24/7 startups, and unexpected pitfalls?

[BabyJilly_S]

Keep up the posting, as I wrote on Oznl's I will repeat here, I enjoy reading your posts and look up to both of you being further down this "road". 

[Little Sherri]

On 12/25/2021 at 6:32 PM, BabyJilly_S said:

Keep up the posting, as I wrote on Oznl's I will repeat here, I enjoy reading your posts and look up to both of you being further down this "road". 

Thanks, @BabyJilly_S - it's nice to know someone is out there reading these, and I'm not just talking to myself over here!

In my wife's family's tradition, what you do on Christmas Eve is supposedly representative of what you will do for the entire year, so I wore a big plastic diaper, a Rearz Select, the single-tab-per-side version of their Inspire line. I love a big white plastic single tab diaper; they're what I grew up in, essentially. For those of you who don't know my back-story - and fear not, those who do, for I have repeated it here many times and will not do so in detail again today - it was seeing a picture of myself in a white plastic diaper, as a kid, in front of the Christmas tree, that caused me to return to the (pre)fold, so to speak, after a 20+ year hiatus from wearing, or thinking about, disposable plastic underpants. I wish that I'd written down exactly when that was, but it was quite a while before I found this place, and I wasn't chronicling these things at the time. I didn't even really know that diapers were on the internet, I didn't know that anyone manufactured ABDL-specific products, and, I didn't know that there were many people out there who shared my views on such things. 

Today, I'm in Rearz Lil' Bella, a comfortable diaper with a cotton candy scent and cute graphics. The last couple of days I mostly wore Megamax's. I've opened up the tub of Desitin cream that my wife bought me; it has a clean, fairly neutral scent. I'm curious as to how it performs; it is supposed to be the best, you might say it's the Pampers of diaper creams. The last few days are a bit of a blur to me; I've mostly spent them drinking either red wine, or high-octane IPA's, and watching movies with the kids, while dining on leftovers. I am making a conscious effort today not to open a beer until dinner; it's way too easy these days to start on the glidepath to snoring on the couch, before the taste of coffee has completely left my mouth. A massive pandemic resurgence has dumped cold water on everyone's plans, and, the weather has dumped cold snow on everyone's cars. I have another week off from today, during which, I plan to make beer, drink beer, test the depths of Disney Plus, and, wear big plastic diapers. 

How have your holidays been so far, folks? 

[BabyJilly_S]

So far so great for me. Christmas day with the folks was lovely, good food, good company.

Trying to not eat everything is the hardest thing, following the pandemic and the extra weight I now carry, I feel the size of a house at the moment and weigh 1.5 stone over what I should. Going to have to do something about that...

 

[Little Sherri]

Well, today is my last day off, before I return to work... sitting right here where I'm typing this. The Omicron variant has upended everyone's plans, include the governments, and we are returning to semi-lockdown; no gyms, no movies, no indoor dining, gatherings limited to 5, and the kids are doing school from home. Now that we're somewhere North of 85% vaccinated, and all the evidence appears to suggest that vaccinated people seem to get through Omicron with only minor discomfort (which I can personally attest to), a lot of people are raising questions about why we are going back in time... wasn't vaccination the silver bullet? Or double vaccination? Or triple? Sigh. 

We'll have to see how the hospitalization numbers track, I guess. Even if most of us are somewhat protected, there are still around 2.2 million people in my province (Ontario), who are not, or who can't be vaccinated, and if 5% of them get really sick, that's still a hell of a lot of people clogging up the ER's and ICU's, and displacing bank executives who were supposed to have a nice, safe first heart attack that would quickly be dealt with and that they would talk about at future shareholder meetings as an inspirational story about overcoming. "Do I still run my morning 5 K? You bet I do. But now I put skim milk in my coffee..." 

So, here I sit, in a slightly wet white plastic diaper, and here I will continue to sit, in a slightly wet plastic diaper, tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day... at least working from home often allows me the luxury of working in just a diaper, something that, were I to attempt it at the office, would likely change the trajectory of my career at this company...

I am around 90 days away from having been in diapers for 3 full years. I wonder if my wife will buy me something. 

[ppdude]

3 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Well, today is my last day off, before I return to work... sitting right here where I'm typing this. The Omicron variant has upended everyone's plans, include the governments, and we are returning to semi-lockdown; no gyms, no movies, no indoor dining, gatherings limited to 5, and the kids are doing school from home. Now that we're somewhere North of 85% vaccinated, and all the evidence appears to suggest that vaccinated people seem to get through Omicron with only minor discomfort (which I can personally attest to), a lot of people are raising questions about why we are going back in time... wasn't vaccination the silver bullet? Or double vaccination? Or triple? Sigh. 

We'll have to see how the hospitalization numbers track, I guess. Even if most of us are somewhat protected, there are still around 2.2 million people in my province (Ontario), who are not, or who can't be vaccinated, and if 5% of them get really sick, that's still a hell of a lot of people clogging up the ER's and ICU's, and displacing bank executives who were supposed to have a nice, safe first heart attack that would quickly be dealt with and that they would talk about at future shareholder meetings as an inspirational story about overcoming. "Do I still run my morning 5 K? You bet I do. But now I put skim milk in my coffee..." 

 

Must suck in Canada. Not quite that stupid here but they're trying.

 

[oznl]

On 1/4/2022 at 9:35 AM, Little Sherri said:

Well, today is my last day off, before I return to work... sitting right here where I'm typing this. The Omicron variant has upended everyone's plans, include the governments, and we are returning to semi-lockdown; no gyms, no movies, no indoor dining, gatherings limited to 5, and the kids are doing school from home. Now that we're somewhere North of 85% vaccinated, and all the evidence appears to suggest that vaccinated people seem to get through Omicron with only minor discomfort (which I can personally attest to), a lot of people are raising questions about why we are going back in time... wasn't vaccination the silver bullet? Or double vaccination? Or triple? Sigh. 

We'll have to see how the hospitalization numbers track, I guess. Even if most of us are somewhat protected, there are still around 2.2 million people in my province (Ontario), who are not, or who can't be vaccinated, and if 5% of them get really sick, that's still a hell of a lot of people clogging up the ER's and ICU's, and displacing bank executives who were supposed to have a nice, safe first heart attack that would quickly be dealt with and that they would talk about at future shareholder meetings as an inspirational story about overcoming. "Do I still run my morning 5 K? You bet I do. But now I put skim milk in my coffee..."

It’s quickly heading the same way here and it sucks.  It was just beginning to look like we were getting to the end of the dismal chapter when Ommicron arrived and kicked us straight back to 2020.  I think it was this slam-dunk back into disappointment from the edge of hope that makes it sting especially.

 

[Little Sherri]

Well, it’s not very often that one says that they admire a 6-year-old, but here we are. Background; a buddy of mine has two kids, a son aged 6, and a daughter aged 8. His wife went to Mexico for a funeral on Boxing day, and has now tested positive for Covid, so she is enjoying a view of the beach in Cancun from a hotel room that she is prohibited from leaving.

My buddy has had to shift gears to working from home, because, thanks to the virility of the Omicron variant, in-person schooling has been cancelled for at least the next couple of weeks, so his kids are both attending school from home.

Him and I had beers via FaceTime last night, and he was telling me about his struggles. The part that I thought would be of interest here is this: his son never did well in online schooling and is probably also having trouble adjusting to his mom being away, and having to endure his dad’s cooking – the guy is a barbecue master, but otherwise leans heavily on the microwave. So, on the first day of school, the lad staged a “potty coup”, and refused to get up and go to the washroom during their learning breaks, which my buddy said seem to take place about every 30 minutes. But, meanwhile, the kid repeatedly got up during class to wander around or pick up a toy. You can probably guess where this is going; toward the end of the school day, his son wet his pants on the couch. Later that evening, when he tried to take the kid the washroom, the kid threw a full-on tantrum, and wet his pajamas while he was rolling around on the floor, kicking and screaming. As far as my buddy knows, his son also hasn’t pooped in a couple of days.

Exasperated and at his wit’s end, with his wife likely away for another 10 days, during which he has to work from their dining room table while also being an educational assistant to two kids, he said this to his son: “If you aren’t willing to go to the bathroom by yourself, then we’ll have to go and get you diapers. Do you want to wear diapers?”

Well, here’s where the admiration part comes in – the kid called his bluff and said “YES!!!”. His kids have never had bedwetting issues, and they did not have any pull-ups in inventory (he should have asked me…), so he had to load both of them in the car at 8 PM and drive to their local Shoppers Drug Mart. Once there, his son expressed a preference for some superhero pull-ups, but my buddy didn’t want to reward this retrograde behaviour with exciting new underpants, so he ended up buying a bag of Huggies OverNites, presumably size 6.

When he got home and put one of them on his son, the kid apparently danced around, seemingly elated about it. I was texting with him this morning, to see how it’s going, and his answer was: “I have a 6-year-old sitting next to me wearing a diaper, doing class from our dining room table, and he’s sitting still and listening to his teacher, so everything is completely f*cked, and, for the moment, going well?”

He said that he asked the kid to go potty on his first break, and the kid agreed, as long as he got to keep his diaper on afterwards.

Now, I’m sure that part of this regression is related to the kid missing his mom, and going back to online schooling, plus the general schedule disruption of the holidays, but part of me also wondered if the kid isn’t a budding “DL”, although it’s probably too early to call it that. But I know that, personally, by the time I was 6, I definitely knew that I felt “something” when it came to wearing diapers myself, or being around people who wore them. I couldn’t really say that to my buddy; he doesn’t know that when I’m sitting in his garage having a beer, I’m typically wearing a giant version of a toddler’s diaper myself. So I couldn’t really launch into a background tutorial on, first, the existence of ABDL, and, second, the minutia of my differential diagnosis. I’m probably off base anyway, because a 6-year-old doesn’t have to regress very much before they’re back into “legitimate” diaper chronology, but, when he told me that the kid is running around in his diaper, pleased as punch, and now cooperating with the program, it did make me wonder. I wish I’d had the guts to do that when I was his age, although back then, it's likely that I'd have been spanked at some point in the proceedings...

[Little Sherri]

I've spent a rare (these days) night and morning in a decadently comfortable cloth diaper and plastic pants; I came into our bedroom in the wee hours of the morning (pun there...), and upon rummaging through my diaper drawer, realized that I'd have to go to the basement to get an overnight diaper, or else I'd have to put on one of my gym diapers before going to bed, which was not going to work. I had let my upstairs diaper inventory run down, a situation I will address today. But I did not want to walk down to the basement at 2 AM - it's cold down there and I was tired. So, I went into my "Capone's Vault" - my cloth diaper drawer that almost never gets opened. I didn't want to play around with pins, I just wanted to put something on and collapse into bed, so I chose an Omutsu printed cloth diaper with Velcro closures, and whatever plastic pants my hands went to in the pitch black, which turned out to be clear ones with a blue, pink and yellow nursery print on them. It beat staying in the 80% used Rearz Select I'd been wearing while I had "garage beers" with a couple of friends that I couldn't connect with over the holidays. 

I'm still in that cloth combination now, and probably could be for most of the day, except that I have to run over to my parents' place this afternoon, and the Omutsu refers to itself as a "bulky cloth diaper", which in this case is not marketing speak - this thing IS bulky. My profile in the mirror is distinctly "bubble butt". So I will have to switch over to a disposable after lunch. I don't have any infrastructure in place for wet cloth diapers right now, because I wear them so infrequently, so I'll probably drop this one in the shower, rinse it out, and put it right into the washer, and then pile a load of towels and things that are obviously mine in with it, so that my kids won't go picking through the load, searching for a sock or whatever, before I have a chance to intercept it. 

I've written about this before, but, for some reason, cloth diapers and printed plastic pants make me bashful in front of my long-suffering wife, even though she has seen me in all manner of absurd printed diapers over the last 2.75 years. I had decided I was going to work on that, as a project - getting over that "take a deep breath and jump out of the airplane" feeling that I have when I am about to erupt through the bathroom door dressed thusly. However, last night was just about what was at hand - I'm pretty sure my wife has no idea what diaper I'm in, since I got up and got dressed while she was still asleep. Later, when this thing is sodden, I will do my level best NOT to be seen in it by her. Whereas disposables start to sag and change colour when they're wet, hinting at what's been happening, and the wetness indicators disappear on some of them, when one is in clear plastic pants, nothing is left to the imagination. 

As to which disposable I will select in its place, most likely a Rearz Lil' Something or other (Bella, Monsters, Splash), or a NorthShore Megamax. I have a number of diaper brands and models in my inventory, and I am still on a quest to burn through the outliers, but, some diapers in my inventory are novelties, and some are core staples. The Lil' diapers and the Megamax's fall into the latter category; they just feel "right" on me. The Lil' diapers may not offer the greatest capacity to be found within my array of options, but I can get a solid 8 or 10 hours out of one, and I feel confident in them - I have worn them so many times now, under so many circumstances, that I know them well, I know when they're reaching their limits, and I know that I can wear them discretely under my cloths, even when they are a bit swollen. The same goes for the Megamax, at least in medium. The Rearz diapers I always buy in large, but NorthShore cuts their products a bit more generously, so a medium works very well for a daytime diaper, whereas a large Megamax would be more like a Rearz Alpaca or Mermaid Tale - pretty much an around-the-house diaper, because like this cloth diaper I'm macerating in right now, their bulk is hard to camouflage, unless I take to wearing robes at all hours. 

I composed this ode to my core products in my head yesterday, when I was happily sitting in bed with my wife, watching one of her shows, wearing just a somewhat wet Lil' Splash. I felt like my diaper was there for me, making the moment just a bit more enjoyable, and that being able to do that was, in fact, contributing to our marital health at some low level, because before I could wear diapers in front of my wife, I would have sequestered myself in my office, or downstairs, so that I could get some "diaper time", while my wife watched whatever she wanted to watch, with just the dog as company, and then I would have crept into the bedroom at some point and put myself to bed while trying not to wake her up. Whereas now, I sit in bed, in a comfy diaper, and we chat away, or I read, while she watches whatever she wants to watch. As much as it was a giant, risky leap, I am glad that I "came clean" with my spouse, more than 2.5 years ago, as it has added immeasurably to my quality of life, if not to hers...

[Little Sherri]

Update: I am out of that Omutsu, but not because I needed to wear something less bulky; that was going to become true in a couple of hours, but isn't the case yet. What happened is, I experienced a couple of sizeable press-out leaks around the back of my legs after I was walking back and forth in a phone call for about 90 minutes, blissfully dribbling away the whole time. I had expected such a bulky cloth diaper to hold more, but then it occurred to me that this was only the second time I had worn that diaper, and only the third time it's been washed, and the instructions that come with it suggest that it won't reach peak capacity until maybe 5 wash cycles or beyond, when the material has really fluffed up.

So I have thrown them in the wash, and taken a shower, and now I'm in the adult equivalent of a Pampers Swaddler - a Prevail Per-Fit 360. I say this because I actually placed one next to a Pampers Swaddler size 7, and the construction is very similar - they have the same cloth-like cover, gathers that look like they were engineered the same way, and elasticized wings that have a lot of stretch to them and that narrow when pulled out. The single tab design of the Swaddler is somewhat different from the "full-width" tab on the 360, but the actual hook-and-loop fastener is very similar, and both are very tenacious.

On my medium-sized 360's, I find that there is a danger to trying to get the entire tab onto the landing zone - sometimes it causes the wing to start detaching from the body of the diaper at the bottom, so I tend to just land the top half of the tab on the front of the diaper, and then I fold the bottom up under the stretchy wing so that it isn't rubbing my side. Today, I was feeling experimental, so I trimmed the tab down so that it was more to scale with the Swaddler I was using for comparison, and I then I tried the diaper on - it worked very well. The modification did not create a weakness as far as I can see. I also made a few slits in the cover of the Swaddler and am employing it as a stuffer, because in slim diapers like these, I find a good kid's diaper adds a notable amount of range. Size 7 Swaddler customers are evidently a demanding lot, because these things have a remarkable amount of capacity. If I put one into a truly low-end diaper such as a Depend with tabs, the Pampers have more capacity than the Depend, despite the fact that the Pampers are designed for maybe 3 - 7 year-olds and the Depend is allegedly designed for 30 - 70 year-olds (++). 

[oznl]

5 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Update: I am out of that Omutsu, but not because I needed to wear something less bulky; that was going to become true in a couple of hours, but isn't the case yet. What happened is, I experienced a couple of sizeable press-out leaks around the back of my legs after I was walking back and forth in a phone call for about 90 minutes, blissfully dribbling away the whole time. I had expected such a bulky cloth diaper to hold more, but then it occurred to me that this was only the second time I had worn that diaper, and only the third time it's been washed, and the instructions that come with it suggest that it won't reach peak capacity until maybe 5 wash cycles or beyond, when the material has really fluffed up

I’ve got a few of the Omutsu.  They’ve definitely been washed more than five times but any stretching of their shift will result in the press-out leaks you describe.

They’ll handle overnight (limited side protection is something to watch for though) but attempting to take them past breakfast time will mean a wet chair.

A stuffer helps but you’ll have an arse the size of a Volkswagen.

They absorb well but don’t hold so well.  Squish a wet Omutsu and it gives you your pee back.  They're pretty comfortable though.

[Little Sherri]

4 hours ago, oznl said:

A stuffer helps but you’ll have an arse the size of a Volkswagen.

They absorb well but don’t hold so well.  Squish a wet Omutsu and it gives you your pee back.  They're pretty comfortable though.

I did enjoy that Volkswagen reference. I caused me to actually laugh out loud. I don't have that many hours flying the Omutsu airframe, so I thought based on their size, that they would have the indefatigable range of a good cloth diaper. Regardless, as you note, they are very, very comfortable. I will treat them like my medium-weight daytime diapers, then - the Rearz Lil' So-and-So's, and not like a Barry (Elite Hybrid). 

It has long been my contention that the universe has a sense of humour, and further evidence of that was on display today. Eldest daughter, who, it could be argued, hasn't stepped foot into the laundry room of this house since we moved here, made an appearance today, in order to run some clothes that she needs for the weekend. The damp, newly-laundered, gloriously printed Omutsu diaper that I referred to in earlier posts was, of course, sitting in the laundry machine. I only know of this because she called me to complain that she'd started the machine up, and then tried to add more items to it a half hour later, and now it was beeping at her and the door wouldn't open. So, I went over to the house and cancelled the cycle and let it drain, and then the door unlocked, and then she threw in a pair of socks, and then 30 more gallons of warm water and another couple of detergent tabs were employed, to bring 4 ounces of material up to par with everything else she'd thrown in there. 

My Omutsu sat in the dryer, not running, of course. I knew the damned thing would take about 120 minutes on the sanitize cycle to not be damp to the touch, and of course, my daughter's light-weight athletic clothing, even run a second time, would be ready for the dryer well before that. Sigh. I turned the dryer on, let it run for 45 minutes, then removed my damp diaper and stashed it in a bag under the laundry sink, and threw her clothes in the dryer, and then, once they'd been deposited into a laundry basket and taken away, I put the diaper in the dryer for round 2, 3, and 4. 

I have no idea what she made of what she'd hastily shoveled from the washer to the dryer, along with some towels. Maybe she thought it was a cushion? A hand towel? Something for cleaning the car (I bet it would do a bang up job as a chamois). I didn't, and can never, ask. 

[Little Sherri]

I'm going to transplant a bit of a conversation that occurred on @oznl's entertaining "Strange Days Indeed" 24/7 thread. We were talking about being well down the 24/7 road now, at least by neophyte standards. I know that some people here have been 24/7 for 20 + years, but for people who have just set out on this road, or are contemplating doing so, my 2.75 years, and Oz's 3 years in the saddle, can look like a far-off place. Although time flies; if you'd asked me when I set out whether I thought I'd still be doing this nearly 3 years later, I would probably have said "unlikely". But here we are. 

Oz, some other people and I were talking about how "nice" it would be to be able to turn on some kind of autopilot once in a while, and to not have to deliberately manage almost every single emission in the #1 department, other than the occasional incident that takes place while sleeping. Even those are vanishingly rare, for me. He and I have been on a similar path (I've been following his journey since before I started my own), both of us blissfully wetting our nappies every 20 or 40 minutes, in small amounts, because that's what diapers generally prefer, if you want to maximize range and minimize failures, in our experience. Doing that for a couple years has had a couple of effects that both of us have noted, including a reduced "comfort range" when holding it, and also, an inability to stop an event once it has started. I suspect this is do to not using the muscles involved with control as vigorously as we used to, rarely clenching, and generally trying to stay relaxed down there. 

However, neither he, nor I, have experienced any real loss of control, at least during the day. Not to say that we'd want to abdicate control all of the time, but, as noted above, it would be great if things could sometimes happen on their own. I'd had a few high-octane IPA's, and I started doing some research into how incontinence works in the young of our species, and basically, it comes down to the bladder automatically contracting when it reaches maybe 50 - 70% of capacity, and at that point, it tends to empty down to about 20% or less, but not entirely, before the contraction stops, the emission stops, and the kid goes on watching Paw Patrol and drinking juice until things reach the trigger point again. 

What babies and toddlers do not do is dribble all the time. And, indeed, this can be seen in older kids as well, when they experience a potty training failure - they usually lose track of the signals coming from below, and suddenly wet themselves in some quantity, rather than noticing that they're gradually wetting themselves as they go. 

So, my epiphany was, what about trying to operate like the "naturally incontinent" do, and refusing to go myself, until my body takes over? I gave that a test drive, and the long and the short of it is, it worked - sort of. I spent about 3 hours and 15 minutes in an increasing amount of discomfort, until, when I sat down in my office - and this is maybe because I spend about 8 hours a day there, always in a diaper - the dam broke, and I started leaking, gently at first, but it quickly built to a torrent, and then petered out. Voila, incontinence! I tried the experiment again, with about the same results - after about 3.5 hours, there were notable distress signals coming from below, and then all of a sudden, it happened again - a perceptible leak that built into a full-flow discharge, and then tapered off to a point where I couldn't feel it. Both times, I had the impression that I had NOT fully emptied myself, but I was once again comfortable. 

This approach has some practical impediments, however, chief among them, the fact that you have to be uncomfortable for quite a while before your body flips your brain the bird, and takes over control. Second, flooding your diapers every 3 hours makes you more prone to product failures, than more frequent, smaller emissions, in my experience. Also, I'm not sure if it's good for your kidneys to be holding it until the point where you can't anymore, as a regular practice. 

Questions I have not yet answered include:

- if you did this for an extended period of time, would your body's tolerance for your shenanigans decline, IE, would you start wetting more frequently? Or would your bladder stretch out and you'd find yourself passing more volume, less frequently? 

- does kidney output respond to being at or near capacity? Does back-pressure slow fluidic production, or is it irrelevant? 

- is this bad for your kidneys or your bladder?

I'm not sure that this is a useful path to chronic incontinence, but, it is surly a path to momentary incontinence. Results may vary. I suggest not deciding to try this on, say, a commercial aircraft, or your first day at a new job. 

[Little Sherri]

I was reading someone else's thread about the varying requirements to pick up prescriptions that include antianxiety medications, when I had another of my infrequent epiphanies, and this one wasn't even fueled by IPA. I think that perhaps I can use the "zeitgeist" growth in our collective understanding of the existence of anxiety disorders, to reduce my anxiety. 

I don't have a diagnosed anxiety disorder, and I don't take antianxiety medication, unless you count Scotch, red wine and double IPA's, but those are available without a prescription, at least currently. Although there has been talk of labelling them with carcinogen warnings that rival what is said about asbestos and plastic cement, so maybe prescriptions are coming. "Doc, it's a long weekend. I want at least a half-dozen IPA's and a couple of Imperial Stouts, a bottle of a Petit Verdot blend, and a few ounces of Lagavulin." But I digress. 

I don't have a diagnosed anxiety disorder, but, as I may have occasionally mentioned before, I do wear diapers all the time, everywhere. That's not exactly common, although it's common enough here. As to if this is how I contend with anxiety, yes, I suspect it is. Or depression, or being existentially realistic, or all of the above. 

So what was my brilliant flash of insight? Just this: while I'm not craving having my unconventional underwear preferences given the stamp of medical legitimacy, at the same time, I'm hurtling toward my 50's, and while I have been largely fortunate, inevitably, statistically, I will find myself in increasingly greater contact with the medical community, as time goes on, until one day I'm lying on a stainless steel tray, and wheeling me to a waiting nondescript black van (or nondescript autonomous black Google pod) is the last expense I extract from our public health system. 

I've already attended several appointments wearing diapers, but none of them involved in-trouser examinations, or if they did (such as having a junk ultrasound), I was given an opportunity to undress in private first, so my disposable underwear didn't get on anyone's radar. The one exception to that, which I've described here before, was an MRI that went somewhat off the rails, from a dignity perspective, when they gave me a disposable gown, due to Covid protocols, that turned out to be transparent under fluorescent light. Or, white diapers glow under bright fluorescents. Regardless, the net effect was me standing in a public waiting room in a glowing diaper. However, nobody there knew or cared who I was, which eased the mortification at least a bit. 

However, sooner or later, I'm probably going to end up in a hospital, perhaps unexpectedly, perhaps for something planned, and, when that time comes, I am going to want to be able to wear a diaper. I can't imagine piling onto the stress of whatever the moment already presents, with a sudden requirement to go a day, or several days, wearing no protection. When that time comes, it's possible that nobody will ask why this middle-aged gentlemen with his faculties otherwise largely intact, is in a big plastic diaper, but, it may come up, and up to now, I've been somewhat worried about what the hell I would say (and let's just hope they don't ask my wife first, God knows what she might blurt out...).

I think what I might go with when the time comes (and assuming I'm asked at all), is an amalgam of the truth, absent the background information that I got here of my own free will. I'll probably say that I have experienced some urge incontinence in the past (now definitely true), and that it provoked a great deal of anxiety in me (which would be true, absent nappies), and so, I am much, much more relaxed when I have a diaper on (definitely true). I'm managing it myself, have no expectation or requirement of any assistance, and plan to provide my own provisions. 

All I can hope for is that, when I'm struck down, I'm in a sober white diaper, rather than, say, a Rearz Mermaid Tale that looks like a swim diaper designed for a 5-year-old. In support of that, I pledge that the backup diaper in my travel kit will, from now on, always be white (I believe that currently it is a Rearz Lil' Monster). "The paramedics noted that there was something he very badly wanted from the trunk of his mangled car, but he couldn't form the words, and there was not a moment to spare - the helicopter was already hovering overhead. They cut all the clothing from his body, except his unicorn-themed diaper, and strapped him to the rescue litter, for the lift." 

[oznl]

13 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I was reading someone else's thread about the varying requirements to pick up prescriptions that include antianxiety medications, when I had another of my infrequent epiphanies, and this one wasn't even fueled by IPA. I think that perhaps I can use the "zeitgeist" growth in our collective understanding of the existence of anxiety disorders, to reduce my anxiety. 

I don't have a diagnosed anxiety disorder, and I don't take antianxiety medication, unless you count Scotch, red wine and double IPA's, but those are available without a prescription, at least currently.

I’m 97% sure I have an anxiety and/or depressive condition.  My kids have been thusly diagnosed and there isn’t DNA for that on their mother’s side.  All their madness is mine.  It’s just that I’m un-medicated (unless you count the nappies).  It's fortunate that I'm also 97% sure I can self-manage this: nappies help a LOT.

13 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

However, sooner or later, I'm probably going to end up in a hospital, perhaps unexpectedly, perhaps for something planned, and, when that time comes, I am going to want to be able to wear a diaper. I can't imagine piling onto the stress of whatever the moment already presents, with a sudden requirement to go a day, or several days, wearing no protection. When that time comes, it's possible that nobody will ask why this middle-aged gentlemen with his faculties otherwise largely intact, is in a big plastic diaper, but, it may come up, and up to now, I've been somewhat worried about what the hell I would say (and let's just hope they don't ask my wife first, God knows what she might blurt out...).

This is VERY much on my radar right now.  The cardio condition has not improved (which is unusual).  General COVID hysteria has kept it on the back-burner for now, all elective surgery is cancelled anyway.

I think this is why that I’ve accelerated my interest in untraining.

It’s not that I’m showing signs of incontinence, it’s more that I’m not incontinent ENOUGH.

I want to get it out of the way and avoid end up exposed to the medical fraternity in some kind of half-baked position.  If something dramatic happens, I'm going to arrive at the ER in a nappy.  Even if I don't (either I don't arrive under lights and siren or my beloved takes pity and removes my nappy whilst waiting for the meat truck), I'm most likely going to go through the excruciatingly awkward experience of repeatedly wetting a hospital bed until the nursing staff decide that "precautions" are necessary...

 

 

[Little Sherri]

9 hours ago, oznl said:

I want to get it out of the way and avoid end up exposed to the medical fraternity in some kind of half-baked position.  If something dramatic happens, I'm going to arrive at the ER in a nappy.  Even if I don't (either I don't arrive under lights and siren or my beloved takes pity and removes my nappy whilst waiting for the meat truck), I'm most likely going to go through the excruciatingly awkward experience of repeatedly wetting a hospital bed until the nursing staff decide that "precautions" are necessary...

I wish you the best, @oznl. One of the less frequently considered, more-talked-about-recently, casualties of COVID is regular medical care and professional monitoring of chronic conditions. When you back COVID cases out of the mortality statistics, at least here in Canada, more of us are dying of something. Not all of that can be explained by suicide, although the uptick in that, at least initially, was worrisome. The numbers there have allegedly stabilized, but a buddy of mine who is a firefighter said that in the first year of the pandemic, they attended more suicide attempts (and, uh, "successes") than actual fires. But, deliberate self-harm aside, people were scared off of attending the ER for anything that wasn't an immediate threat to life, so when people did drag themselves in, they were sicker. There has been a 30% decline in cancer treatments, for example. Has there been a 30% decline in cancer? That would be unlikely. 

Regarding your comment about repeatedly wetting the hospital bed until the nursing staff respond, I can report from witnessed experience that they don't fool around; both my parents ended up in the hospital about 7 years ago, at the same time, and my step-father (ironically, the same guy who found and waved my homemade diapers around in front of my family when I was 13) mysteriously wet the bed, while awake, and was seemingly unaware of it. They let that happen exactly twice, and then they put him in what they euphemistically called "pull-ups", which were awful looking tan-coloured medical diapers of unknown origin but undoubted economy. 

In other news, I am continuing to burn through outliers in my nappy diaper inventory, and in so doing, I have come to ask myself, on occasion, if a diaper deserves to be an outlier, or if it should be put on the first string. One such diaper is the Bambino Teddy that I'm in now; these are a damned comfortable diaper, not of unmanageable bulk, they stand up to activity (I helped a buddy move and assemble a treadmill in one about a week ago), and they have reasonable range and reliability. Also, the graphics are cute. Their chief detraction is their cost; I haven't tried buying them by the case, directly from Bambino, but when I buy them by the bag from my local diaper supplier, they end up costing $4.50 CAD each, which irks the Scotsman in me. But I do like them. 

 

[ppdude]

4 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Regarding your comment about repeatedly wetting the hospital bed until the nursing staff respond, I can report from witnessed experience that they don't fool around; both my parents ended up in the hospital about 7 years ago, at the same time, and my step-father (ironically, the same guy who found and waved my homemade diapers around in front of my family when I was 13) mysteriously wet the bed, while awake, and was seemingly unaware of it. They let that happen exactly twice, and then they put him in what they euphemistically called "pull-ups", which were awful looking tan-coloured medical diapers of unknown origin but undoubted economy. 

ir cost; I haven't tried buying them by the case, directly from Bambino, but when I buy them by the bag from my local diaper supplier, they end up costing $4.50 CAD each, which irks the Scotsman in me. But I do like them. 

 

Hospital experience in the good old USA, they had an institutional "one size fits all" junk disposable diaper that was way too big, and way too thin. They were cavalier about it and said if I didn't like it to bring my own. So I did. I'd hate to see what they'd do if you were in jail...

 

 

[Little Sherri]

It is amazing how thin and large they can make them, @ppdude. They're like a couple of sheets of paper towel centered in a kitchen garbage bag. Thus confirming that the nursing budget, the laundry budget, and the diaper budget are handled by different people. "Keep up the good work, Diaper Purchasing - you slashed your costs by another 20%! Meanwhile, I'm firing the Laundry Manager - his labour, water and detergent costs just keep going up."

Speaking of laundry budgets, I had a sidebar conversation recently where someone asked me if I thought that maybe my parents "liked" keeping me in diapers as a kid, IE, were one or both of them "into" diapers? That might be a fantasy rabbit hole, but in reality, I think the only thing my parents liked about my continued need to wear diapers at night, was the reduced laundering of my bed linins. They tried many times to wean me off of them, with reward systems for staying dry, and waking me up at midnight to go pee, plus the ever-present social pressure of being, for example, the only 8-year-old on the church camping trip with a diaper bag stashed in his tent or the trunk of the car. 

Also, they wasted no time in getting my brother out of diapers, since his bladder was cooperative, and there is no photographic evidence that my sister wore diapers beyond about age 3, other than one cursed pair of clear plastic pants with pink elastics that still fit on me until I was 5 or 6, but I assume that they were oversized remnants of the cloth diaper era. So I don't think that I was singled out for special treatment, beyond whatever practicality demanded. 

 

[Little Sherri]

An external stimuli that has slightly impinged upon our domestic harmony lately consists of a commercial for Gordon Ramsay's latest show, "Uncharted", where he travels the world looking for local delicacies to sample and prepare, which apparently involves much climbing of rock faces and riding of horses. Some of the shows that my wife likes to watch have been amalgamated under the banner of a TV streaming app being offered by a local TV station, so that now, instead of waiting for and trapping them when they enter our house via cable and the PVR, we can pay $12 a month for the right to download them at will from the ether. Eventually everything we watch will cost something per month, and be available on demand, at which point we will cancel our $240-a-month TV service... because we subscribe to thirty $12-a-month-streaming apps. Each with its own password. 

The app is convenient in that you can watch whatever you want whenever you want to, without being subjected to advertisements, at least in theory. In practice, what the app subjects you to, instead, is one ad before the show starts, a couple of them during it, and one at the end. All of the ads are identical, and what they advertise is... the app you are already presumably subscribed to. They're fairly long, too, consisting of clips from all the amazing shows that you can download, including the latest Ramsay offering. 

They show a few clips from his show entitled "Uncharted", including one where he watches the preparation of... something, some kind of dark paste being made in a highly rustic setting, suggestive of perhaps a tribal or aboriginal village, maybe in South America. Or Mississippi. At one point, the camera focuses on Ramsay, who says of the concoction: "That looks like the insides of a diaper." (I don't know why he didn't say "nappy"; maybe he expects the primary audience is in the US?)

My wife might sit and watch two or three, 22 minutes episodes of her show, on a given evening, during which the commercial for the streaming app might air eight times. The first time Ramsay said "That looks like the insides of a diaper", my wife immediately shot a glance at me and smirked, because when we heard him say that, I was sitting on our bed in, of course, a diaper (and a shirt), and my eyes immediately flicked to her, for just a moment, almost involuntarily. I didn't realize that Ramsay was going to then say that same phrase in our bedroom ninety-seven more times over the next few weeks. My wife doesn't look at me every time it happens, but at least once per evening, she graces me with a sarcastic raising of her eyebrows in response to it. 

Obviously, the chef's simile is referencing diaper contents that fall under the "#2" rubric, and that's not what I use my diapers for, but her reaction begs the question... what does she think I do in my diapers? We've never discussed it. Obviously, I don't walk around the house smelling like a toddler (or geriatric) with a load on board, and I sort of assume that she's noted that I still do use the washroom. It's much less frequently now, but once or twice a day, I'm in there for the length of time it takes to finish a magazine article. Presumably, she doesn't think I'm just in there for the ambiance.

Of course, any rebuttal I might decide to offer up the next time Ramsay chimes in about diapers, at 10:40, 10:55. 11:05, 11:15, and 11:25 PM, and she shoots me a look, would be opening myself up to an airing of grievances. "Honey, I don't use my diapers for THAT..." might net me a withering "Well, congratulations are in order then, aren't they...?", so I guess the best course is just to sit there in silence, and avoid immediate eye contact, whenever Ramsay mentions diapers, while I'm hanging around in one. I suppose the other option would be to go put some pants on, but, having earned myself the "right" to wander my home in just a diaper on select occasions, for the first time since I was of a single-digit age, I will not now be driven to retreat by a television chef's click bait one-liner, no matter how often it is repeated. 

[Little Sherri]

I went skiing this weekend for the first time in a long time (probably 5 years), so this marks another first for me, in terms of the first time I've done something while wearing a diaper.

I have to say, diapers and skiing are made for each other. I fell on my ass at least four times, and having that extra padding there was not unappreciated. Plus, because of the Omicron explosion, they're doing everything outdoors at the ski hill we went to - all the indoor spaces are closed off, so there is no easy access to washrooms. They had one frozen port-o-let outside the rental hut, but it was -21 outside, so not a great day to have to strip half down, in order to answer nature's callings in an icebox. I, of course, was wearing a diaper, and I was very happy that was the case. I don't think I'd go skiing again without a diaper on. Plus snow pants could disguise anything - I could have been wearing a Rearz Alpaca or even a cloth diaper. What I went with was a Rearz InControl Active Air, only because the nylon athletic pants I wore underneath my snow pants don't do a good job of quieting down a plastic diaper, and I didn't know if we were going to end up back at my buddy's place afterwards, in which case I would presumably be taking off my snow pants for the beer portion of the proceedings, and would be crunch-crunch-crunching past him and his family, were I in a Rearz Barynard, or a Megamax. 

I saw two kids in the lift lines with distinct damp circles on their snow pants, the positioning of which suggested that they were not the result of sitting in snow. And at -21, you don't get wet from contact with the ground. 

[spark]

11 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I went skiing this weekend for the first time in a long time (probably 5 years), so this marks another first for me, in terms of the first time I've done something while wearing a diaper.

I have to say, diapers and skiing are made for each other. I fell on my ass at least four times, and having that extra padding there was not unappreciated. Plus, because of the Omicron explosion, they're doing everything outdoors at the ski hill we went to - all the indoor spaces are closed off, so there is no easy access to washrooms. They had one frozen port-o-let outside the rental hut, but it was -21 outside, so not a great day to have to strip half down, in order to answer nature's callings in an icebox. I, of course, was wearing a diaper, and I was very happy that was the case. I don't think I'd go skiing again without a diaper on. Plus snow pants could disguise anything - I could have been wearing a Rearz Alpaca or even a cloth diaper. What I went with was a Rearz InControl Active Air, only because the nylon athletic pants I wore underneath my snow pants don't do a good job of quieting down a plastic diaper, and I didn't know if we were going to end up back at my buddy's place afterwards, in which case I would presumably be taking off my snow pants for the beer portion of the proceedings, and would be crunch-crunch-crunching past him and his family, were I in a Rearz Barynard, or a Megamax. 

I saw two kids in the lift lines with distinct damp circles on their snow pants, the positioning of which suggested that they were not the result of sitting in snow. And at -21, you don't get wet from contact with the ground. 

I used to  in dive shop in the SF Bay area, and and we would clean wetsuits.  FTR- the idea of wetsuits is the water is trapped between your body and skin.   The water in Monterey is 56 degrees, which is 98 degrees   I'm not saying people choose to pee in their wetsuits, but I used to clean them- let's just say I used a lot of soap.

 

[Little Sherri]

Interesting, @spark. I used to dive on occasion in Ontario, in the Tobermory area, where there are a lot of shallow wrecks. A lot of dive shops use the area for certification dives. The water up there is never warm, but I recall one dive we did in mid-June, where the surface temperature was 54 F and the bottom temperature was something like 46 F. I remember it well, because the jacket portion of my wetsuit got left behind by the dive shop, so I did the dive wearing the overalls only - it felt like my arms were on fire. But to your point, the guy who owned the shop said that if you pee in your wetsuit, when you get out of the water and you're stripping it off on the boat, the pee will still be in there. I guess he'd seen it before! They gave us the engine cooling water discharge hose from the boat, to fill our wetsuits before we dove in - the water coming out of there was probably 80 degrees F. 

Speaking of temperature, I noticed an effect this weekend... when it was -21 C out. Specifically, the Rearz Lil' Monster I was wearing got a lot LOUDER, or so it seemed. It might have been partially the effect that a snowfall, and falling snow, have on sound, where they seem to dampen background noise a bit. Also, there were not a lot of people driving around, so there was no noise from the road. In any case, my diaper sounded very crinkly, and when I went into the house, where there was some background noise, the effect persisted for a minute or so, and then seemed to decline a bit, presumably as the plastic warmed up. I wonder how cold it would need to get before diaper covers are in danger of shattering?

[Little Sherri]

My thought of the day today was sparked by an occurrence yesterday, later in the evening; my kids had bought me a hat for Christmas, a "beanie" or abbreviated tuque, sort of a longshoreman's hat, and I have taken to wearing it around the house, because it's cold out, and the hat is warm, but not overly so, as with a heavy winter tuque of the type I exchange it for when I venture outdoors for any length of time.

It has been my wife's contention that I am wearing it "wrong", IE perched too high on my head, but I like not having it hovering just above my eyebrows, and anyway, who cares, was my thought. Well, apparently she does. I emerged from the washroom last night in a light blue t-shirt and a Rearz Lil' Squirts Splash, the hat under discussion still adorning my coconut, when she said "Wait, stop!" from where she was sitting on the bed. Then, she lifted her phone, and took a picture of me, and then said, "Now, come here." Confused and slightly alarmed, I walked toward her and said something like "Uh, what are we doing...?", and then she reached up and tugged my hat down, then said "Step back", which I did, after which she took another picture of me, then said, "Come here", and patted the bed where she wanted me to sit next to her, as she turned so that she was sitting on the edge of the mattress. 

I sat down, and watched as she fiddled with a photo editing app, eventually creating a side-by-side image of the two pictures she had taken, to show me that the hat looks better when it's sitting lower. But, for me, that arguable detail was entirely eclipsed by the fact that what she had on her phone was a photo array of two men standing in printed diapers, and both of them were me. 

I have been coming on here for almost three years now, sharing my observations, experiences and sometimes asinine thoughts, but followers will note that I have posted remarkably few pictures of myself, or anyone else, diapered or not... none, in fact. The only things I've photographed for this site have been unoccupied diapers. Not to cast aspersions on the willingness of others to share such things - I have enjoyed looking at pictures others have posted - but, I have uploaded exactly one picture of myself in a diaper, and it's an unidentifiable shot of a white plastic diaper with two truncated (and trunk-like) legs coming out of it that I shared with someone here during a conversation about the finer points of fitting a diaper. 

I looked at the image she'd created, and said "Uh, maybe don't keep pictures of me in diapers on your phone...", because the kids use her (and my) phones all the time, even though they have their own - they might want to see their purchase history on Amazon or what have you, or order food (they don't have access to our credit cards in any apps they have on their phones, at least as far as I know). And, she's a prolific social media user, so I am one misdirected thumb away from having to fake my death and start over again somewhere closer to the Arctic circle. 

She said "Don' worry, I'll delete them", and I didn't ask for proof she she had, because, let's face it, if she wanted to, she could shoot and distribute hours of HD video of me sleeping in diapers, with a pacifier, after I've kicked the covers off in an attempt to regulate my temperature while next to her, a human furnace. So at some point I just have to trust that she's not going to do that. 

My sensitivity about being photographed thusly attired, goes back to when I was a kid. My parents had an old 35 mm camera that they used to employ during vacations and holidays, although back then the only way to share pictures was via the mail, so exponential distribution was unlikely. But, my mom kept (and keeps) dozens of photo albums on a shelf under their coffee table for people to peruse whilst visiting, and I have been horrified over the years to occasionally come across images of myself obviously wearing a diaper. I'm not talking about baby pictures - those don't bother me. I am talking about me standing on a beach at maybe 4 or 5, clad just in plastic pants, presumably over a diaper, or, a picture of me at maybe 7, on Christmas morning, kneeling under the tree, in pajamas, a white plastic disposable towering halfway up out of the back of my pants. As a kid, I had cousins idly flip through those albums while our parents had coffee, and then suddenly say "Dude, what's with the diaper!?!" or something like that, when I still had a box of them in my bedroom closet, and the whole situation was deeply nerve-wracking. Meanwhile, my mom and my aunts thought it was cute. 

So I don't like the idea of photos like that being beyond my control, although I know that, in this era of cloud-based everything, any photo taken that does not involve actual film, could eventually be purloined. Even if my wife deleted it, somewhere in the cloud, there now exists two images of me, and one melded image of the two, a confused man in a hat and a printed plastic diaper. 

Where are you folks on diaper pictures? 

[BabyJilly_S]

I think I have three headless ones. No one will see them as the room might be identifiable. 

Though the thought occurred that someone would have to be searching these boards should I have posted them, which would lead to "hey, what are you doing on that site....?!!!" as my initial defense....

Oh, I do like a beanie myself and they are best down around your eyebrows I am afraid.

Although that shows that your good lady is very used to your "habit" now  

 

[Little Sherri]

I donned a Princess Pink last night when I was getting ready for bed at around 10 PM. There was no attempt at photography on my wife's part. The current routine for me is to head up and have a shower and get a new diaper on a little earlier than I used to, so that it's likely to be a little wet before I go to bed, based on @oznl's prescription that going to bed wet lowers inhibitions to nocturnal happenings. In support of that contention, I made an interesting observation last night, which I shall delve into below.

Heading up at 10 PM allows me to, for the most part, avoid bedroom incursions by the kids, who are either asleep or doing their own things by then, and it gives me some "diaper time" - time where I can be in just a diaper, which I find relaxing. My wife will watch a show, and I'll read, or sometimes we can watch something we both agree on, for an hour or 90 minutes. Then, we turn out the lights. 

Some background: my wife tends to be a light sleeper, so, she is easily disturbed by noises in the middle of the night, including sounds made by the dog, the kids wandering around, and, noises emitted by me. I've detailed here before how she used to elbow me awake a couple to several times a night, because of a teeth "clicking" or "clacking" sound that I make when I fall asleep (allegedly), a problem that I solved by sleeping with a pacifier for the last 3 plus years. I know she'd be fine with me tossing the diapers and never looking back, but I think if I wanted to ditch the pacifiers, she'd make me move into the guest bedroom. Another sound I allegedly make when I sleep is a common issue for the middle-aged male of the species; snoring. I don't do it all the time, apparently, but if I've had a dance with Lady Ethanol prior to retiring, or if I'm really exhausted, it happens, much to the delight of my light-sleeping bedmate. 

Paradoxically, my wife also sometimes snores like a freight train labouring up a hill, on occasion. When that happens, I just roll over and try to ignore it, because waking her up from rarely-achieved deep sleep sets both of us up for a bad next day. Thus, it vexes me somewhat when she feels no compunctions about rousing me from a deep, decadent sleep, if I am disturbing her. But such are the compromises that a union balances on. 

Just such a rousing occurred last night. I was allegedly snoring, which I believe is indicative of my being in a fairly deep sleep, and my wife elbowed me while saying something loudly that I can't accurately report, but it was probably some version of my name and "Stop snoring!" That caused me to startle awake... and I found myself on my back, which is a position that I never really sleep in - I'm a stomach or a side sleeper, more to the stomach end of the spectrum since I started wearing diapers to bed, the worst position for wetting a diaper being on one's side. But there I was, lying on my back, and, I quickly realized, a tad warm and damp... Zounds! My wife's sudden interjection caused me to catch myself apparently in the act of, or just having completed, a nocturnal emission, all while snoring, strongly suggesting that it was happening while I was still sleeping!

I can't say for sure that I didn't rouse from deeper sleep to roll over onto my back, deliberately, sometime before, but I have no recollection of that. So, I'm curious... when one unconsciously wets the bed, in addition to overriding the "hold" commands on the containment valves, is it common for a complete repositioning to be commenced, in the service of the wetting event? Does my subconscious "know" that it's better to by lying on my back when we do this? Or is that evidence that I was doing it consciously, and then fell back to sleep, and I just don't remember any of it? How long does it take to resume snoring, if I was awake, briefly? 

Or, is this a "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin" line of inquiry, and should I instead accept that if, by hook or by crook, I'm wetting my diaper overnight without recalling it, that itself is the essence of bedwetting? 

[WBxx]

A few of my old sleep wetting audio recordings captured a sound shortly before the event that I interrupt as repositioning. However, back then clad in multiple cloth diapers and plastic pants leakage was not a concern so something else triggered the movement.  My only explanation is I rolled over to obtain a position more comfortable or easier to wet in.

I have another possibility for your waking position.  Now days in disposables there are times I wake ever so slightly to the sensation of urine overflow trickling across my skin (often sleep on my side pointing up).  When this happens I move a bit and presumably finish the task at hand.  Wonder if I (or you) sometimes make this adjustment during the act without waking explaining waking on your back.

These unanswered questions highlight the pressings need for an affordable home nocturnal enuresis recording device/system.