24/7 startups, and unexpected pitfalls?

[adhb]

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

[Little Sherri]

15 hours ago, adhb said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Little Sherri]

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

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

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

[justforfun]

10 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

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

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

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

[Little Sherri]

12 hours ago, justforfun said:

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

This is a good point, and I have experienced this myself before, particularly, as you say, with white products - "This diaper worked great... was it an Inspire, Inspire+, InControl Original... what was it? And what size??? 

Maybe they could print it discretely in small text somewhere, or do what Pampers and some of the other baby diaper manufacturers do, and put a subtle logo and "7" at the top at the back. Or choose a numbering system that is less readily identifiable, but that allows for easy identification for those in the know - MegaMax size 9 is the Medium, say, and size 10 is the Large, and size 11 is the XL, something like that. 

[Little Sherri]

I'm wearing one of the new Rearz Barnyard diapers today. Well, I started out in it yesterday - I had a Belgian beer tasting session with a buddy, and in the process, I actually wet the bottom of my shirt and the top of my jeans, although thankfully, that happened just before he left, so it wasn't a situation where I had to run out and return with different clothes on. I somehow peed over the top of a NorthShore Supreme - I'd bought some in medium, thinking that they would be cut like the MegaMax, in which I can wear a medium, but alas, they are not. Large next time. The medium dips too low at the front once the diaper starts sagging a bit. 

After his Uber left, I went in the house and put on this Barnyard, at maybe 11 PM, and it's 1:00 PM now, so that's 14 hours, and although I barely wet overnight, I wet heroically when I got up this morning. These diapers are the real deal - comfy and reliable and the tabs are iron-clad. It's also nice, per my previous post about obvious wetness indicators, to be able to walk around in this diaper without it advertising it's climate status to anyone around. I'll be changing it shortly, only because I need to go out, and its proportions are no longer subtle. Were that not the case, I'd bet that I could wear this thing for a couple more hours, anyway. Maybe all the way until dinner, if I put on plastic pants. 

[oznl]

8 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I'm wearing one of the new Rearz Barnyard diapers today.

I'm somewhat confused by these although my confusion may be due to local supply issues.

The "small" and "medium" claim "mega" (acronym: Marketing Exaggerating Greatness Again) capacity of 8500ml whilst the "large" claims a mere 5435ml.  Further confusing this murky issue is whether there was any actual engineering changes that occurred between the 5435 and the 8500 claims or merely more optimistic interpretations of the same core's capacity.

In any case, at AUD4.17 per unit, they are a pricey way to spend a penny especially considering that the Critter Caboose is only AUD1 more per case.

It's possible that the local distributor is simply running down stock of the "legacy" Barnyard in Large which begs the question, is the "Mega" Barnyard just a Caboose with different print?

[Little Sherri]

18 hours ago, oznl said:

The "small" and "medium" claim "mega" (acronym: Marketing Exaggerating Greatness Again) capacity of 8500ml whilst the "large" claims a mere 5435ml.  Further confusing this murky issue is whether there was any actual engineering changes that occurred between the 5435 and the 8500 claims or merely more optimistic interpretations of the same core's capacity.

What I think happened is, they did two things at the same time - they "Mega'ed" some of their models, and, they also changed they way they calculated capacity, supposedly to align with the wonderous optimism of what the preferred "standard" test procedure, which I think may be along the lines of "Wear the diaper into the sea, stand chest-deep for 5 minutes, then, emerge, and stand until water stops running out, at which point you take the diaper off, weigh it, and then compare that weight to a dry one, in order to calculate the water content."

So, using their old standard, perhaps the barnyard has gone from 5435 to 6500, but, via the new methodology, now, they're 8500 ml diapers (or whatever, I haven't bothered to go get the specific numbers). My seat-of-the-pants impression is that they have a bit more SAP in them, and that they do hold more, although there is no way in hell one of these things is going to be wearable with over 16 lbs of liquid in them. The tabs might hold up, though - they are pretty good. But unless the plan is to stand outdoors with nothing else on, or, to recline in the shower stall and read the paper, you will be seeking a diaper change well before the alleged capacity is reached. 

I think in your case, they have old stock of the large that they're blowing through, before offering the new version. However, if a Critter Caboose is the same cost, or less, than a Barnyard in your neck of the planet, then you aren't missing much in sticking with the Caboose. I bought the Barnyards on sale - they're not normally a big part of my supply chain. But they ended up being about $3.30 a unit, so I decided to try them out again - I'd bought them once before, when Rearz had one of their sales a couple of years ago, when they were new and I was curious. I don't think they're on the same "chassis" as the Critter Caboose, because of the printing technique used on the Caboose - I forget what they call it, but it's what's done on most modern baby diapers, where the image shows up in the same position and orientation on each cover, rather than being a continual patter that each cover is cut from randomly. I could be wrong though. 

[Little Sherri]

I had a "wore the wrong diaper for the circumstances" morning this weekend, something that has become relatively rare for me, as a veteran diapernaut. 

I'd gone over to a buddy's place to celebrate another buddy's birthday, lugging with me a cooler full of various craft IPA's and stouts, plus a jug of my own beer, and a plan to leave my car at another friend's place, get a ride over to the party from his wife, and then Uber back to his place and sleep in his guest bedroom. Critically, I'd thrown two bags into the back of my car - a backpack, with my toiletries in it, plus a generous overnight diaper, a Bambino Skooldoodles. The other bag, a canvas tote that I'd grabbed at the last second, had an entire second outfit in it, on top of which I'd tossed a next-day diaper. The second outfit served two purposes; first, it's never a bad idea to have other clothes with you when you pee your pants every 15 - 30 minutes, and you plan to drink heavily, but, second, we're having one of those Canadian springs where it gets up to 27 degrees C plus the humidity during the day, and then goes down to 12 in the evening. So, I'd worn shorts and a t-shirt but packed jeans and a sweatshirt. 

Things started going awry when my buddy's wife, who is a medical professional, had a client suddenly require her services, and so was unable to drive us over to the gathering. No problem, I would drive, leave my car there, and then pick it up the next day. Then, the second puzzle piece fell into place when my friend whose birthday we were celebrating pulled out a cocktail shaker and proceeded to start making all sorts of martini's and mixed drinks. They were fabulous, by the way, but mixed drinks do not typically make up a large proportion of my diet - I'm a beer and wine guy, plus neat spirits, here and there - generally Scotch, Irish whiskey or bourbon. 

So, pouring 22 different kinds of gin and vodka, rum, whiskey, bourbon, and mixers and creme de this and such and such schnapps down my gullet over the course of a few hours was a departure from standard operating procedure. I also had some of the beer I brought. The next thing I knew, it was the wee hours of the morning, time to go, and the friend I'd arrived with had summoned an Uber. I had a moment of clarity and realized that my car was not waiting diligently and acting as a valise, outside the house I was departing for, but rather, it was sitting outside the house I was leaving. On the way past, I grabbed my backpack... but not the other bag. 

We arrived back at his house and, of course, had a gentlemanly Scotch, to see in the first rays of dawn. I had an interesting experience... I was standing in his kitchen, thankfully behind his island, dribbling unconcernedly into my diaper (a NorthShore Supreme), when I felt a deluge run down the inside of my thigh. Egad! Failure. Defcon 3, where's the pilot handbook again....? So intoxicated... think, think. 

Fate intervened in the form of him trotting off to go to the washroom, leaving me a couple of minutes to contemplate my situation. Amazingly, my shorts were entirely dry - the liquid flow had laminated itself to my leg. They have dogs and kids so there was a spray bottle of disinfectant cleaner and a roll of paper towel sitting almost right in front of me. And I'd kicked my sandals off at the door. 

I wiped my leg down with a damp paper towel, sprayed the floor and my foot with cleaner, wiped them down, tossed everything out, and then my friend returned and asked if I wanted another drink, to which I said "Better not." He agreed, and we parted ways, then I squelched down to their guest bathroom with my backpack. The Supreme was truly soaked, but even so, it had given up its post reluctantly - a postmortem showed that nearly every square inch of it had seen fire. 

I bagged it and pulled on my overnight diaper, the Skooldoodle, and also a pair of plastic pants, brushed my teeth, gunned a couple of glasses of water, and hit the sack. I slept like a rock and woke up in a wet diaper, as often happens when I sleep away from home, with booze on board. The Bambino did its job. However, now I needed to join my friend and his family in their kitchen, and then at some point get a ride back to my car... all while wearing a big, somewhat wet, crinkly plastic diaper. Sigh. My "tomorrow's selection" day-weight diaper was waiting for me in my car, a few miles away. 

Worse, my buddy had a project he wanted to bang off first - could we possibly pull out and reassemble some patio furniture for 15 minutes before we go? Sure. Bending and lifting and kneeling was just what I wanted to do. 

I revisited nostalgic qualms of anxiety from my early days of 24/7, as I tried to keep my puffy backside pointed toward a wall or fence when bending over or squatting, cringing internally on hearing my diaper crunch and crinkle, while knowing, logically, that I was the only one who knew what I was hearing, if anyone heard it at all. 

Then, we had tea and toast at his island, then, finally, we headed back to the scene of the crime, only to end up helping with the cleanup there, me all the time hoping that my none of my friends, their wives, nor their families, would at any point notice that I'd seemed to have put on 20 pounds and four inches of waistline, overnight. Finally, I arrived at home base, at which point the daytime diaper was no longer necessary, and I could just ride out that Skooldoodle while trying to clear the fog in my head and get some chores done. 

[Little Sherri]

Maybe it's been the uptick in drinking since everything went off the rails with my parents, but, over the last couple of weeks, there has definitely been a corresponding increase in the incidence of nocturnal enuresis. I was out last night helping a buddy install some cabinets, wearing a medium-weight breathable diaper that was not long for this world by the time we finished up, had a pint of his excellent beer, and parted ways. When I got home, I took a shower and then put on a NorthShore MegaMax (they love their case-sensitive spellings), drank a bunch of water to counteract the scorching hot wings we'd consumed, and then went to bed and slept like a rock, with no recollection of having stirred, and no dreams to report.

I woke up this morning decidedly wet, to the point that I briefly considered a diaper change, even though I usually run my overnight nappy out to lunchtime roughly. Capacity wasn't the issue - that MegaMax still had lots of gas in the tank - rather, it was contact time. I just got over carcinogenic diaper rash that had me wearing breathable everything for a week, and I don't want to tempt that fate again. Particularly since we've been playing twilight, cart-less golf with some regularity, which is a bit of a hike. Diaper rash on a humid ~6600 yard walk (although we don't usually get 18 holes in, more like 12) can be distracting. 

I have to run an errand later this morning, as it turns out, so I've decided to stay in the 'Max from last night. Weighing out the decision reminded me of being a kid on a Saturday morning, pinching the front of my diaper when I got up - could I just dash downstairs and put on the morning cartoons, or, was it sopping wet, and I'd better take it off, which also meant getting dressed, an unacceptable inconvenience when there was a limited window in which kids' programming was shown. Most of you born after, say, 1990, will not know what I'm talking about, because you grew up in a world where there were some dedicated kids' programming channels, and then the Lord created streaming, and it was good. 

But for children of the 1980's, cartoons were put on regular, boring TV channels, for limited periods of time. Saturday mornings, for obvious reasons, were the best - you'd get Looney Tunes, plus some other stuff, from the crack of dawn, until maybe 11:00 or noon, when they started running Matlock reruns. Thus, we'd actually get up EARLIER on weekends than we did during the week, to suck every last drop out of their availability. You didn't have the option of opening your iPad and summoning anything you want from the ether. 

[jeremy12312]

11 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

from the crack of dawn,

Not too early, though, or else you were watching the test pattern color bars. 

[oznl]

5 hours ago, jeremy12312 said:

Not too early, though, or else you were watching the test pattern color bars. 

Nah, that wasn't all bad...  ABC TV test pattern here used to run a pretty cool soundtrack in the early 70s.  I think they just let a couple of broadcast engineers have at it.  I'm pretty sure I picked up my taste for David Bowie in front of the test pattern one morning.

[Little Sherri]

I'm curious as to if both of you, @oznl & @jeremy12312, also shared my experience of trying to watch scrambled "Pay TV" in the 1980's. The pictures waved and danced and the colours were inverted and lines ran back and forth across the screen, but occasionally, you could make out parts of images, and if part of an image contained, say, part of a lady in a compromised state of dress, well, that was serendipity. Or possibly wishful thinking - the images really were quite scrambled. But there was no way in hell my parents were going to pay for the pay TV channels, beyond whatever our basic cable package included, and even that was a luxury that came along a bit later in my childhood - my early TV viewing experience was in black & white and involved orienting the rabbit ears until the picture cleared up enough to see Mr. Dressup. 

[oznl]

2 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I'm curious as to if both of you, @oznl & @jeremy12312, also shared my experience of trying to watch scrambled "Pay TV" in the 1980's. The pictures waved and danced and the colours were inverted and lines ran back and forth across the screen, but occasionally, you could make out parts of images, and if part of an image contained, say, part of a lady in a compromised state of dress, well, that was serendipity. Or possibly wishful thinking - the images really were quite scrambled. But there was no way in hell my parents were going to pay for the pay TV channels, beyond whatever our basic cable package included, and even that was a luxury that came along a bit later in my childhood - my early TV viewing experience was in black & white and involved orienting the rabbit ears until the picture cleared up enough to see Mr. Dressup. 

Pay TV in Australia didn't launch until the mid 1990s - such was the regulatory control that did (and still does) limit the introduction of just about anything, ever in Australia without vast bureaucratic and legal effort.  I dimly recall that it had to be somehow "permitted" by the federal Government.  I think by this time, something resembling digital encryption had become technologically available making interception non-trivial.

There was a kind of minuscule "grey market" in home satellite dishes before then (yep, that too was somehow "not permitted" although since dish police weren't a thing, it was a bit of a technicality).  I'd seen some kind of content scrambling in that place (it wasn't encryption) that as had been told to me, was often nothing more than screwing with the analogue video encoding format (in our case PAL, in yours, NTSC) to require some kind of customised receiver necessary to get something resembling a usable picture.  This kind of technology could be trivially defeated if you knew how.

TV games for me as a child/early adolescent derived from my own dad (who was both an electronics expert and a keen ham radio operator) and I used to fool around with TV DX: using my elaborately (and probably poorly) designed and constructed, highly directional (and highly tuned) yagi array antenna with a misappropriated family portable B&W TV (valve) to watch grainy pictures from regional locations some distance from the city I grew up in when atmospheric conditions were favorable.  I didn't seem to care if it was predominately cattle market reports and ads for tractors and fertiliser.  I could watch "Channel 6" (well, sometimes) when nobody else in my school could.

I loved DXing.  I still do but it's dead.

There was "free" pay-radio around too.  Ever wondered where that endless Indian music in an Indian restaurant came from back then?  All you had to do was to de-tune your FM receiver down below 88 Mhz.  It wasn't encrypted at all, just out of band (necessitating a "special" receiver for anybody who didn't have a jeweler's screwdriver, an old-school FM radio and a sense of adventure).

[jeremy12312]

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

trying to watch scrambled "Pay TV" in the 1980's.

‘90s for me, but yes. We had The Spice Channel in the States, and it was a common after-school activity to try to catch a glimpse of something in the noise. 

[Little Sherri]

I was getting weird feedback from my wife for a couple of days about my, let's say, unconventional underpants, although another term might be "forward thinking" - I read somewhere that more than 50% of men experience some form of urinary incontinence in their lifetime. Although that was in an article on the webpage of a company that primarily deals in diapers, so I can see how they might like that to be true, even if it's not. But I digress. 

I was preparing to prepare for a colonoscopy (totally routine, but it does involve deliberately taking powerful laxatives for a couple of days) and my wife, who's had a few of them, told me that I should consider bringing a change of clothes to the appointment, in case the worst happens on the way, or in the waiting room. I laughed and said that I'd definitely be bringing an extra diaper with me, and that I hoped that if there were an incident, that would be preparation enough. 

Then she said "Yeah, I've heard enough about diapers, I don't want to talk about that." Not that I've been talking about them much lately - they usually more or less go unspoken of - but I took a note, figuring that maybe I'd been "shoving them in her face" a bit too much, and that maybe the "new normal" for me as an openly diapered person (within my own walls, anyway) wasn't sufficiently "normal" for her yet, although in the past, I swear she's brought them up, conversationally, almost as often as I have. 

So, I thought, okay, I'll leave the topic alone for a while, and I even started wearing shorts over my diaper until right before I got into bed, rather than appearing in a shirt and a diaper as soon as we head upstairs for the evening. 

Then, this morning, I had a Rearz Barnyard on, and I'd gone into the bathroom, taken it part way off, then realized I forgot some toiletries I'd purchased on the dining room table, so I re-closed one of the two tabs on one side of my diaper, and trotted downstairs to get the shaving cream and other stuff I'd deposited when I came in from my car the previous evening. I figured that was preferable to running downstairs naked... 

Of course, she was sitting at the dining room table, looking at mail, and I sighed inwardly - here I was, appearing on the main floor of the house in just a diaper, at 8:30 in the morning. I put my head down and went to grab the bag of stuff, figuring I would not engage in any superfluous conversation thusly dressed. As I walked past her, she said "Hey!" like she needed to say something urgently, so I stopped on the spot and said "What's up?" , and then she reached over and closed the lower tab on my diaper and said "You're about to bust loose" or something like that. Then she went back to looking at the mail. 

[Little Sherri]

Quick Father's Day update... the kids gave me some golf stuff, and my beloved packed up a box of what turned out to be white V-neck t-shirts. She'd noted on a previous outing that I didn't really have a great selection of white shirts anymore. I have a lot of black diaper shirts and some black V-neck t-shirts, all of which work well under darker clothing, but if I wear a white or a light blue dress shirt, the black is too dark. I have a couple of white diaper shirts, but they're getting dingy and grey-looking, as they are my oldest ones. I switched to black a couple of years ago because printed diapers can show through the white, and the whole point of them is to allow me to bend over or squat without worrying that the back of my diaper becomes visible above my pants or shorts. 

The shirts were from a company that also makes boxer shorts, and the packaging showed a guy in white boxer shorts and a white t-shirt. Thorough the window of the package, the shirts looked like three rolls of white cotton, making it not immediately apparent as to what I was looking at. For a moment, even I thought that my wife had bought me a package of boxer shorts, and I was looking slightly perplexed, but then I saw small writing that said "Men's Large White V--Neck T-shirts" or something like that. 

My kids could not see the fine print from across the table, however, and both of them said in unison, "Why'd you buy dad underwear?"

Which I thought was funny. They had the same thought I did. I don't wear those anymore...

[Little Sherri]

I spent a couple of days on the road with a colleague going to a couple of project sites. I'm happy to report that my previously-oversized and then possibly-slightly-undersized dress pants are slightly oversized again, and I was comfortable wearing a Tena ProSkin something or other with a onesie over it. The Tena is a slim, quiet diaper that's realistically good for about 4 hours, but that was all I needed from it. Whereas I could wear, say, a Rearz Lil' Monster or even a MegaMax under jeans or cargo shorts and be able to cruise for 6 - 8 hours when out with my buddies, under dress pants... no. The fabric is too light. 

Thankfully, I tend to work more from home than on site, these days, and often, I can wear jeans when I do go to site - that's what the people I'm meeting with have on, most of the time. But my colleague is an in-office guy, and I knew he'd show up in nice clothes, so I had to match suits, so to speak. Although he neglected to wear safety shoes, so he had to don the dreaded clown shoes for the walk-throughs. 

Today, I'm back in my office at home, so I'm in an ABU Alfagatorz (I think I spelled that correctly), which is a novelty diaper, but one that actually works pretty well, and they're comfortable. I enjoyed walking around the kitchen in it this morning, making coffee and reading the paper (only my wife was home). 

There is going to be a couple of multi-day stretches this summer when both my kids will be away, where I might try and see how long I can wear just a diaper (and some kind of shirt). I'd have to pick through this string to try and find where I talked about this before, but I think my previous record for that might be something like 24 or 36 hours. It would be interesting to see if I can go a couple of days without any pants or shorts coming into the picture. It would have to be mid-week, as the weekends are too social for that kind of marathon. Longtime readers know that my kids are "in the know" now (and they're not exactly kids, either, they're both in their teens), but whereas I no longer dash for the bathroom or the closet in panic if they come walking into my bedroom while I am thusly clad, at the same time, I treat the rest of the house as a "public space" when they're home, and will at least pull on some shorts or a robe if I'm leaving the confines of my room, generally. If it's just my wife and I, then all bets are off, and I'm willing to endure the occasional withering eye-roll or sarcastic comment. 

I like to envision my retirement as maybe including periods where my primary wardrobe below the waist is a diaper. Although one should be careful what they wish for - a solid brain hemorrhage could also bring that dream to reality, but not quite in the way I'd prefer. "He really likes colouring books... of course, he can only move his left hand, but, I think they keep him calm..."  Stroked out in a diaper, and bottles being a practical solution rather than an indulgence... that's not what I'm aiming for. 

[Little Sherri]

I'm wearing a Rearz Barnyard today, again enjoying the fact that I've dropped a little weight and I now feel comfortable wearing this somewhat bulky diaper under a pair of definitely-bulky cargo shorts. I walked to the end of the driveway this morning to meet a courier van that had just pulled in, and I didn't have second thoughts about meeting the driver versus just letting them "do the drop", as it were. On past occasions, particularly if I'm wearing a larger diaper under light athletic shorts (or just a diaper...), I'd see a truck come in from my office window and I'd just wait out the drop-off and allow it to depart before going out.

This has on occasion burned me when, for reasons understood only by courier drivers, they've decided to drive away with my package rather than placing it on my porch, even though 95% of the stuff we have delivered just gets dropped on the porch and doesn't need signed for. But every once in a while, we get notification of the need to reschedule a delivery, or pick an item up at the post office, because a delivery was "attempted" and we weren't home. Even when, on some occasions, there were three or four people at home at the time... I swear sometimes they just don't feel like driving all the way out to my place, so they fake that they attempted delivery. You'd think that GPS tracking would prevent that, but I'm guessing that the drivers assumes that nobody is going to conduct a forensic investigation and delve into the data log, over one wayward delivery. I wish that they would. 

Ironically, on today's occasion, the driver was, of course, dropping off a case of diapers. Which I now have to sneak into the house, because I have, at last glance, something like 13.5 cases of diapers in the basement - I've actually created a spreadsheet that tracks my inventory by brand, model, size, and then some categories I've applied (and yes, I'm a dork):

- printed or white

- "breathable" or plastic

- hook/loop or tape tabs

- light, medium or heavy duty: light being 2 - 4 hour gym diapers, medium being most of what I wear, typical daytime diapers that I can wear anywhere, such as Rearz Lil' Monsters or NorthShore MegaMax's (in medium only...) or Supreme's, and the HD diapers being Critter Caboose's and Mermaid Tales and other really bulky products that I'd wear around the house primarily, or out for short errands, but would not wear to, say, a dinner out with friends or to my in-law's place or to rebuild a buddy's deck or whatever. 

The stress over the ongoing situation with my parents has caused me to almost compulsively buy diapers a couple of times when I saw good prices - I inarguably do not need any more diapers, however, I feel good whenever another bag or case arrives, as though it guarantees me another couple of weeks on this strange, damp journey. 

[Little Sherri]

I have more feedback on the "Do people know" file, although, as is often the case, it isn't conclusive. My in-laws have come to stay with us for a couple of days, in order to go to some appointments they have in the area. This interrupts my usual schedule slightly, although now I can sort of feel comfortable in decent diapers under cargo shorts again, so I'm not relegated to my light-duty stock entirely. 

I thought that my shift with them was done, at 10 PM, when they retired to their quarters, and we to ours, so I took a shower and put on a white MegaMax, and then proceeded to watch cooking shows with my wife - not my selection, but it was too late for me to become invested in anything, so I idly scrolled through articles about that doomed submersible, while she watched a lady blitz fresh cilantro with organic yogurt in a food processer, something I've never seen her do in our kitchen, but I digress. 

Unexpectedly, our eldest burst into the room, wanting to ask questions about deductions from her paycheque. I had to explain to her the bitter reality of living in a developed country... all this stuff needs paid for. But, at least she'll get most of it back, being, as she is, a seasonal employee whose income won't likely crack the basic exemption. If it does, good for her. 

She left the door open when she came in, which did not immediately cause me concern, because my in-laws like to rise at dawn and bed down not long after dusk, generally, unless there is something interesting on CNN. There was, but the sub stuff had been repeated all evening, so it seemed that they had retired. 

Then, I heard the main bathroom door open, up the hallway, and, like an apparition, my mother-in-law appeared and crossed by my bedroom doorway on the way to her room. Never breaking stride, she looked over, gave a slight wave, said "Good night" and disappeared. I was sitting on top of the bedcovers in a t-shirt and a white plastic diaper. My daughter raised a hand without looking back. My wife said "Goodnight mom" while looking up organic yogurt on her phone. My eyebrows shot up. It was all over in a split second. 

She didn't pause, raise an eyebrow, or even blink. So, either, she's just not that observant, and she saw nothing, or, she saw something, and it wasn't newsworthy, because that something is something she already knows about. 

I said "Uh, honey..." and pointed over my daughter's shoulder, while making a motion like closing a door with my hand. She walked back and nudged it most of the way closed, then carried on with her line of inquiry. I tried to follow what she was talking about while at the same time conducting an inquiry of the last 5 seconds in my head... what, exactly, happened there? 

[oznl]

5 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Unexpectedly, our eldest burst into the room, wanting to ask questions about deductions from her paycheque. I had to explain to her the bitter reality of living in a developed country... all this stuff needs paid for.

I’ve been greatly (and quietly) amused watching my own kids hard, almost looney-left ideologies moderate as they’ve entered the taxation system and realised that Governments don’t create money but rather hand out other peoples’.

Suddenly, Government-funded national interpretive dance tours marketing indigenous oppression and collectivised guilt don’t seem like such a fabulous idea once THEY are the ones paying for them.

[Little Sherri]

Well here's a new position to be in... I've been asked to purchase pull-ups for my stepdad by my sister. This is problematic for a number of reasons, but of course, I have to be careful about donning the mantle of expertise. 

First of all, she said we should get them for him because they'll be "easier" for him to put on by himself... except that he can barely stand on his own and can't bend over at all. Of course, I can't explain to her that I've been wearing tabbed diapers for over four years and that they are much easier to put on if you can't bend over, because if you can get your trousers down to mid-thigh, and you have a countertop or a wall to lean on, with some tugging and shifting, you can feed a tabbed diaper under yourself and fasten it, without the need to reach your ankles or completely remove your lower clothes. 

Secondly, she specified that I should get him "Depends." You know, the pull-ups from the commercials where the confident seniors play 18 holes wearing snug white pants, before sailing back across the bay to where they left their aircraft. What he needs is containment - again, much easier to secure in a tabbed product, but if tabs are verboten, then, we need to enlist a serious pull-up, definitely not something that can be purchased off the shelf at a major retailer. 

I went and got some samples from my local diaper supplier of their best pull-up, an Abena maximum-absorption product that the lady who helped me swears by - apparently she has an autistic son in his late teens who wears them daily. For once, I could actually have a discussion with one of these people about the merits of a given product, without feeling slightly bad that I was misleading her - this actually was for someone else. I got samples because there are two sizes that overlap his dimensions. The larger one would be easier for him to pull on, but also probably too big, which can create leak paths around less-than-snug leg openings that, of course, can't be adjusted, because it's a pull-up. The smaller one looked like the right product to me, but if they're a struggle for him to drag up, then they're dead in the water. 

What will probably happen is that neither of them will work, and then my sister will say "I told you, get DEPENDS", and then she'll go buy a bag of Depends, and then after that, the staff will have some bedding to change. After that nearly-inevitable outcome, I'll probably make up a story about a long conversation I had with a very helpful sales rep at a medical supply outlet, and then I'll pull out some "free samples" I was given, and then we'll try and figure out which decent product might work best for him. 

I said it before, and I'll say it again - of all the challenges I have faced as a self-imposed diapernaut, this might be the greatest. I can contend with the person fitting my pants, or a TSA agent, detecting "something" under my trousers. I can deal with the ire of my spouse. I'm coming to terms with the idea that my friends will probably eventually know. I'll someday work up the nerve to get a massage or see my chiropractor in a diaper (under shorts, I'm sure). I've already stared down highly-paid medical professionals from inside my plastic underpants. However, if anything is going to steal the joy in this from me, it is shopping for diapers for my parents. That is the acid test. 

[oznl]

17 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I went and got some samples from my local diaper supplier of their best pull-up, an Abena maximum-absorption product that the lady who helped me swears by - apparently she has an autistic son in his late teens who wears them daily.

I've used those pull-ups in my very early days as gym diapers: staggeringly expensive and yet disappointing.  Probably the dux of a dismal class, the least-worst medical pull-up, the best stale vegetable with which to open a tin of beans.

One of the more hilarious design shortcomings (may have since been resolved) is that it's perilously easy to put them on inside-out due to very limited visual cues.

I'd probably just play the professional nerd card, tell her you've done the engineering homework (because in a strange kind of way, you have) and to offer a sample pack of Rearz air-active (a product I'm sorely tempted to try as soon as my near-endless cache of Abena L4 run out).

[BabyJilly_S]

I hope you manage to navigate the challenges ok....

[Little Sherri]

So... is it plastic pants, or plastic panties? In my household, it's sort have been both - when I was a kid, my mom and my aunts used to call them "plastic panties", but I think that may have been a holdover from when my sister was wearing them - she predates me by almost 4 years and she wore cloth diapers a lot more than I did, apparently, although, as I've mentioned before, my recollection differs from what my mom says reality was. I had the impression that I wore cloth at least a couple of times a week, but she said that was not so, she hated cloth diapers and was tired of them, and by the time I was born, disposables were quite common. She only used cloth as backup diapers on me. 

So, as the plastic covers in our household had mostly originated in my sister's custody, calling them "panties" made sense, although they still used that terminology when putting them on me, which I came to NOT appreciate, when I was old enough to figure out that boys and girls wore different clothing, including underwear, and that a boy wearing clothes meant for girls was undignified, even if you couldn't see them. 

On this site, I see people using the terminology interchangeably. However, my wife apparently prefers "plastic pants", which I found out this morning. I'd gone out with a buddy to have some pints, and we discovered a great IPA, and drank lots of it, and I was not making good decisions when I wandered into our room at 1 AM. I brushed my teeth, but changing my diaper seemed like too much of a chore, so I rummaged around in my cloth diaper drawer in the dark and pulled out what ended up being a pair of nursery-print plastic pants, which I pulled on inside-out, over my wet Rearz InControl Elite Hybrid - one of the last ones I have. Although being clear, you could hardly tell I'd put them on the wrong way. 

I woke up this morning, on top of the covers, in just those plastic pants, the diaper, and socks. My wife was already sitting up, and she said "You snored like crazy last night, Mr. Plastic Pants." 

Hmmm... Mr. Plastic Pants. It has a ring to it. I suppose if they're plastic panties, then it would have to be Mrs. Plastic Panties, although I guess Mr. Plastic Panties would be acceptable. 

I think that's the first time I ever heard her say the words "plastic pants." We never used them on our kids. Maybe I can finally break through that wall I have in my head and wear cloth diapers in front of her now. Maybe.