners, who sometimes see -40C, it's quote the number. For the diapererati, this can be a test of one's commitment - wearing essentially a greenhouse over your equipment doesn't help to reduce the feeling that one is wading through a fetid swamp.

It’s true that most Aussies are going to be familiar enough with +40C but that’s still a pretty hot day and needs to be treated with a degree of respect.  When I was younger and sillier, I decided that a 46C day (that’s seriously hot) was a great time to get up on the roof and fix the TV antenna.  Hello heat stroke and "Hello" to an altered state of consciousness whilst standing on a roof 🤣

Funnily enough, the Florida-ish part of Australia I inhabit these days has a natural throttle on temperature due to an almost endemic sea-breeze, it struggles to get much past about 32 – 35C here close to the coast although the humidity can be crushing and in summer, don’t expect cool nights.

When I was a kid, I lived in a more arid part of the country where mid 40s could be expected a few times each summer but it was as dry as a chip there.  I actually think that those low humidity mid 40s were more comfortable than Brisbane pulling a 32C with a dew point of 25C however.

Humidity will do it to you every time though.  It kills your body's ability to regulate temperature.

We’re coming to the end of our winter here with sunny days that have ticked up from typical low 20s to around 24 – 27C forecast next week already.

Watching what’s going on in the Northern hemisphere, I am slightly in awe of what this summer may bring us and NOT in a good way.  I wonder at what we have done to our planet.

[Little Sherri]

It's another steamy day here in the land of rain and humidity. I'm up in my office working on some month-end paperwork, in a Rearz Critter Caboose and a golf shirt. My wife has been up here a couple of times printing stuff, and has made no comment so far. 

The Critter Caboose is a fantastically comfortable and capacious product that seems to wear well in these cloying meteorological conditions - I was out cleaning my pool over lunch and I did not regret wearing it (I threw shorts on in deference to my neighbours' mental health). 

I like the combination of a golf shirt over a diaper - it's business up top, baby down below. I'm at the point in this adventure where wearing a diaper isn't the least bit distracting anymore. Indeed, I imagine that I get more done, because I don't have to get up and run to the washroom periodically. Although I guess I'd get even more done if I didn't sit down and write about my plastic underpants, whenever I have a break point in my work. But "this" contributes to my mental wellbeing, and that contributes, I assume, to my engagement with my work. That's my assertion, and I'm sticking with it. 

[Little Sherri]

I'm going to throw a topic into the survey section on this, just to see what people say: have you ever forgotten what diaper you are wearing?

This happened to me yesterday. In my defense, it has been a fantastically busy few days, lots of social events, plus dealing with my parents, with minimum sleep, and a fair bit of imbibing. I didn't really have any nappy-related anxieties, despite being around a lot of friends and family. My thoughts on this continue to evolve, and I would be misleading you if I said that I'm just open about it, or even "fine" with everyone knowing I wear diapers, but, at the same time, I have a generalized, unconfirmed impression that my closer friends know, and don't care. I have no interest in being uncomfortable, or making them uncomfortable, so my protocols have not changed, with respect to being discrete and trying not to have any wardrobe failures, but, it is a weight off my chest, in some respects, not to have to worry about it anymore, if an errant crinkle or bulge or protruding sliver of plastic enters the scene. 

Case in point: I was driving back from shopping this weekend, wearing an InControl Essential - a daytime-weight white plastic diaper. Over it, I had on cargo shorts and a longish t-shirt, but no onesie. It was hot out and I felt the extra layer was unnecessary, as I was just picking up some wine and buns and cheese for a barbecue - if everything went to plan, the outing was unlikely to involve protracted periods of squatting or bending, or any exertion. The Universe, as I've stated before, has a sense of humour about such assumptions, so, of course, a good friend of mine threw a mayday out into the digital universe - he needed to move a couch containing a electric recliners at BOTH ends up from his basement, so that his in-laws could put it into a van they'd rented. The request was time-sensitive, and I was nearby, and he's helped me out plenty of times... I had to put up my hand. 

Which, in short order, had me squatting and lifting and bending repeatedly, with an audience. Sigh. I tucked my t-shirt into my waistband before the ordeal started, but by the time the 400 lb monster was out on his driveway, I was sweating, and except for at the front, my shirt was untucked. In the midst of wrestling the thing up the staircase without damaging his wainscoting, there were zero opportunities to adjust my wardrobe or even worry about it. I tried to summon my inner @diaperedboilermanand just shrug and push through. I was pretty sure that at some point, some white plastic had to have made an appearance. At least it wasn't festooned with purple cartoon dinosaurs or something like that. It easily could have been a Lil' Monster or Lil' Splash, two of my daytime go-to's. 

After that, we had a beer (as is legally required), laughed, talked about upcoming events, and everything about our interactions was entirely normal. 

But back to the topic I opened with; yesterday, I was sitting in a buddy's backyard, drinking beer he'd made - I had a ride coming for me. It was another unexpected event - a couple of people got together for an impromptu beverage session to celebrate the birth of a new beer. My wife was looking at patio cushions, something I did not need to help her with. The call came out. She dropped me off, and would come back in a couple of hours. I was on maybe my third beer, and was dribbling unconcernedly into my pants, when it occurred to me that I could not, for the life of me, remember what diaper I had on. I could tell by the feel that it was plastic and had some bulk to it, but, I'd put it on the night before, right at bedtime, when I was exhausted... I'd slept in, got up, rushed around a bit, then left the house... what diaper was I in? I couldn't exactly look, but I felt like I needed to know, because I was using it more than perhaps I'd thought I would. I searched my mind but could not recall.

Finally, my wife arrived and I said my goodbyes and got into the car. When we pulled away, I pulled the side of my onesie up and the waist of my shorts down to try and have a look - I was hoping my wife would mistake the activity for me messing around with buckling my seatbelt, but she glanced over and said "Should I be worried about my seat?" 

I reddened slightly and copped to the truth, which was that I could not remember what diaper I'd put on the previous evening. "The one with the tan and yellow animals," she replied, deadpan. Right. A Rearz Barnyard. It had utterly slipped my mind. At least it was up to the task at hand. I was also intrigued that SHE'D made note of it - I kind of thought they'd become invisible to her. 

Let's see, what else... oh, right, I meant to mention that shortly after I'd penned Friday's entry, the front of my golf shirt somehow ended up in the front of my Critter Caboose, with predictable results. It's not all sunshine and roses. 

[Little Sherri]

I test-drove a sample of a Tranquility ATN (all-through-the-night) last night, this time in the correct size (large). I'd previously come into a bag of these in medium, but they only worked as single-tab diapers on me - the lower tabs would never reach around my tree-like legs. This relegated them to being "temporary diapers", fill-in's that I might wear while cutting the lawn or as a stop-gap if I've, say, exhausted my current diaper, but I know I'm going out in a couple of hours, and will want a fresh one at that time. 

The large ones fit me as they were meant to, with full wing overlap and good tab engagement, top and bottom. I was dubious of their all-through-the-night claims, because they are a relatively light and thin diaper, but, they are plastic-backed and allegedly a premium product, at least relative to the junk on store shelves, so, I decided to give them a shot, in the name of science. 

The Tranquility ATN's follow two European diaper conventions: they have the tab-on-a-tab fastening system, rather than a "landing zone", and, they have less stuffing and more polymer in them. That makes them less bulky, which left me wondering how they'd faire, if there was an "event" overnight. 

Somewhat surprisingly, I went to bed dry and woke up wet - it's as though my subconscious was also curious about how the ATN's would perform. These days, that's an unpredictable outcome. As an aside, this reinforces for me that I simply have to wear diapers to bed - they are no longer optional. Things happen. I had helped a buddy install pavers - a hell of a job - the night before until nearly midnight (under an industrial spotlight), and then we drank beer, but only a couple. So I did not stumble into bed pickled in an IPA marinade; instead, I'd been lightly brushed with lager. I was sweaty and dusty and covered in bug spray, so I took a shower, after which I needed a new diaper. The sample pack of the large ATN's was sitting on my bedside table - I'd intended to slot them into my diaper drawer but hadn't yet. Perfect timing. I unwrapped one. 

While sleeping, I had a dream, an usually detailed one. I was out walking on a trail in a t-shirt and what I believe was a disposable diaper, but under plastic pants. I had shorts with me, but for some reason had left them in a bag against a tree at a point I was going to work my way back to. The trail passed through a forest that seemed vast and private - I had no concerns about being seen in my strange hiking outfit. Unexpectedly, I came across a woman on a horse, and I had a sense that she was lost. She was pretty, a bit younger than me but not young, probably in her 30's in my mind's eye. Initially, I froze behind a pine or spruce tree, which inexplicably was much smaller and lower than all the other trees - most of the forest canopy was well above us, and although we were deep in the woods, I could see a fair distance. What can I say, it was a dream, they are not required by law to make sense. 

The horse noticed me and started to freak out a bit, because I was skulking around, trying to hide, so I felt obligated to show myself. I had butterflies in my stomach, but I walked out and gave a wave, then tried to carry on with my hike, however, the lady and the horse walked over towards me, so I stopped. The lady said hello and asked me if I knew where "Neil's Creek" was. In real life, I've never heard of a "Neil's Creek", but in the dream, I indicated where I thought it was. She thanked me and rode away slowly, while I watched her go. It was about then that it dawned on me that she hadn't said anything about my state of dress, or even given me a strained look. I felt the tension leaving me... and I peed in my diaper. 

Which also happened in real life, apparently. I must have rolled over on my back at some point, because most of the fire was low and back in the diaper. The ATN, to its credit, held up. It took everything and didn't leak. Where it differs from, say, a Megamax or a premium Rearz diaper, is that, in either of the latter, I would have gotten up, had coffee, gone to my office, and stayed in the diaper until mid-day or later, whereas for the ATN, after I had breakfast, I had to change my diaper - it was done, that overnight event had taken it to probably the 75% mark. I realized this when I dropped it to have my morning meeting with the porcelain throne - most of the interior was saturated. I tried putting it back on, just to wear it while I went to get another diaper, but the "refastenable" tabs had minimal affinity for their bedmates. This probably doesn't matter in a lighter-duty diaper in any case; how often are you going to need to open a diaper that might give you 4 or 5 hours of daytime service, or, one night's sleep? 

So, the ATN is probably not going to become a first-line player on my team, but, that said, they held up surprisingly well for a low-weight diaper, and, at $1.90 CAD per unit, they're not expensive, in a world where Depends with tabs cost $1.50 a piece and basically consist of paper towels glued onto a plastic sheet. 

[oznl]

Reading your post caused me to remember that I had a similarly-themed dream I had last night (it’s Saturday morning here right now so greetings from the future).

I was walking around wearing only a t-shirt and a nappy in a moderately crowded strip-shopping area.  I kept trying to pull my t-shirt down over my nappy to hide it but at some point, I just gave up.  Nobody seemed to care anyway.

Remembering dreams for me is like trying to grab handfuls of smoke but that one came back to me reading your account.

I’ve no idea if I wet during sleep because I’d gone to bed in a fairly damp cloth nappy anyway.  I have the vaguest notion that using my nappy was something that happened towards the end of that dream though.

On 8/4/2023 at 12:47 AM, Little Sherri said:

Somewhat surprisingly, I went to bed dry and woke up wet - it's as though my subconscious was also curious about how the ATN's would perform. These days, that's an unpredictable outcome. As an aside, this reinforces for me that I simply have to wear diapers to bed - they are no longer optional. Things happen.

Clearly I’m in the same place.  I wet the bed far too often to dare go to bed unattired.  I MUST wear a nappy now.  I don’t think the magnitude of what I have done has truly struck me here yet.

[Little Sherri]

I've had no more diaper dreams to report, and perhaps not coincidentally, I've gone dry through the night again, or rather, nothing has happened that I didn't document, as far as I can tell. The usual routine is, I wake up, feel the need to pee, glance at the clock (3:09 this morning, as it happens), then I roll over onto my back, make sure that I'm pointing in the correct direction, I take my foot off the brakes, and then I pass back out (if I'm lucky). 

I did go on a foray that might have occurred in one of my dreams, last night - I was standing in my kitchen getting a drink for my wife, when my daughter said goodnight as she walked past the entrance. I had a realization that I'd turned the pool heater on for her hours earlier, and that it was going to be 17 degrees C overnight, which I didn't want to leave the heater on to battle. Around here, weekday swimming usually occurs later in the afternoon, and only if it's a reasonable temperature outside... and if it's nice out, the pool will have been sitting in the sun from the morning, so often needs very little help from the heater to get back up to temperatures that my family finds acceptable. 

I asked her if she'd turned the pool heater off, and she said no as she dashed up the stairs. Crap. I was standing there in a slightly soggy MegaMax. I'd have to go upstairs and pull shorts on and then come back down and go out to turn off the heater. Hmmm. I stood and squinted out my patio door. It was pretty dark out there. I turned off the pot lights out back. Darker still. I squinted some more and tried to make out any shapes in my neighbour's distant gardens... nothing. It was all shadows. I took a breath and slid open the patio door and made my way down to the pool deck and over to the shed to turn off the heater. When I got there, I realized the pool robot was sitting on the deck as well, and that the basket inside it had not been emptied. Sigh. I commenced emptying the robot's basket into the composter, and then wrapping up the robot and it's 50 foot cord. It was fresh outside, but not uncomfortable. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, my diaper seemed to glow slightly, but there were no sightlines from where I was working to any windows other than my own. 

Were it not as late, and had I had the foresight to bring out bug spray with me, I might have had a beer and enjoyed the evening for a while, but as it was, I was going to get eaten alive, and there was still the possibility that my wife might come down to the kitchen to see why it was taking me a half hour to get her a drink, and then she'd have a stroke upon catching me doing pool maintenance, dressed as a toddler. As it was, when I made my way back upstairs, my daughter asked me from her room if I'd gone outside "like that", I guess because she heard the patio door open after I'd asked her about the heater. 

I said "You left the pool heater on," and she let it go at that. 

I did go sit out on my pool deck a couple of times last year in just a diaper, on nights when we'd had a fire. This was later in the evening, once my family had retired, and the fire pit had been reduced to coals. The protocol was similar - I turned off all the outdoor lights and pulled my chair in closer to the warmth, and just sat there sipping IPA or wine, and enjoying the feeling of the night air against my skin. They holy grail would be to either remodel my garden, or, eventually buy a place a bit further into the country, where I hang out in the yard during the day in just a diaper, without involving the innocent. I don't know why the idea tickles me so much - it's not like I spent a lot of time outdoors in just a diaper when I was a kid, or at least, not at ages during when the human brain is capable of laying down memories. There is a picture of me somewhere on a beach in plastic pants, but I looked about 3 in it. By the time I was 6 or 7, I was afraid to the core of my being that someone would see me in a diaper, so, yeah, I always had something on over it if I wasn't inside the house. 

Maybe that's why I feel compelled to enjoy the outdoors alfresco, now? Because somewhere inside, I wish I'd had the knowledge back then to know what I could have "gotten away with", so to speak, in not needing an excuse to go sit in the grass in my Pampers and blow the fluff off of dandelions, or build roads in the sandbox, or whatever. Whereas now, yeah, people would ask questions...

[Little Sherri]

I have a couple of things to report on, since yesterday. First of all, last night, I had a dream that I was trying to eat toast, but I found the crust really chewy... and I woke up to find myself gnawing on my pacifier. Maybe I was hungry. Then, I noted that my butt felt notably wet, yet I was lying on my stomach. A quick tactile probing revealed that, yes, the back of my diaper (a Lil' Splash) was pretty wet, the front was not, and, my bedding was bone dry. Ergo, I'd rolled over onto my back at some point and wet, but I had no recollection of it. I glanced at the clock - it was about 4 am - and then I went back to sleep. 

I got up this morning knowing that my daughter had a friend over, but also, knowing that teenagers who swam until midnight and then chatted until 3 am tend to sleep in... wrong. I'd pulled on light athletic shorts and walked into the kitchen to make coffee, and then, two teenagers appeared in my midst. Luckily, the Splash does not take on MegaMax proportions, but it is kind of a loud diaper, under light fabric. I abandoned my usual morning routine of not caring what I have on while I read the paper, and went to put on heavier cargo shorts. The episode did underline for me, though, how much I enjoy not caring what I have on, most of the time, at least around the house. 

I had a near-miss (I think) on the security breach front, earlier yesterday, when I took the kitchen garbage bag that was three quarters full, and went up to empty the bathroom garbage bags, and, since it had space in it, I threw in a half-dozen diapers from my diaper can. I hadn't tied it off yet, because I was going to check the laundry room garbage can, which is usually overflowing with lint from the dryer, however the aforementioned friend's mom arrived at the door just as I was heading into the laundry room, and I put the bag down in the hall while I let her in. Her arrival set off a process whereby my wife implored my daughter to take the dog out quickly, lest he pee from excitement at the arrival of this amazing new human. My daughter decided to take the dog out through the same door the amazing new human was entering through... I guess maybe we have to be more specific on this topic in the future. 

The dog got excited, did NOT pee, but, wrapped his leash around various legs, and, plowed through the garbage bag, causing it to discharge... one balled-up diaper, plus some food wrappers. Mercifully, it was a white one - a Rearz Essential, I think - and our visitor was paying attention to the dog, not the contents of the bag, so I tossed it back from whence it came, pretty quickly. Did it register? If so, she didn't react. Although my daughter has stayed over at her place dozens of times, and pull-ups were often part of that picture, so maybe, maybe, if she recognized what she saw as being from the genus plasticus diaperous, she might have assumed it's origins could be explained thusly. I'll never know, and I'm not sharing this theory with my wife or my daughter. 

[Little Sherri]

I once again had the rare experience of having my wife choose my diaper for me. I was in my office until late, working on a beer recipe, when I got a text from her that she was going to sleep early because she'd slept like crap the night before (a frequent affliction for her), and, that she'd "put my pajamas in the bathroom, please don't go crashing around looking for things, or turn on any lights." 

That was mildly hilarious to read, because I am actually quite adept at finding stuff by the light of my phone and generally not turning on lights, whereas she is the one who is known to come into the room and "only turn on the bathroom light", but then prop the door wide open, and operate for a half hour puttering around, because, as previously mentioned, she often doesn't sleep well. The whole "sleep hygiene" concept is foreign to her - she likes to stream programs on her phone and hold it right in front of her eyes, until 1 AM, and then she wonders why it takes her another two hours to fall asleep, unless she takes four times the suggested dose of melatonin. I've explained the blue light thing, but, like how thermostats work, or, how the car knows it needs service, she prefers to ignore the advancements that have been made in recent decades. 

But I digress. Back to my "pajamas". I was immediately curious as to what she'd set out for me, because I don't really wear pajamas, particularly not in the summer. I generally sleep in an old t-shirt and a diaper. Tiptoeing up to our room therefore had a bit of a Christmas morning feel to it, although I was also dreading the possibility that she might have selected something unsuitable, such as one of my slim gym diapers or the medium Tranquility ATN's that I'm using as fodder for sweaty, dusty yardwork. 

When I got into the bathroom (by the light of my phone), on my side of the counter rested a Bambino Skooldoodle and a t-shirt. Cute diaper, not a bad selection for overnight duty, and, curiously, not the selection that would have fallen readily to hand in my diaper drawer. I'd recently restocked it, and I knew that there were mostly white diapers at the front, and printed ones at the back. 

I know that if I ask her why she chose that particular diaper, she'll fire some sarcastic comment back at me, so, it is likely to remain a mystery. Maybe she prefers it? Or, more likely, it felt like it had the right heft to it, although I have never really explained the process I use to figure out what baby pants I'm going to wear, and when. A long time ago, she lamented that I should just be opening my diaper cases one at a time, and using them up as I go, and I explained to her that that would be like opening one food item in your kitchen, and eating only that, until you'd used it up. "We are all eating multigrain bread until all of it is used up, and then, I shall open the cream cheese, for that has the next closest expiry date." 

Diapers are articles of clothing, not paper towels, in my world. You don't use up all your white socks, and then move on to the black ones. 

[Little Sherri]

I have a comedy of errors to relate, which also offers further proof that it's not all belly tickles and the gentle scent of baby powder, over on the 24/7 side...

Gotta pound this out quickly as I have work to do...

The scene: I'm puttering around the bedroom wearing a moderately wet Tranquility ATN, a white plastic diaper with the tab-on-tab fastening system found on BetterDry and Comfidry and some other European-made diapers. I'm in the ATN because I was doing work outside and had put on bug spray (bad mosquito season this year) and planned to take a shower and didn't need to burn up a 10 hour diaper on a 4 hour project. My wife comes home from a baking class with my younger daughter, and she brings the dog up to our bedroom. I'm crisscrossing the room around putting laundry away. 

At some point, she drags the dog crate (he sleeps in a crate because he's still a pup and prone to chewing inappropriate things if he's unsupervised) over in front of the closet door to create space for her to open her drawers, and she starts putting laundry away as well. I need to get into the closet, so I pull the crate back a bit and wedge myself between it and the door frame, to put something away. I caught the lower back of my diaper against the crate as I squeezed between it and the door frame, but didn't give it much thought. 

Then, as I'm standing in the closet, I feel a sprinkle of damp fluff tumble down the back of my legs. Crap. I've torn my diaper open. I feel around back there and find about a 2-inch gash. Every time I move, more fluff comes tumbling out. I'm in a closet that contains no diapers (except the ones in the diaper can), and no lower-half garments except dress pants, and I'm not pulling on dress pants in order to stroll over to the bathroom. Luckily, I had deposited a new diaper on the countertop in the bathroom, for after my shower. 

I'm frozen in place for a moment, and then I decide to slip out of the closet and get to the washroom as quickly as I can; I'm worried that my beloved is going to be vexed, and/or disgusted, if I'm dropping wet diaper fluff and swollen polymer beads along behind me, plus, the dog is in the room - would he try to eat it? Probably. But it's a bit like trying to clean up blood while still bleeding heavily - if I don't deal with the source first, I'm going to make a bigger mess. I should probably have taken the diaper off and sprinted back naked below the waist, but I was still hoping to keep the whole episode off of my wife's radar at that point, and strolling out of the closet naked would have raised eyebrows. 

I sidestepped from the closet to the bathroom door, aware that some fluff grazed my legs as I went, and quickly slipped into the bathroom, closing the door. Chunks of diaper fluff are falling everywhere. I jump into the shower stall and take the diaper off to examine it... yup, quite the gash has been opened up on the lower rear. There's diaper fluff all over the bathroom floor. 

I ball up the diaper and fire it into the trash can, then take a spray bottle of Lysol and do my best to clean the bathroom floor up, which is no easy thing - the beads have minds of their own and don't want to come up with the paper towel. You almost need a broom or a vacuum, neither of which I had. Then, I consider my position... do I want to put my clean new diaper on before taking a shower? No. I figured that the mess in the closet was contained, and that whatever bits of fluff had fallen between the closet and the bathroom might not get noticed - the dog had been on the bed, playing with a toy. 

This was a mistake. 

I took a quick shower and stepped back out onto the bathroom floor, not realizing that SAP beads and Lysol apparently form a film with the friction coefficient of Teflon. As soon as I stepped out of the shower stall, I went down with a crash, landing between the toilet and the glass wall of the shower stall, which was a split-second decision, as I didn't want to go crashing THROUGH the plate glass - that would have been an even more hilarious story. Cue me, covered in blood, trying to get into a Lil' Monster (the diaper on the counter) for the ambulance ride. 

I survived the fall unscathed except for a sore hand that I jammed into the baseboard, and a couple of bruises. But meanwhile, the whole household has heard the crash, and they're all yelling "DAD, are you OKAY?!?" at the same time. I don't want them crashing through the door to the spectacle of me naked on the floor like an albino manatee, so I yell that I'm fine. I get up, rinse off again (see the part where I fell next to the toilet), dry off, and put my diaper on. Meanwhile, I'm hearing some commotion outside the bathroom door, which I assume is related to them hearing my impact with the terrain. I open the door to my wife yelling that the dog is eating something on the floor, and she thinks it's insulation. 

Sigh. The gig is up. 

"It's not insulation - it's diaper fluff. I ripped my diaper on the dog crate before my shower, apparently."

"Well is it TOXIC!?!!"

Sigh. 

"No, it's not toxic. It's the same stuff they put in baby diapers."

"How do you know it's not toxic?"

"Because babies and toddlers around the world carry it around with them 24 hours a day. Believe me, it has been eaten before. Dogs have eaten diapers before - our own dog ate part of a diaper years ago, remember? It's not toxic." 

"Well keep your fluff in your diapers, please." 

Gladly. 

I grabbed the Lysol and the paper towels, she grabbed the dog, and I crawled along the floor between the bathroom and the closet, spraying and wiping up diaper fluff, while the dog barked furiously, me vaguely wishing that I had something else on, besides a big printed diaper. 

[Little Sherri]

I had another couple of "damn this ridiculous wardrobe decision" moments last night. My wife and I were arguing about money; not an uncommon phenomenon in marriages, obviously. She's planning a vacation with a friend for her birthday, which I was fine with, but then she said that she was saving the money herself, and that I wasn't contributing... which I objected to, because she's "saving" the money by removing it from our general revenue, which is around 75% funded by me. We treat all the money as family money, so it's not that I feel I have a 75% claim to our shared "wealth" (I use that term loosely), but, I felt it was disingenuous to say that I'm "not contributing" because I've yet to come to the table with an offering. I knew the money was coming out of our shared account, but I had also planned to gift her with some spending money on her actual birthday. I didn't feel like I needed to make some grand gesture months prior to the event. Which apparently I do. 

Anyway, we were having this slightly heated discussion while I was wearing a Critter Caboose, a super-sized plastic Rearz diaper decorated with animal characters. My size has a giant purple panda on the butt. At one point, she referred to me as "Kung Fu Panda". As in "Chill out, Kung Fu Panda."  Sigh. 

Then, we settled down to watch a TV show; I was reading a book and she put on an episode of whatever the continuation is of the Way-too-many Kids and Counting show that got taken off the air because one of the brothers allegedly got handsy with some of his siblings. The episode she was watching centered on a baby shower - they're always having babies - and one of the games they played at the giant shower (with a couple of hundred guests) was a competition in diapering dolls with your eyes closed. SO they're holding up diapered dolls and diapers, and saying "baby diapers" over and over again. I'm lying there in, of course, my big baby diaper, and a t-shirt, and I felt like the moment was "pregnant", to use a pun, and I wanted it to be over. But because the Universe has a sense of humour, it went on for several minutes, while I tried not to glance at her. I wanted to pull a blanket up over myself, but that would have only underlined the moment. 

 

[WBxx]

There are no “shared accounts” here.  Wife has her accounts and I have mine.  Wife is responsible for certain expenses and I take care of the rest.  Beyond that we each buy and pay for whatever we individually want.  In decades of marriage we’ve argued about many things but never once money.  Then again we live well below our means which makes spending a moot point.