24/7 startups, and unexpected pitfalls?

[oznl]

10 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Actually, @oznl, I retract my question - I see they have a pretty thorough sizing guide on their site. Now I have to find out if they have a distributor in Canada; their "find a dealer" map only includes the US. Otherwise I can order via one of the US options. I shall report back. 

The only comment I'd add is that for this kind of use over a disposable, a firmer fit is a better fit.  My waist is massive at between 42 - 44" depending on the day although I seem to get away with 40" pants even with a nappy, even a 38" without.   Using the Gary PUL over a disposable, a simple "large" is just fine for me.  I have an "XL" somewhere but frankly, it's a bit puffy although it goes well over a cloth diaper.

[Little Sherri]

Thanks for that, @oznl - that's exactly the kind of advice I'm looking for. 

Well, I took a small step today that felt like a big step; having run about five times now in a nappy, I can say that my success seems not have been a fluke. As an aside, I think that perhaps my problems with wearing a diaper on the treadmill the last time I tired may have stemmed from a persistent case of diaper rash that kept recurring every several days or so, even when I was sure that I had it beaten down. I finally decided to heed the directions on the medicated spray I was using, and I went two weeks straight using it twice a day, long after all signs had vanished. Voila, no diaper rash in months, thus confirming my suspicion that most irritation down there is fungal in origin, not bacterial, assuming you're being reasonably fastidious about hygiene. 

So, the big small step I've taken was hunting down all of my boxers, putting them into a bag, tying it off, and stuffing it up into the storage shelf I suspended from the ceiling of my garage, for the winter tires. So if I want to revert to wearing boxers, I'll need to drag out a ladder and move some tires, or go do some shopping. It's not exactly insurmountable, but, much like requiring that guns be locked in a cabinet, accessing my big-boy underwear will require me to give a second thought to what I'm about to do. Maybe I should put the Scotch and the Bourbon up there. No. Too much climbing. 

This is a step further than the one I already took, placing my remaining boxers into a bin in my basement, next to my treadmill, with my running shoes and martial arts gear. I have a vague plan to toss it when I dig out the winter tires, if I haven't had to pull it down for any reason by then. Next up: measuring myself for some Gary Athletic PUL pants, so that I can conduct some experiments with wearing a diaper during training, once the gyms open back up. 

[Little Sherri]

In a surprising turn of events, I think that my camouflage-print cargo shorts might actually provide... camouflage? I don't think that they'd conceal me if I laid down in tall grass, but I have them on over a Rearz Alpaca, which Rearz bills as a "nighttime diaper", and I can confirm that these are near the top of the capacity hierarchy, but also right at the pinnacle of bulk, and not quiet, either. However, when I woke up this morning, the diaper was probably at less than 25% of its capacity, so I was reluctant to discard it for something slimmer. I decided that the acid test would be asking my spouse for her opinion on it. The dog needed walking, so I pulled the aforementioned shorts up over my diaper, pulled on a long t-shirt, then put forth the question: "Does this work, or do you think I'm going to alarm the neighbours?" She gave me a bit of an eye-roll, but then an up-and-down visual once-over, and said "I don't think anyone would notice." I took that as a thumbs up to proceed. The crunch-crunch-crunch of the diaper was audible to me, but outside, with the ambient background noise, I didn't think it would stand out to anyone else. Nobody gave me a second look. 

As a side note to that, the neighbour whom I think might have  detected something, has sold her house. This isn't the recent incident in my garage with the next-door neighbour's grown daughter; this was about a year ago. I ran into the lady from two houses over, in the evening, after ill-advisedly deciding to wear light running shorts over a bulky Rearz Barnyard; she was out for a cigarette. Then she got chatty, and when I eventually walked away from her, and looked back, I saw her with her arms crossed, watching me walk away, looking either puzzled or bemused. I might have been a little too obvious about trying to keep myself oriented front-forward as my dog sniffed around and pulled me in this and that direction. I'd been hoping that she would be the one to walk away first, but she was in no hurry, and once the conversation drifted off, I said, well, nice seeing you, and walked backwards away for a few steps, then pivoted and walked forward, but I feigned untangling the leash as an excuse to turn around one more time when I was maybe forty feet away, and it was during that rotation that I realized that she had been watching me walk away the entire time. She's an acquaintance of my wife's, and she never said anything, so, whatever might have come of it, hasn't, and now she lives somewhere else. 

As I type this I am watching a meeting with my other eye, mostly mundane, month-end stuff. I'm reminded once again, though, of how damned convenient it is to be in a diaper for these meetings, although I guess the corollary to that "convenience" is, while I assume most of my colleagues do not wear diapers, neither are they used to weeing every 7 - 15 minutes throughout the day, so for them, 90 or 120 minutes in a chair is not interminable. Whereas I would be in agony, or the chair would be wet. This line of thought also makes me wonder how many long-haul truckers there are in this community - diapers would seem like an ideal preoccupation for people who drive for 12 or 14 hours a day. 

[oznl]

9 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

As I type this I am watching a meeting with my other eye, mostly mundane, month-end stuff. I'm reminded once again, though, of how damned convenient it is to be in a diaper for these meetings, although I guess the corollary to that "convenience" is, while I assume most of my colleagues do not wear diapers, neither are they used to weeing every 7 - 15 minutes throughout the day, so for them, 90 or 120 minutes in a chair is not interminable. Whereas I would be in agony, or the chair would be wet. This line of thought also makes me wonder how many long-haul truckers there are in this community - diapers would seem like an ideal preoccupation for people who drive for 12 or 14 hours a day. 

This plays into my theory of “you don’t know you’ve got ‘til it’s gone” (with apologies to Joni Mitchell).  Although I regard myself as continent (during the day at least), a vanishingly-rare field trip to supervise some work a few months back revealed to me that I no longer had the bladder capacity to accomplish that without nappies.  My nappies were more than convenient, they were operationally necessary.  Although I chose to use them as required, the frequency of that requirement was such that I didn't really have an alternative.

My work-from-home cadence has been marked by periods of near-idleness interspersed with days of more or less back to back zoom meetings.  In the latter, without my nappies I would have simply had to excuse myself periodically, awkward when these meetings may be 1:1. 

There was an early policy to end meetings 10 minutes before the hour but only start them at the hour giving staff 600 seconds of downtime but it fell by the wayside.

[Little Sherri]

I'm enjoying another rare t-shirt-and-diaper day around the house, my wife and kids having hit the road to go have a socially-distanced lunch with my in-laws. These days with the summer weather, I'm often in a shirt & diaper pairing later in the evening, once the sprogs have gone to bed, or, in the case of my eldest, to her midnight-to-4-AM video chat, but other than that, I typically have a pair of cargo shorts on over whatever I'm taped into. A regret that comes immediately to mind from my childhood is not "enjoying" being in just a diaper at the time. Other than when I slept, I didn't spend a lot of time without something on over my diaper, and even at night, most of the time I wore pajamas, other than maybe at the height of summer. I don't have very vivid recollections of how it "felt" to be in a diaper back then, though - I wish I did. There were moments that left a lasting impression, but usually not good ones. However I also know that I spent a lot of time that I don't recall very clearly, lounging around in Pampers, so, since I don't vividly recall most of it, I have to assume that it wasn't terrible? There have been some threads here where people have mused about when they think they first developed their DL side, and I have concluded that it was obviously pretty early for me - I recall being fascinated with other people who wore diapers when I was only 4 or 5. But that said, I don't really recall ever "looking forward" to being diapered, though, clearly, I missed it once the necessity had passed, so much so that I eventually crafted my own diapers, and put them on in secret. But I also didn't kick up much of a fuss about it. I'm not sure if that was because I was already deriving some pleasure, or at least some comfort, from my plastic underpants, or if it was just because I was in general a fairly cooperative kid, always eager to please. 

In other news, I was reminded that despite being somewhat of a diaper veteran, I can still make rookie mistakes; I was sitting at my desk in a Rearz Alpaca, enjoying their cloud-like softness and commendable capacity, thinking to myself as I plodded through meeting after meeting, that at least I didn't have to worry about my diaper for a while, when I became aware of a lingering dampness up by my navel. I didn't pay much attention to it at first, because an Alpaca in size large is a high-rise diaper, so a good portion of the front of me was in the tropical zone, so to speak, but the feeling became more and more insistent, so during a break, I went to pull my shirt up and have a look... and then I realized that I had tucked the bottom of the front of my t-shirt into my diaper. Again. Putting me in the position of not needing to change my diaper, but, needing a change of clothes - the dampness had wicked up the shirt and crossed into the front of my shorts. 

[Little Sherri]

I attended my first martial arts class in the new socially-distanced format at the gym. It was essentially an intense workout class with exercises aimed at mimicking the motions of fighting - we hit bags and engaged kick pads in mortal combat. It felt really good, though, and working on being precise with the motions, rather than fast, seemed worth the effort - looking around, you could tell who the longer-tenure martial artists were, versus the people who just started, based on the fluidity and biomechanics of their strikes and kicks. We might not learn much from these activities, but they will keep us fit, and they may slow the process of losing skills that go unpracticed. 

As to wearing a diaper at the gym, I decided to forego one for the first trip, although, given that the washrooms are now closed off, wearing a diaper there would be practical. But I wanted to test-drive the new format without being distracted by whether or not my diaper might be peaking out from my pants while I repeatedly dropped to the floor and jumped back up, etc. So, reluctantly, I climbed a ladder in my garage, reached behind the winter tires, and extracted a pair of boxer shorts to wear for the class. Being out of a diaper for about 90 minutes felt very weird, although, true to form, heavy exertion basically diverted all of my fluid output to sweat, so I didn't experience any real urgency until right before I arrived in my driveway, and I was able to hold it long enough to make it into the shower. Getting back into a diaper afterwards felt great. 

My conclusion is that it would not be impossible to wear a diaper while training, but, much like my experience with wearing a diaper at work, the key, I think, will be having some good onesies in inventory. I wear a black t-shirt under my gi, so a black onesie would for all intents and purposes do the same thing, while also protecting me from waistband diaper excursions when bent over or crouched, etc. I have a couple of onesies in black and a few in white, but I will need to get more of them. I find t-shirts tend to wear out and/or get sweat stained pretty quickly. I think that if I couple a onesie with one of the Gary Active PUL boxer-like covers, I might be able to forever part ways with my diminishing collection of boxer shorts. 

[Little Sherri]

I have another diaper dream to report, and this one was a bit disturbing, emotionally, when I was in the midst of it. Freud would have a field-day with this; the gist of the dream was that we were at an event of some sort, and my wife and my mother were talking. I was standing just far enough away from them not to be able to make out most of what they were saying, but I believed in the dream that I did distinctly discern that my wife said "He's wearing diapers again." I then went through a complete wash-rinse-tumble dry barrage of emotions, which were very realistic in the dream; I was initially deeply pissed off that my wife would bring that up with anyone, let alone my mother, but, we were at a public event, so I couldn't just up and ask her if she'd lost her mind, without drawing attention to the conversation. Then, I felt panicked - now that my mom knows, who might she tell? Who else had my wife told? Why was this coming up at all? Then, in the dream, I started doubting myself... what was I doing? Was I willing to publicly own it and defend it? Was it time to abort the mission? But then, interestingly, I had a breakthrough, in the dream - I talked myself down. I realized that my mom had known that I wore diapers before, back when I was a kid, and as far as I knew, she kept my secret - maybe a couple of my aunts knew, but, the information never made its way outside of the walls of our house for the most part. So, what were the odds that she'd take out an ad in the paper now? Next, I transitioned to feeling relief  - "Okay, so it's out there. I'm committed to this. People will have to take me for what I am, and my plastic underwear preferences are one minor part of that. If I lose friends over it, then they weren't very good friends." 

Because the universe has a sense of humour, I came out of this dream to the sound of my dog barking... someone was at my door. I hopped out of bed, hauled a pair of shorts up over my diaper, and bounded down the stairs to try and stop the dog from waking up the whole house. I thought it might be related to some work being done on the utilities by the city, which I was told might end up involving a foray onto my lawn, but, no, I had forgotten that a friend was coming by to borrow a ladder. So there I was in shorts, over a Rearz 'Lil Monster that wasn't so 'lil any more, no coffee in me yet, talking about the hockey game from the previous night (tragic), and extricating my ladder for him. We tied it to the roof of his car, and I was remarkably nonchalant about whether or not my pendulous diaper could be detected - I couldn't even check, lest I draw attention to it, but he seemed not to skip a beat, so I assume it went unnoticed. It wasn't until he drove away that I realized that the ladder he took was the only access I had to my underwear, tucked away as it was, in behind my winter tires on the ceiling of my garage.  My plan in any case was to stay on course and in diapers, but now I'd have to either acquire a ladder, or go shopping, if I changed my mind. 

[Little Sherri]

Well, having loaned out my ladder, my underwear remains marooned behind my winter tires on the ceiling of my garage. We did a laundry sort this weekend, dumping baskets of intermingled clean laundry onto our bed and sorting out what belonged to whom, and putting everyone's belongings into separate baskets. It has been a busy couple of weeks, so we hadn't done a big laundry sort in a while, so I wasn't sure if any of my boxers might have been lingering in the system, but, nope, when everyone had extracted their clothes, my basket contained no underwear. I don't know if my wife made note of that or not - she was folding my stuff - more on that momentarily. I don't think my kids would have noticed or cared. If I don't get my ladder back by tomorrow then I will be going to the gym in a diaper and a onesie, I guess, unless I want to go buy more boxers. Or build a ladder. 

I'd planned to be in diapers all week in any case - I've been in diapers all week for the last ~72 weeks or so - but I do feel slightly different now that I really can't wear anything else without going out of my way. I took the liberty of expanding my diaper empire into another of my dresser drawers; when I first started putting diapers in my dresser, I put them in with my sleepwear. When I took the step of moving my boxers down to the basement with my exercise equipment, the "socks and underwear drawer" became just the sock drawer. Well, now I'm breaking out my daytime and nighttime diapers - some BetterDry's and Bambino's and Safari's and Alpaca's and the like are in the bottom drawer with the t-shirts I sleep in, while some daytime diapers, such as the medium-sized 'Lil Monsters and the Prevails and medium Elite's are now in with the socks. I'm curious as to if that registered with my wife when she was putting my socks away. Probably. 

Not that it would be breaking news to her; earlier this week, when we were rearranging the basement, she helped me stack four cases of diapers under the stairs, and on top of that, I have a shelf in the basement with two bags on it, plus two bags in my closet, plus a full shelf in my closet, plus two half-filled dresser drawer. Oh, and the cloth diaper/plastic pants shelf. 

I'm curious as to how you folks contend with your used diapers; I know a couple of you have a dedicated pail. I've just been tossing them into the garbage can in our bathroom, and then emptying the can on a daily basis - garbage removal is on my chore list, anyway. But there is always the risk of one of the kids seeing a diaper in the trash - that happened once already - and also, it's inconvenient to be emptying it on a daily basis, but that can will only contain two or three adult nappies. I've looked at some of the diaper systems - the Diaper Genie comes to mind, we used to have one when the kids were at that stage - but I'm not sure if they'd reliably ingest diapers this big. 

 

[adhb]

I put used diapers in a plastic bag from the grocery store, each of which will usually hold 4 wet diapers. When a bag is full, I tie it shut and put it in the garbage container outdoors

[oznl]

On 8/11/2020 at 12:01 AM, Little Sherri said:

I'm curious as to how you folks contend with your used diapers; I know a couple of you have a dedicated pail. I've just been tossing them into the garbage can in our bathroom, and then emptying the can on a daily basis - garbage removal is on my chore list, anyway. But there is always the risk of one of the kids seeing a diaper in the trash - that happened once already - and also, it's inconvenient to be emptying it on a daily basis, but that can will only contain two or three adult nappies. I've looked at some of the diaper systems - the Diaper Genie comes to mind, we used to have one when the kids were at that stage - but I'm not sure if they'd reliably ingest diapers this big. 

 

An anonymous-but-dedicated, nearly-air-tight pedal bin in a corner of my small study (which is a no-go zone for the rest of the family).  The bin has a trash bag liner and the occasional squirt of enzymatic odor neutraliser.  When emptying, I tie off the trash bag, pull it out and carry it downstairs and out to the wheelie bin.  I usually empty my diaper bin twice per week.  It would be more but i usually manage a couple of nights and days in cloth diapers.  Obviously, only wet diapers are disposed of thusly but anything else would be vanishingly rare.

I thought that anything diaper-specific would end up a conversation piece (the one that I inadvertently triggered at the gym has a big label embossed on its lid that says "nappy disposal") and I'm also trying to limit single-use plastics as much as possible.   A lot of these things use vendor-specific consumables.  I'm not exactly a greenie but I try not to be too big a part of the plastic problem.

A future diapered-life-crisis I can see is when our local council green-washes a cost saving initiative and replaces our capacious 240 litre wheelie bin with something the size of a biscuit barrel and calls it environmentalism.  This has already happened in other councils.  Dark rumours abound for parents of nappy-clad children or incontinent adults being able to pay extra for a normal size "red" bin to advertise to the whole street of one's condition...

 

[Little Sherri]

15 hours ago, oznl said:

Dark rumours abound for parents of nappy-clad children or incontinent adults being able to pay extra for a normal size "red" bin to advertise to the whole street of one's condition..

The Scarlet Bin... grim indeed. You'll have to adopt an incontinent dog; there are canine incontinence products. Thus will your daily treks about the neighbourhood with your diapered dog deflect inquisitions regarding your own daily diapered treks. I would imagine that if you called some shelters specifically requesting an incontinent dog, there would be an enthusiastic response... "Uh... hang on... DAVE! WAIT! Don't gas that one yet... Yes, we do have one for adoption....". 

They handle this a bit better around here; they've reduced our garbage pickup to biweekly, and reduced the permitted number of containers to two, but put no restrictions on what a "container" might be, so in my case, I have a large garbage can that can hold two to three bags easily, and if I need to, I can put a second container out. You can purchase the right to dispose of more trash via tags, and they provide an allowance of additional tags for people who have kids, or, presumably, other family members in nappies. No word on dogs. 

16 hours ago, oznl said:

I thought that anything diaper-specific would end up a conversation piece (the one that I inadvertently triggered at the gym has a big label embossed on its lid that says "nappy disposal")

This was my thought as well - it would be a bit obvious. I have a buddy who has two kids who both wear pull-ups at night, and they have continued to use the nappy containment device they've had since the kids were small, which is eminently practical, however, it is located in their main upstairs bathroom... and it is prominently branded. Which has lead to my kids asking, when they've been over there, why they still have a "Diaper Genie" when their kids are 11 and 9. So, I already have evidence that such a thing would not go unnoticed. 

Speaking of going unnoticed, I wore a diaper under a white onesie t-shirt to my martial arts class yesterday, and I think that, as long as the classes remain, by pandemic-imposed necessity, a contact-less affair, this solution is going to work. I will need to get some more onesies, however, unless I decide that the ones I used as undershirts under work clothes are no longer necessary, because I'm not going to be going anywhere for work in the near future, anyway. Once they've been consigned to gym duty, they get beaten up pretty quickly - stretched out and sweat-stained. Having not yet retrieved my ladder from my buddy, I'm glad this solution proved roadworthy, because all my boxers are marooned on the ceiling of my garage. 

[Little Sherri]

Goddamn it, I soaked the bottom front of my t-shirt again. It somehow ended up partly inside my diaper, and I was in the saddle for a two-hour meeting. This is the second time I've experienced this "failure mode" inside of two weeks, although this time, as far as I can recall, I didn't tuck it into my diaper, it somehow worked its way in there itself. I have not been in the habit of wearing onesies around the house on days that I'm not going anywhere, but a onesie would prevent this. 

[oznl]

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Goddamn it, I soaked the bottom front of my t-shirt again. It somehow ended up partly inside my diaper, and I was in the saddle for a two-hour meeting. This is the second time I've experienced this "failure mode" inside of two weeks, although this time, as far as I can recall, I didn't tuck it into my diaper, it somehow worked its way in there itself. I have not been in the habit of wearing onesies around the house on days that I'm not going anywhere, but a onesie would prevent this. 

This is where plastic pants are my friends.  I've discovered the decadently-comfortable-but-infuriatingly-leak-prone ABU Simples will occasionally leak in this way (they mostly leak in other ways).  This diaper rides high at the front.  The top front edge of the diaper is prone to flipping downwards/outwards under my too-big-belly (physical activity seems to provoke this), exposing wet padding to whatever is next to it, usually the bottom of my t-shirt and if I'm especially lucky, the top of my jeans.

[Little Sherri]

Well, I have my ladder back, so I could in theory once again access my last remaining boxer shorts, which are tucked up on a shelf, suspended from the roof of my garage, behind my winter tires. This was hardly an acid test of my nappy resolve, given that I've already, for example, visited another continent with only diapers packed for underwear, but, it has proven out that I can engage in the last remaining activities I thought I needed boxers for: long-distance running, and martial arts. I have now successfully worn diapers while doing both, and in the case of running, several times. The only thing that could change would be if somehow, the pandemic wanes sufficiently to allow people to actually make contact with each other when training again, in which case I will have to reevaluate if I can get away with wearing diapers - in the "before times", we threw each other to and fro, and sometimes ended up entangled in a heap, and I have had people sit on my head, and have sat upon peoples heads, at least momentarily, in the fray - it might be hard to miss the notably padded feel of a diapered bottom under such circumstances. 

Still, I'm damned tempted to dispose of my boxers. I don't know why the idea gives me a bit of a thrill - nothing in my day-to-day routine would really change. And if I ever panic and decide to revert to my potty trained ways, it's not like I couldn't scrape up $9 and buy myself some more. But there is a certain finality to the idea. 

Another thing I accomplished in a diaper this week was getting notably lost, and banged up, on a mountain biking trip with a buddy of mine. We set out to follow about a 20 km trail, which doesn't sound that long when you're on bikes, but, as we progressed, the route degraded, and eventually became barely deserved of the title "trail", being more a progression of thin spots in the bush, littered with rocks, logs, and logs on rocks. At some point we concluded that we must have lost the trail, so we followed a path that looked less arduous, but it ended at a fantastically scenic cliff, overlooking a lake - a lake that we had passed by, at a lower elevation, quite a while back. So we backtracked, found the rocky scar that was apparently the mapped route, and stumbled and gashed ourselves and banged our feet off of rocks and got bitten by mosquitoes until we were most of the way back to the car, before we could once again attain speeds at which you would experience wind. 

My nappy, Prevail 360 under a onesie, held up admirably, although I was so soaked with sweat by the end of the ordeal, that even a catastrophic failure might have gone undetected, possibly even by me. 

I want to write to the manufacturer and propose that they cease using imagery of confident grandparents playing with their grandchildren on perfectly manicured lawns, and instead, enlist some testimonials from endurance athletes. "I ran the New York Marathon in a Prevail 360, and then I wore it home." "I placed 7th in the Tour de France, and never broke a tab." 

[Little Sherri]

I don't have much new to report over the weekend. I went on a 20 km trail ride with some buddies; a couple of them were wearing biking shorts with padded rears, and of course my rear was padded as well,  comfortably swaddled in a Rearz Lil' Monster, which held up pretty well to the punishment. I found that when I went to change it after arriving home, the inner lining had separated from the shell down in the middle of the diaper, and some of the stuffing was sticking to me, but none of it had escaped, and given the extreme forces it was probably subject to over the course of that 20 km's of pounding up and down hills, I'd say the diaper did about as well as could be expected. 

We went and looked at a house that's a bit out in the country compared with our current abode; it was a study in trade-offs, because the price is pretty much exactly what we expect we could get for our place. In the exchange, we would be getting a swimming pool at about the middle of its design life, a lot at least 4 x as large as the one we have now, a well-finished house of almost exactly the same size, but 80 years older, and, my favourite part, a giant, separate garage with a loft over it, where I imagine I'd be spending a lot of my time. My wife remarked that given what it must have cost to build it, she was surprised that it didn't have a washroom. I just shrugged. My mind turned to the nappy I was wearing. I'll make do. One thing I wanted but that we wouldn't get if we sprung for this place is a backyard private enough for open diaper lounging. This house has a lovely backyard, and the nearest neighbouring house is a few hundred feet away, but sits up on a hill and has a lot of windows. Ah, well, you can't have everything. In any case, I haven't broached this long-term goal with my wife, and I don't think she puts it quite as high on her list as it is on mine. 

Speaking of diaper lounging, my wife mentioned my unmentionables last night, when I dug out a very old pair of athletic shorts emblazoned with the crest of the university I attended. I pulled them on over a Bambino Magnifico, and at some point I indicated that I was going to put the garbage out and take the dog for a walk, and uncharacteristically, she said "Like THAT?", which gave me pause, because she basically never comments on where or when I wear a diaper anymore. I girded myself for what, I worried, might become a charged exchange, and said something along the lines of "What do you mean, 'like this'?", but it turned out that she wasn't commenting on the diaper, per se, but on the shorts, which, admittedly, might have fit me better 25 years ago. "I can see your... undies... from behind. Go with smaller undies or larger shorts." So I switched back to the middle-aged dad uniform of the summer, IE cargo shorts, and asked "How's this then?", to which she studied me, and then said "You're fine." In retrospect, I think she was probably doing me a favour in saying something - a Bambino Magnifico is at the top end of bulky, high-capacity diapers, and although this one was in a medium size, it had also been in service for a few hours, and the rear had become somewhat pendulous, although it was nowhere near spent, as confirmed by the fact that as I type this, I'm still wearing it - I ended up sleeping in it. I think perhaps I've become so used to whiling away the days in some of my larger diapers, that I've become overconfident about how far I can go with it.

Which is somewhat amazing, considering that for about the first year of this 24/7 experiment, other than for dog walks in the dead of night, I never left the house in anything other than a slim, cloth-backed diaper. I had more or less resigned myself to wearing bulkier plastic diapers only when operating around the house, despite my preference for them, but with coaching from some of the fine people I've interacted with herein, I am living my dream, such as it is, largely able to go about my business wearing true ABDL products most of the time. But putting a Magnifico under snug shorts was perhaps a step too far. 

[Stroller]

17 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

So I switched back to the middle-aged dad uniform of the summer, IE cargo shorts, and asked "How's this then?", to which she studied me, and then said "You're fine." In retrospect, I think she was probably doing me a favour in saying something

Well it's a degree of involvement from her isn't it?  I grab those moments whenever I can.  When my wife does something like that it's very much a part of looking after me.  I wish it happened more, really.  She doesn't really like to see me in my Tykables dungarees, for instance, because the cut and the stretchy material don't really look right.  She's OK with dungarees, but not with those ones.  I still wear them sometimes (with a top over them if I'm in public), but she's helping me with a project to make some better street-going short leg dungarees out of two pairs of cargo shorts.  This morning in bed she looked at the pyjamas I was in (little monsters jamas, that she made), and said the material hadn't washed well, and that she needed to make me some more.  I love those moments.  I'm pretty lucky really.  Perhaps you may be able to get your wife to become more of a collaborator too?

[Little Sherri]

5 hours ago, Stroller said:

Perhaps you may be able to get your wife to become more of a collaborator too?

That would definitely make me happy, and congrats on your success in bringing your wife a bit on board, so to speak. Although I can't complain much; I went from wearing diapers only at night, and in secret, to being in them all the time, within a few short months, as well as openly storing diapers in our house (openly to her - I keep them hidden from the kids), and, when the kids aren't around, I can wear just a diaper and a shirt. I've slept with a pacifier for the past year and a half or so, although as a side note, that at least partially benefits her, because she used to wake me up a few times a week over alleged tooth clicking that I apparently engage in when falling asleep, and the paci completely eliminates that. I still haven't asked her what she thinks this is all about, but I appreciate her acceptance. 

I probably wouldn't mind a degree of greater participation, but I don't know that I want her to take over a full "mommy" role - "mom stuff" and "wife stuff" are pretty separate in my mind. But when she does, on very, very rare occasions, make mention of my juvenile underwear, it gives me a bit of a thrill, for sure. If she spies a saggy diaper and says "Don't you think you should change that?", I jump - first of all, because I don't want to irritate her, and secondly, there is a part of me that wouldn't mind submitting, playfully, to a bit of "control" in that regard. But I don't think I want to be on my back, legs up, getting swabbed by her - I think it would be asking too much of her, and I'd be afraid that it might damage our relationship. On one occasion when I was trying a one-handed diaper repair using packing tape - a tab had torn off - and she asked me if I needed help, it was like the clouds parted and a shaft of light shined down. I handed her the tape, expecting that she'd help me rip a piece off, but instead, she pulled out about a two-foot strip, said I was over-complicating things, and unceremoniously applied it across the entire front of my diaper, from hip to hip, effectively locking me into it, which was a bit of a thrill. I stayed in that diaper until it was well and truly spent. 

She also bought me a sleeper, granted, a sober grey one, but I really enjoy lounging around in it, over a diaper, in the winter months. I want to get another one with maybe a bit of a print on it - what would be cool, albeit perhaps hard to find, would be one that zips up the back, so that getting into or out of it unassisted would take some effort - maybe that would be a level of "participation" I could come to enjoy, and that wouldn't be asking a lot of her. Although of course I'd be setting myself up for an hilarious episode of "how do I get out of this thing" when, at 4 AM, one of the smoke detectors malfunctions, or the dog starts throwing up, and I'm trapped in toddler's pajamas. 

Speaking of toddler's clothing, I'm in a Rearz Barnyard right now; I haven't spent the day in one of these in quite a while, because I've bought a variety of diapers since I got these, including in particular a smoking deal I got on cases of Lil' Monsters that I've been burning through, so I haven't thrown one into the rotation recently. I have to say that I forgot how big these things are. In a size large, this is a BIG diaper - it comes up well above my navel in front, the and almost half way up my back at the rear. Very crinkly as well. However I will probably be in my office for a good part of the day, so I think I can get away with it. 

[Stroller]

1 hour ago, Little Sherri said:

She also bought me a sleeper, granted, a sober grey one, but I really enjoy lounging around in it, over a diaper, in the winter months. I want to get another one with maybe a bit of a print on it - what would be cool, albeit perhaps hard to find, would be one that zips up the back, so that getting into or out of it unassisted would take some effort

My wife bought me one - just as drab as yours, in navy blue rather than grey.  But I have worn it in public, eg on campsites, when we've been away together.  Heading for the campsite showers in just a nappy and a sleeper felt a bit odd to start with, but I loved it.  More recently she's made me a red one that definitely can't be worn in public.  We looked at getting one made here:  https://www.the-all-in-one-company.co.uk/

...but she baulked at the price & made me one instead.  They look good though on the website, with a range of good prints including baby ones, and the option of a rear zip.

 

[puffy_bottom]

I have a nice black watch tartan sleeper (no feet) with snaps all the way up the front from Hanna Andersson sold last F/W season. It's great, hugs my diaper and has a little bit of stretch. I have lots of their PJs but that's the only one piece. I rarely get to lounge around in it but I love when I get to.

[Little Sherri]

23 hours ago, Stroller said:

They look good though on the website, with a range of good prints including baby ones, and the option of a rear zip.

That's a cool site. 

Well, for an unheard of third time this week, my wife said the "d" word... I had some downtime between meetings and I was trying to stay productive, but without doing any actual work work, so I went on a hunt for things to do, and I realized that it had been a while since our bedding had been in the wash, so I began stripping the bed, when my wife came into the room. I guess a guy in a diaper stripping a bed looks somewhat like a guy in ski mask jamming cash into a bag, so my wife raised an eyebrow, and said "Diaper leak?" I froze in place, because that moment brought back a whole host of memories and an emotional nostalgia rush from my bedwetting childhood, but I shook it off, and just said "No, just fresh linens."

The moment took me back, though - I recalled pulling damp sheets off of my bed and wadding them into a black garbage bag, so that I could carry them through the house without it being obvious. I didn't wet the bed itself with any great frequency, because I usually slept in a diaper, but as I got larger, and the toddler diapers stayed the same size, I was starting to press their limits and sometimes there would be a failure. Also once in a blue moon my parents would test-drive putting me to bed without one, which usually meant wet sheets within a couple of days. I also recall the odd time in the wee hours (pun intended) when I woke up and needed to go #2, and I would pull one of the tabs off my diaper, which usually ripped the cover, or caused most of the glue to come off of the tab (1980's diaper technology), then I'd slide the diaper down my other leg, finish on the toilet, hitch it back up, hold the one side together, and then go wake up one of my parents to have it taped back on again, usually with scotch tape, unless it was wet already, in which case I'd toss it and get put into a new one. 

[Little Sherri]

I'm sitting here in another swollen Barnyard, contemplating the coming weekend; on item on the agenda is taking my parents over to my sister's place for lunch. I've been thinking of delicately dipping my toe into the diaper topic again, because of a couple of topics that have come up here recently, related to memories. I realize that, like most of us,  I don't have perfectly formed memories of a lot of my early life - the developing brain is still organizing itself, and a lot of data goes into the archives without being indexed for later retrieval. You sort of stumble across episodes or snippets of the buried material after being reminded (or another term would be "triggered") by events, or a conversation, or even a smell. 

I'm not at all out in the open with anyone in my extended family with respect to having put myself back in diapers over the last 18 months, and I have no wish to discuss that with my mom or my sister in particular. While, for me, this "thing" is largely non-sexual, it still falls under the category broad category of a "fetish", and talking to my mom or my sister about fetishes is not my, um, fetish. However, they do hold the keys to some information that I'm curious about, being as they were, older and more observant than I was, back in those days. 

What I'm curious about is how I got out of diapers, because I think that might offer some insight into how it is that I ended up back in diapers again. I have pretty clear memories of fashioning diapers for myself out of towels and pillow cases, and cutting leg holes into white shopping bags, when I was around 11 or 12, although I can't say for sure why I was compelled to do so, or rather, what tipped the scale and brought me from secretly wishing I was in diapers, to actually making them. However, I have almost no memories of those fateful last days when I legitimately still "wore diapers", not for recreational purposes, but because I "had to". However, my mom would have administered the transition, and my sister would have been present, and being four years older, probably has some memories that I don't. 

It's dangerous ground to tread on, though, while I'm sitting next to my wife, because she will know that while we're talking about it, under whatever I'm wearing, I'll be in a diaper. She has been remarkably sensitive about this absurd wardrobe preference... MOST of the time. She has taken the occasional veiled swipe at me, including, as I have recounted before, once asking my friend's wife if a newly purchased pair of shorts looked big on me... and of course they were big, I bought them that way, specifically to fit over a diaper, which I was wearing, in that moment when she invited everyone in the room to ponder my lower half. Thanks, honey!

My kids will be in the pool and out of earshot, and my step dad probably won't pay much attention if we aren't talking about stock prices or politics. I have no idea if my sister will offer up any insights, tune out the conversation, or use it as an opportunity to crack a joke at my expense, as she used to do when I was a kid, although, to be fair, I don't think she's made mention of it in a long time. The last time it might have been touched on by her was when her own kids were very young, and she said something along the lines of having worried, since she'd had boys, that they'd still be in diapers when they hit grade school, the implication being that girls don't engage in such nonsense. Which, I can attest, is far from true!

So, we'll see. If I can somehow introduce the topic without it being a complete non sequitur, I'll have a go at it. I have some old photos taken by my grandparents that a cousin recently sent me on Facebook, so maybe I can use them to start talking about the past, and see where it goes.  

[oznl]

11 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

It's dangerous ground to tread on

Yep.  That's about the size of it.  One of the risks we run in discussing these things openly in places like this is we may become desensitized about how, um, unusual our behaviors are out on planet real life.  It may be a mistake to conflate "normal discussion" in this environment with what might be considered normal discussion at a family BBQ, especially when it relates to behaviors that can be easily and tragically misunderstood.

With respect to the "fetish" thing, I wholly agree with you that for at least some of us, this is NOT a simple fetish.  Nevertheless, the rest-of-world is going to have its own opinions informed by scions of modern psychology such as Phil Donahue and Oprah Whinfrey and they are likely to disagree.

NOBODY wants to know that Uncle Bob has a thing for leather stockings.  Nobody at all...  Diapers, even less so.

I would tread VERY carefully.  Maybe not at all.

[Little Sherri]

I haven't had much time to post here over the last few days - busy at work, busy at home, and I still want to touch on the conversation I ended up having with my mom about when I finally got out of diapers as a kid, but I only have a quick moment right now and I wanted to mention a couple of interesting and/or mildly disturbing developments that occurred over the last couple of days. First, my wife acknowledged out loud that I "wear diapers", words she's never actually strung together before. Not that I "wear diapers at night", or "am wearing a diaper", both of which are more situational than universal. She said something to the effect of "Now that you wear diapers, we need to figure out some place for you to put them, so it's less likely one of the kids would see them." She said this after I came home from an afternoon of running errands, grabbed a new diaper from my dresser, dropped my shorts, revealing the diaper I'd had on since the morning, and went into the bathroom to change. I left the dead soldier perched precariously on top of a full trash can; in my defense, I was headed straight down to get a bag and empty it, but she wandered into the bathroom in the interim, and there it was, in all its soggy glory. I don't leave diapers in open cans for very long, but, she has a point - it would be great to have a diaper bin of some sort, something discrete. But that aside, her saying that I "wear diapers" really caused my soul to lift a bit. I do. I wear diapers. Strange that such a thing would please anyone, but here we are. 

Of course, the universe has a sense of humour, and there can be no light without darkness, so, the very next day, I got thrown a curve ball that I wasn't ready for... picture me, in the Home Depot, searching for a very particular plumbing fitting to help a friend with a project, and of course, it being Home Depot, there was nobody around to assist - I knew I was on my own. I was crouched down looking at the lowest shelves, studying the mislabeled contents of a box like a jeweler hoping to find a precious stone, and a much older, really tall, grey haired guy walked up behind me and seemed to be looking at the shelves above. We both had masks on and I wasn't too concerned about personal space implications, so I paid him no mind, and continued my inspection, when he spoke up. "I prefer Safari's."

Hmmmm.... huh? My mind didn't know what to do with that non sequitur from a random stranger in a hardware store. So this guy prefers safari's... did he mean, to hunting in the plumbing isle? I saw his point. So I said something like "Yeah I'm on a hunt for sure..." without turning around. 

Then he said "No, I prefer Safari's to Little Monsters." Again, I wasn't quick on the draw, and it took me an appreciable couple of seconds to find my bearings and realize that, no, he wasn't talking about random topics, and he wasn't out of his mind, he was talking about... my diaper. I had a Rearz Lil' Monster on. And I was crouched down really low, concentrating on the contents of a poorly-located shelf. And evidently, my diaper had made an appearance - I hadn't thrown a onesie on over it, the errand had been a last-minute addition to picking my daughter up from an activity. I was suddenly glad that she had stayed with the car while I ran in. I turned and looked up at him, and he gave me a wink, and continued on down the isle. I stood up and tucked my shirt in and watched him go, his shorts looking slightly bulky, his over-sized grey t-shirt hanging low... I'm guessing he was a fellow traveler on the diapered highway. Wearing a Safari, presumably.

Rearz being located about 40 minutes away, I guess it's not completely surprising that there would be people in these parts who are familiar with their lineup, although I've yet to meet any, but this was the first time in my life that a stranger openly acknowledged not just that I was in a diaper, but, an ABDL diaper, festooned with pink and blue and (checking inside my shorts...) yellow and purple characters. As an aside, I've actually eyed their masks, which have the same characters on them as the diapers do, my thought being, if I chose one that was cartoonish but not over the top - IE, maybe the Safari characters, but not Princess Pink - it could be a silent nod to those "in the know" when I'm out and about, but it would mean nothing to most folks. However, I'm not sure I want to start wearing an "I like diapers" pin on my jacket out in public just yet. 

Part of me wonders if that masked man might be one of you...

[oznl]

It wasn’t me.  Wrong hemisphere (would be southern), wrong outlet (would be “Bunnings”, not “Home Depot”) and most importantly, I’m not sure that I would want to raise such a topic in the great outdoors, let alone without at least implied consent from the other party.

Those lower shelves at hardware places will do it to you every time though.

Last weekend I was at Bunnings (think: “Home Depot”) and on my list was dynamic lifter fertiliser for garden.  As I was squatted down trying to haul out a 25kg sack from the bottom shelf, I felt the fresh, warm nearly-spring breeze gently caressing my lower back as my t-shirt rode up and I considered my daughter who, standing behind me, was content to let me deal with fertiliser unassisted.

Day gear was an Abena L4 under white Gary PUL pants, it probably didn’t even look that suspicious as a patch of white above my shorts but in any case, darling daughter when I looked around was completely engrossed in her smart phone and not even facing me.   

Maybe we should have a forum section called "spotted!" where these sightings can be called out (no photos) and individuals can then decide if they want to 'fess up or not.

[Stroller]

Not me either.  Although I do own a few Safaris.  My local B&Q is a bit closer than Canada too.  Would I have said anything if I saw something like he did?  I'm not sure, but quite likely I would.

Nothing like that's happened to me yet, and I do try to keep the risk down by being in a onesie whenever I leave the house.