24/7 startups, and unexpected pitfalls?

[Little Sherri]

My wife and younger daughter are out of town visiting friends of ours for a couple of days, and my older daughter is rarely seen - you'd have to stand in the hallway outside her room at the stroke of midnight to catch a glimpse. That's mostly because she's working a lot, but she does keep the hours of a vampire. I have my suspicions. 

In the "before times", this would have been a big week for me - I would have relished the possibility of being padded, as the vernacular goes, for most or all of this period, gliding around on a cottony cloud of dampness. I probably would have pushed back social engagements and tried to schedule mostly working-from-home projects, to allow for uninterrupted stretches in diapers. 

However, in current times, this is not that big of a deal. I get to stretch out a bit in the bed - even though it's king-sized, my wife somehow takes up 2/3rds of it, but slowly, overnight, so that I find myself perched on edge of my side by morning. I wear diapers all the time now, and I've long since figured out how to wear all but the largest ABDL products, anywhere, anytime. Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer. 

However, there is one. Cloth diapers. I own them, I've worn them, I know their ways, but for some reason, as I've discussed before, I'm strangely bashful about wearing them around my wife. There's something about being in a big puffy cloth diaper and plastic pants that I'm shy about. I've worn endless printed diapers in front of my wife, but even plain white plastic pants make me self-conscious around her, let alone the nursery print ones. 

I've mused on this before, but, I think that it's because, on the rare occasions when I wore cloth diapers as a kid, they made a big impression on me. The process for having them put on took longer, and I could never do it myself. Their bulk was undeniable - I didn't own pajamas that could hide them, and in the heat of summer, in our unairconditioned home, I didn't wear anything over them most of the time anyway. They made such a large impression on my psyche that, for a long time, I believed that I had worn plastic pants a lot, as a kid, until I had a conversation with my mom about it a couple of years back, and she told me that, nope, she didn't like dealing with cloth diapers, she only used them for backup when she couldn't get the size of disposables I could still fit in. Apparently they didn't buy them from the store - my dad worked for some kind of retail distributor and they handled skids of diapers, but not all the time and not predictably, so they got them cheap and stocked up when they could, but, there were droughts. I'd love to have more details to offer on that but, alas, my father has been gone for decades, and my mom is not in a condition where I can talk to her about it. Or anything. But I digress. 

SO, the next couple of days are dedicated to rediscovering the joys and sorrows of cloth diapers. I even have a pub outing scheduled - @oznl, maybe I'll tap you on the shoulder for advice - I haven't done a lot of public appearances in reusable diapers.  

[oznl]

8 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

SO, the next couple of days are dedicated to rediscovering the joys and sorrows of cloth diapers. I even have a pub outing scheduled - @oznl, maybe I'll tap you on the shoulder for advice - I haven't done a lot of public appearances in reusable diapers.  

There’s no doubt that there’s bulk involved with adult cloth nappies that are capacious enough to be viable.  There’s also gravity, especially after those nappies have seen a bit of action.  For me, those “shapewear” pants (think: “Spanx boy-shorts” or similar) really come into their own with keeping cloth nappies in place and flattening out bulges.  You’ll definitely need the +1 size jeans and an overhanging shirt helps a lot.

High waist plastic pants help too as unlike a disposable, 100% of your nappy needs to be covered.  The wicking characteristics of cloth are superb.

Stay on top of laundry and remain wary that cloth has no odour control.

They are brilliant in bed though (my preferred attire there is simply t-shirt, nappy and plastic pants).  Assuming you have a cloth product that doesn’t have denuded-side padding, I find that my position in bed when I pee is completely irrelevant.

A confluence of a mid-week public holiday and a booked vacation day means that I have a 5 day weekend.  I’m in a disposable now but I’ll be changing into cloth tonight and staying in cloth for the next few days…

[oznl]

I should have added.  Cloth baby nappy squares (24" x 24" are commonly and cheaply available down here) when folded make awesome reusable booster pads for adult cloth nappies

[Stroller]

7 hours ago, oznl said:

There’s no doubt that there’s bulk involved with adult cloth nappies that are capacious enough to be viable.  There’s also gravity, especially after those nappies have seen a bit of action.  For me, those “shapewear” pants (think: “Spanx boy-shorts” or similar) really come into their own with keeping cloth nappies in place and flattening out bulges.  You’ll definitely need the +1 size jeans and an overhanging shirt helps a lot.

High waist plastic pants help too as unlike a disposable, 100% of your nappy needs to be covered.  The wicking characteristics of cloth are superb.

Stay on top of laundry and remain wary that cloth has no odour control.

They are brilliant in bed though (my preferred attire there is simply t-shirt, nappy and plastic pants).  Assuming you have a cloth product that doesn’t have denuded-side padding, I find that my position in bed when I pee is completely irrelevant.

All that!  Apart from the overhanging shirt & Spanx, which I can get away without.  I think that's largely because I'm reasonably slim & wear heavy duty oversize cargo shorts in the summer months (& dungarees in the winter).  I don't try to wear terry squares during the day - they're really bulky and can fall down.  Velcro or side-poppered pocket nappies work much better for daytime for me.  I can conceal plenty of soaker power in the crotch of a pocket nappy cover.  What you want to avoid is excess padding at the sides and particularly at the front.  You can get away with a lot in the crotch and at the back.  Good luck with it Little Sherri!

[oznl]

5 hours ago, Stroller said:

Good luck with it Little Sherri!

And let me be the first to congratulate England on their Women's FIFA semi-final win against Australia (11 minutes ago).  I've just finished watching it. I had *some* hopes but I was a bit wary since England is a "proper" team.   The equaliser was nice but it was all down hill after that for the poor old Matildas  😞

[Little Sherri]

14 hours ago, oznl said:

A confluence of a mid-week public holiday and a booked vacation day means that I have a 5 day weekend.  I’m in a disposable now but I’ll be changing into cloth tonight and staying in cloth for the next few days…

Enjoy your vacation! 

I managed to coast through the entirety of yesterday in two cloth diapers, one that started its shift when I went to bed the night before, and then one that picked up the baton at about 2 PM. Cloth diapers do not arrest fluids the way that SAP-filled disposables do, so I started getting press-out leaks on my prefold diaper, and I switched to an Omutsu for the latter shift. It did a great job, although I found the bulk of it slightly intimidating out in the world. The fact that it was cold last night helped - I could wear jeans and an overhanging sweater and a light jacket. Plus, they are silent - my plastic pants produced no sounds, really.

Both diapers were more comfortable than I remember. They become uniformly damp pretty early on, but you kind of adapt to that, and then they almost disappear beneath you. They also hold A LOT. 

I got home at 1 AM and had an early meeting this morning so out of laziness, I threw on a Rearz Barnyard (still in it), rather than mucking about with pinning on another flat (I only have one Omutsu). I could perhaps have stayed in that Omutsu, but I didn't want to risk angering the Diaper Gods and being stricken with malignant diaper rash. 

Today, I will wash and dry yesterday's diapers - I rinsed them in the shower and left them there, one of the benefits of having our bedroom to myself. Then, the next hill for me to climb is to muster my courage, and take a cloth diaper and plastic pants into the bathroom with me at bedtime, and then emerge thusly clad, and pick up my book and generally do all the things I feely do in a disposable, in front of my wife, and hopefully, I can work through my inexplicable shyness about wearing cloth diapers in front of people. 

[Little Sherri]

Another thing I'm engaging in that normally isn't a great option here... drying my cloth diapers in the sun. First of all, because it's been a rainy summer, and today is actually sunny, but, mainly because I don't think my family wants to see my diapers sunning on the deck. However, they are all out of the house, so sun the diapers will. I don't imagine that any neighbour who cared to look would figure out what is splayed out on my deck - their vantage point is a good distance away, and the white cloth squares could be anything. The Omutsu, though... yeah, the purpose of that that might be more discernable. But, again, not from 100 feet out. Or that's my theory. 

[Cruiser 03]

Laying your plastic pants in the sun will prematurely wear them out, it’s not a good idea .diapers and boosters hell yeah sunlight is natures bleach !

[justforfun]

Using reusables for an extended time has been an experience... I've been 24/7 since July 1st.  Figuring out how to go out in public with discretion was definitely a challenge.  There were a few times where it was important... business stuff... where I just wore some thin incontinence underwear and didn't use them until business was done to eliminate any risks, but I'm just doing this as a hobby for two months.

For when I actually want/expect to use the diaper in public, it was suggested to me in another thread that snap-sided pocket diapers were a good option, as Stroller and others suggested above.  They can be stuffed to an appropriate balance of discretion and functionality, but they definitely don't last as long as a equivalently-bulky disposable.  In many cases, for me at least, that means changing is going to be necessary anytime I'm going to be out for more than a few hours.  The snaps make for easy changes, and a backpack with a few pre-assembled pocket diapers and a waterproof bag for the used diapers makes for quick and easy changes.

Onesies to hold them up are necessary, but I find that compression garments lead to press-out leaks too quickly by not allowing the cover to form the pocket around the cloth as effectively as some looseness (supported by the onesie).  Loose cargo shorts and an un-tucked, short-sleeve button-down short over the onesie make for excellent camouflage.

And yes, sun-bleached cloth diapers are regularly on the drying rack on my back porch.  Definitely helps with the smell.

Have fun!

[Little Sherri]

The family is back, and I'm back in disposables, although I am determined to rock a cloth diaper in front of my wife in the next few days. It was to involve the right combination of me having time the following day to actually make use of a cloth diaper, and, my and her schedule the previous evening lining up such that I can hang out with her for a bit of time. It isn't much of an advancement if I put on a cloth diaper and printed plastic pants, and then climb into bed in the dark. Whereas if I help her sort laundry dressed like that, then I'm pushing myself a bit out of my comfort zone. 

Having worked from home for the entirety of this week, before and after the cloth diaper experiment, I can also comment a bit further on the Rearz "Mega-ed" diaper line. This week I wore a Barnyard, a Critter Caboose and an Inspire+ in "Mega" format, and I can say that they do hold more than they used to. Not 11000 ml, close to 3 gallons, or 24 lbs of liquid, but, they hold more than their non-Mega counterparts, in my opinion.

Their proneness to press-out leaks still exists, but it has a higher threshold now. All three of these diapers went on me at bedtime, they saw only light fire overnight, and then they were my partners for much of the day, retiring at around the dinner hour, typically, when I had to put something less swollen on so that I could go out into the world. Call them about 18 hour shifts, without any heavy drinking that might constitute a monsoon event for a diaper - just the usual coffees in the morning and water throughout the day, maybe a Diet Coke with lunch, and at least one morning release coincided with a #2 and happened on the throne, so, they got about 2/3rds of my 24-hour output, in 3/4's of a day let's say. They didn't leak, and they remained decadently comfortable until I started getting tired of being that damp down there, right about when I changed them. The tabs never failed me. 

Overall, they provide decent value for the money. Were I not busy in the evenings, and were I willing to put on plastic pants for backup, I could see any these lasting until 10 PM or whenever I wanted to change for bed, making them 24-hour capable, assuming, again, I wasn't going on a pub crawl. 

[oznl]

2 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

The family is back, and I'm back in disposables, although I am determined to rock a cloth diaper in front of my wife in the next few days. It was to involve the right combination of me having time the following day to actually make use of a cloth diaper, and, my and her schedule the previous evening lining up such that I can hang out with her for a bit of time. It isn't much of an advancement if I put on a cloth diaper and printed plastic pants, and then climb into bed in the dark.

Whilst I don't know her, from what I've gleaned from your blog you have one "ace in the hole" with respect to her tolerating cloth diapers:  they have a substantially lower total cost of ownership (I'm making this comment from inside a terry pinned night nappy that is probably nearly a decade old and still perfectly usable).

My own beloved cares not one jot for the environment beyond the point where it impinges upon her preferences or convenience (so I've never run that line) but in terms of resource consumption and the general driving of entropy, they're good there too.  I accept that reusables are NOT without their own impacts but a few gallons of water and a bit of detergent and electricity HAS to be better than burying a single-use, pee-soaked 4lb plastic bag of SAP in the ground two to three times per day.  I feel bad about that myself.

[Cruiser 03]

8 hours ago, justforfun said:

Using reusables for an extended time has been an experience... I've been 24/7 since July 1st.  Figuring out how to go out in public with discretion was definitely a challenge.  There were a few times where it was important... business stuff... where I just wore some thin incontinence underwear and didn't use them until business was done to eliminate any risks, but I'm just doing this as a hobby for two months.

For when I actually want/expect to use the diaper in public, it was suggested to me in another thread that snap-sided pocket diapers were a good option, as Stroller and others suggested above.  They can be stuffed to an appropriate balance of discretion and functionality, but they definitely don't last as long as a equivalently-bulky disposable.  In many cases, for me at least, that means changing is going to be necessary anytime I'm going to be out for more than a few hours.  The snaps make for easy changes, and a backpack with a few pre-assembled pocket diapers and a waterproof bag for the used diapers makes for quick and easy changes.

Onesies to hold them up are necessary, but I find that compression garments lead to press-out leaks too quickly by not allowing the cover to form the pocket around the cloth as effectively as some looseness (supported by the onesie).  Loose cargo shorts and an un-tucked, short-sleeve button-down short over the onesie make for excellent camouflage.

And yes, sun-bleached cloth diapers are regularly on the drying rack on my back porch.  Definitely helps with the smell.

Have fun!

Don’t buy off the rack onesies , I buy from KINS custom . An order of 15 or more is considered bulk doesn’t matter what colors , they do a onesie to your measurements send it to you wash wear beat the hell out of it , and you can ask them to adjust or Customize before they produce the full order . That saves them money so you save money , you can negotiate a kick ass price , I have over 400 they have made me in every style you can think off , I like my crotch wider , my tail longer so it snaps together more towards the front then froth . Some of mine are very old as in made in 09-10 and paid as little as $15 bucks , of course pandemic inflation would cost more today , also it’s really cheap if you have a fabric color or print favorite and send them the fabric it’s incredibly inexpensive , your basic onesie requires three yards of fabric . So if you want a little more room like a poo pocket etc you can get it via there custom clothing form you fill out your measurements they call you you negotiate a price and payment and wait for it to come . I am in the US so they paid shipping and customs costs comes in discrete bag customs declaration is the same for diapers pants onesies etc “ medical clothing “ . I highly reccomend them obviously if I have 400 plus they are meeting my needs.  

[Little Sherri]

I was again watching another one of my wife's "we have too many kids" reality TV shows with half an eye while reading in bed yesterday. This show was about a family who had quintuplets. There are at least a few of these shows. Which makes sense, I guess, because if we had quintuplets, I'd be casting about for a way to pay for 5 kids to do everything at the same time - from diapers to first bicycles to shoes/skates/skies/roller blades to graduation dresses (or suits), to plane tickets, to driving lessons and post-secondary education. Having a TV show just makes sense. 

The kids were toddlers in this episode, and the mom went away with an older daughter on a short vacation, enabling the hapless dad plot point (though he actually did an admirable job, given how stacked the odds were against him). Of course, there were diapers. Lots and lots of diapers. They spent a bunch of time showing him running kids back and forth to the change table - apparently he changed 30 diapers on the first day. 

I was, of course, laying in bed in a big plastic diaper. The Universe often hits me over the head with these things. 

What I was noticing, though, was the diaper-to-body ratio on the toddlers. I've had toddlers of my own before, but at the time, I was really busy, and not taking notes. That was also in the "before times", when "this" was still buried deep inside my psyche, after the stepdad-found-my-diaper-stash episode of my early teens. I hadn't tried to put a diaper on myself in 20 years. 

My observation regarding the babies on the TV show was that their diapers seemed enormous... but then I looked down, and I realized that my own Inspire+ was also fairly gigantic. There was a time, early on in "this" when I tried to squeeze into the medium size of any brand that I could. I was smaller then - thanks, Covid, thanks, making beer - but, many of the diapers I was buying barely fit with two tabs engaged on each side. However, the large size of most of the products I was using seemed unnaturally big on me - they seemed "unrealistic", and I suspected that maybe most of the ABDL community demanded huge diapers, because that was their thing, whereas I wanted mine to fit the way I remembered them fitting as a kid. 

Ah, but there's the rub. Looking at those toddlers running circles around that beleaguered dad, I realized that it was my compass, and not the compass of most of the ABDL community, that was not pointing at true North, so to speak. Toddler diapers are kind of huge, on toddlers. What I was recalling, and what was shaping my fit preferences, early in this whole 24/7 thing, was how toddler diapers fit on slightly older kids. I have almost no recollection of being a toddler. But I do recall wearing diapers when I was 6 - 10. The whole reason that they fit on me at all was because they were dramatically oversized for their primary audience. Kids grow in height a lot faster than they grow in waist size, ergo, toddler diapers could be made to work for older kids prone to leaky plumbing after dark, in an era before pull-ups for 50 lb (or 125 lb) kids existed. 

I'm much more driven by functionality, these days, than I am by "authenticity", so I buy almost everything in size large, and I've adapted my wardrobe to allow me to wear them with reasonable stealth. And I actually prefer my "toddler-fit" diapers to the "overstretched" look and feel I was going for when I was new at this. 

[Little Sherri]

I discovered another benefit to wearing diapers, one which is probably obvious, but I'll state it anyway: you can fart with impunity. Sure, they muffle the sounds a bit, but in my particular example, I was sitting in a loud pub, so that part didn't matter. However, what was making me fart was some interaction between beer and some souvlaki I'd eaten the day before that never really rested easy - ever since I finished it, I'd been slightly "off" intestinally. Nothing catastrophic, but, notable. Then, after drinking beer and eating part of a pub appetizer platter, I was stricken with prolific gas. Lucky for me, it was loud in there, and I was on one side of the table, while my buddies were on the other, so I didn't think I'd stink up the place. However in the condition that I was in - recovering from "something" - I was mildly concerned about precipitating a "sharting" incident, if I let nature take its course, but, if I kept it in, I was going to be uncomfortable.

At one point, I got up and went to the washroom, which was mercifully empty, just to let a few elephantine bellows go, and that's when the thought occurred to me: I'm wearing a diaper. I didn't want to full-on crap my pants, but, I didn't think that was in the cards. However, a mild blow-over incident would be well contained and needn't even interrupt my night, and if it got bad, my diaper bag was under the table (not that I relished the idea of conducting a change in a pub bathroom). However I made it home in that diaper and when I binned it for the night, it had not taken any fire of that sort - it was strictly damp. But, in big boy underpants, I'd have been very leery of cutting loose, and probably would have had to deal with some bloating discomfort. Yay diapers, you were there for me again. 

[DiaperboyEddie12]

11 minutes ago, Little Sherri said:

I discovered another benefit to wearing diapers, one which is probably obvious, but I'll state it anyway: you can fart with impunity. Sure, they muffle the sounds a bit, but in my particular example, I was sitting in a loud pub, so that part didn't matter. However, what was making me fart was some interaction between beer and some souvlaki I'd eaten the day before that never really rested easy - ever since I finished it, I'd been slightly "off" intestinally. Nothing catastrophic, but, notable. Then, after drinking beer and eating part of a pub appetizer platter, I was stricken with prolific gas. Lucky for me, it was loud in there, and I was on one side of the table, while my buddies were on the other, so I didn't think I'd stink up the place. However in the condition that I was in - recovering from "something" - I was mildly concerned about precipitating a "sharting" incident, if I let nature take its course, but, if I kept it in, I was going to be uncomfortable.

At one point, I got up and went to the washroom, which was mercifully empty, just to let a few elephantine bellows go, and that's when the thought occurred to me: I'm wearing a diaper. I didn't want to full-on crap my pants, but, I didn't think that was in the cards. However, a mild blow-over incident would be well contained and needn't even interrupt my night, and if it got bad, my diaper bag was under the table (not that I relished the idea of conducting a change in a pub bathroom). However I made it home in that diaper and when I binned it for the night, it had not taken any fire of that sort - it was strictly damp. But, in big boy underpants, I'd have been very leery of cutting loose, and probably would have had to deal with some bloating discomfort. Yay diapers, you were there for me again. 

Nice one @Little Sherri I have had many of times shart attacks.  And full on messy diapers.  Though I do not have a diaper bag if I go blow a messy diaper when at work I just go home and clean up then back to work.  If I am just out at the store or something I just wait till I go home and deal with it then.

i know I will have to get a diaper bag one day.  But still putting it off.

[Little Sherri]

I had another one of those epiphanies today where I immediately thought "I'm not as smart as I've been giving myself credit for."

I had been out doing some fence demo work with a couple of buddies in preparation for a fence build gig that will pay only in beer and good stories. I got home mid-afternoon, having been dropped off, already mildly toasted - mildly - by the beers I'd consumed while working. I thought, damn, jumping into my pool would feel great - I was covered in sun block and sweat. And, it had dawned on me that while I've spent a bunch of time working around my pool, I actually hadn't been in it that many times. I felt I was due. 

After my swim, I wrapped my waist in one of our oversized swim towels, and then I realized that my wife, my daughter, and her friend, were doing exactly the same thing. Suddenly, the epiphany struck: I could walk around my pool deck in a diaper under a towel, and it would not look remotely abnormal to anyone. I waited until my daughter and her friend left and then I went inside to get changed out of my bathing suit... and I put on a Rearz Essential, a white plastic diaper of medium weight. I wrapped my towel back around my waist, got myself a beer, sat on a chair on the pool deck, and read the newspaper. My wife sat across from me, doing Sudoku puzzles in a book. Eventually, she went inside to do something, and then I did a bit of an analysis of the sightlines from where I was seated, and I realized that the somewhat deep patio furniture we had was really ideal for my purposes - the armrests are high, you kind of sink into them, the sides and backs are not open, and together, they form a 'U' shape, the opening of which faces towards my house. From the sides, if anyone cared to have a closer look, all they'd see (from 80 - 300 feet away, depending on who) would be my upper torso and shoulders, plus the lower half of my legs - and, only if the really cared to study the scene, which I was betting they would not do. 

So, I took my towel off, and I sat in my chair and red my book in a t-shirt and a diaper, and sipped my beer and enjoyed the late-afternoon sun, and I've only just come inside because the mosquitoes are starting to wake up (bad year for them, lots of rain). I actually had (and have) no backup shorts with me, just the towel. The sun on my diaper felt... nice. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but, because I'm not, it was novel. Next week if we have some nice days, and nobody is home to be offended (aside from my beloved), I'm going to sit out there in my diaper with my laptop and work, at least for a bit, and see if I can "normalize" being outdoors in my plastic underpants. 

[Little Sherri]

I had a dream last night that I wet the bed, or rather, that I wet in bed, and then I woke up this morning to find my diaper moderately wet. So, it was not a dream, it was likely a recollection of an event... unless I dreamed that I wet the bed, and then I did so, but not concurrently. Regardless, the outcome is what it is... yeah, I should wear diapers to bed. Happily, that's also what I want to do. 

Rain and cool weather have interfered with my recently-devised plan to hang out on the pool deck in the sun in a diaper. During the limited windows of worthy weather, someone has generally been out there. Not that I couldn't therefor continue, but, I don't want it to appear "forced" - when I was hanging out thusly attired with my wife previously, I'd just come out of the pool, and I swapped my bathing suit for a diaper in the main floor washroom without going upstairs and getting completely changed, so what I had on kind of made sense (if anything I do makes sense...), whereas if I'd gone upstairs and showered etc and then reappeared in just a diaper and a towel, it would raise the question of why I hadn't just gotten dressed while I was up there. 

Ahh, the machinations, and the hoops I sometimes jump through mentally, over certain situations. Meanwhile, most of the time, I just move from diaper to diaper without giving it much thought. I could not have imagined, 4.5 years ago, how routine this would all become - I simply do everything and go everywhere, with a diaper on. I'm still kind of astounded by that, when I stop and think about it. But here we are. 

[Little Sherri]

Just another routine update... routine day... wearing a Rearz Barnyard and working in my office. This may seem a bit disjointed because I'm stoned on cold medication. A series of "it's not Covid, I swear" respiratory infections have been making the rounds this summer. I'm usually one to faire these things rather easily - my wife will be sneezing and coughing and popping pills and sleeping in the afternoons for days, whereas I get a day with a sore throat, then a day with a cough and some nasal congestion, and then it kind of clears. But not this one. I'm still not as badly off as my beloved proports to have been - I haven't stopped doing anything - but I have a tickle in my throat that just won't go away, and that causes me to have to cough violently at inconvenient moments. I'm using the mute button on Teams a lot. 

Another comment on routine... my wife was compiling a shopping list this morning. She asked me if I needed Diet Coke - I said that I did. Then she said, "And you need diaper cream." 

I responded with "I'll check."

She said, "No, I checked - you only have the tub you're using. You have lots of baby powder in he linen closet but no diaper cream. Do we need anything else in the bathroom department? Toilet bowl cleaner...?"

And then on down the list she went, garbage bags, shampoo, paper towel... diaper cream and baby powder are part of our shopping routine now.

[Little Sherri]

Another quick update - lots on the go today. Wore a Mega'ed Barnyard for about 23 consecutive hours yesterday, although the overnight shift doesn't really count as I slept like a rock under the influence of cold medication, and woke up dry - and, dry-mouthed. I was thirsty. But, from then, until I called halt at about 10 PM, the Barnyard took everything I gave it. I knew I was pushing my luck, in the last couple of hours, and I had arrived at the point in the evening where I was going to sit in bed and read while my wife watched TV. I didn't want to press-out leak onto my side of the bedding, and I was becoming a little self-conscious about how swollen and pendulous the diaper had become. I had helped my daughter pack up an inflatable mattress and I could feel myself waddling and the bulk of it compressing and rolling underneath me. My wife was engaged in packing up for a trip to a friend's cottage in our room, so I felt slightly conspicuous when I duffed my shorts and started sorting some laundry she was dispensing as part of her process, and I grabbed a new diaper and went to take a shower. 

The Barnyard never became uncomfortable, and it never really developed any smell, either. It didn't smell daisy-fresh anymore, but it still had a whiff of it's original soapy scent, and, no foul "untended toddler" undertones. I was starting to get slightly irritated by the consistent dampness down there, but my skin didn't look any the worse for wear. 

All of which is to say, again, that anyone who suspects that Rearz has not changed anything other than the name, needs to try one of these products out, or try one again. Is it an 11-litre diaper? Definitely not. Is it otherwise a top tier product? Yes. 

As mentioned, my wife will be at a friend's cottage this weekend, so I'll probably try to book some more cloth diaper mileage, if I can fit it in - I'm not sure what my social schedule looks like as of yet, and there's not much point putting a cloth diaper on for a few hours - the effort is about the same. 

[Little Sherri]

Just another Sunday here in diaperville. I went to a street festival yesterday downtown, and was happy to be able to avoid using the portable toilets there, which were baking in the sun all day. Today is dedicated to chores, and one of the first was to empty my diaper can; it can be interesting and strangely affirming to undertake this rather prosaic task, precisely because, first of all, it is prosaic these day, and, second, because it's a bit of a diaper diary of the previous few days. There was a Little King, a couple of Lil' Splash, a Lil' Monster, an InControl Essential, a Barnyard, a couple of the ATN diapers I've been burning through, a Tena, a NorthShore Supreme... the passage of time counted out in diapers. 

I did not get a chance to go over to cloth, as I thought I might, because I had too much on the schedule to make it worthwhile occupying a bulky, high-capacity diaper that then has to be dealt with, beyond depositing it in said diaper can. I may put one on tonight. The weather is looking nice - maybe I'll put fire on, on the pool deck, and hang out in a cloth diaper for a while, in an attempt to recreate my childhood camping experiences. Except that my childhood camping experiences almost never involved cloth diapers - that would have been a pain in the ass. My mom has one picture of me on a beach when I was 3 or 4 in a cloth diaper, but that might have been a day trip and not from a camping weekend, because who would want to have to wrestle a bag of soggy cloth diapers into the trunk of the car for the drive home? 

But sitting by the fire in a diaper happened - we all had to get our pajamas on before sitting around the fire and roasting marshmallows, the marshmallows being the bait to get us to cooperatively get ready for bed. I'll have to be careful about sparks burning holes in my plastic pants... 

[Little Sherri]

I had an interesting diaper dream last night: I was in a change room at a plant, the type of place I might find myself during a site visit to a customer. I was standing with a bunch of guys who had special coveralls on - they worked there - and then one of the supervisors said I had to wear the coveralls, too, so I said, no problem, I'll put them on over my clothes, and then he said they can't be put on over clothing for some reason. I said I was just visiting the site, and he said that there were no exceptions, it was for safety reasons. Then, most of the people left, but one guy stayed behind to help me put them on - apparently they had to be zipped up at the back. 

I was pressed for time and had a team of guys waiting for me, so, reluctantly, I removed my dress shirt and pants... revealing, of course, a big plastic diaper. The guy who was there to help me get into my coveralls raised his eyebrows, but then said "Is the inspection going to take THAT much time!?!", and then he started helping me get into the outfit. 

I don't know what diaper I had on in the dream, or if my subconscious even chose one, but when I woke up, I was in a Lil' Splash, and my mind immediately made that the diaper I was wearing in the dream. 

That was it, I woke up right then. The dream mimicked situations I have been in before, where I've had to put on Nomex or other special coveralls to go into hazardous areas in plants, but, I've never been required to remove my clothes, thank Christ. It also reminded me of a visit I made to a plant with a giant changeroom for men, and a tiny one for women (reflecting the original ratio of employees, I guess), where the giant room had a row of smallish urinals on the wall with no dividers between them. I said I was just going to go use the facilities for a moment, when I was standing in the hall outside the room, and didn't realize what it looked like inside - I wanted to go make some adjustment to my diaper, I forget what, maybe to snug up a tab or do a pinch check on how pregnant it was getting. One of the guys I was with said he needed to go too (perfect...), and followed me in... to the giant room with no stalls and 14 open urinals. He moseyed up to one, I chose one a few units away, and then he started talking to me about sports while he took a glorious wiz and I stood, pressed slightly too close to the ancient ceramic receptacle, opened up the front of my pants, and pretended I was peeing, because I would have had to unsnap my onesie to actually get access to the equipment, and pulling "mini me" up over the top of a diaper would probably have been conspicuous. 

In the dream, I was amazed that the guy's only response to seeing my diaper was that I must have been anticipating a long visit.  

My cloth diaper plans have thus far been unrealized, because I have too many places to go or people dropping in, during this period when I have the house entirely to myself. Maybe tomorrow. This is a reminder, though, of how much things have changed for me - having the house to myself for a few days would have been something I looked forward to for weeks, in my past life, so that I could spend an uninterrupted 18 or 24 or 36 hours in a diaper, before having to go back to less satisfying, but less bulky boxer shorts at some point. Now, I kind of miss everybody. It's fine - the kitchen, for example, is staying remarkably clean - but, I'd just as soon have people around. 

[Little Sherri]

I've blown all my underwear plans for this week out of the water; the weather has not cooperated with respect to either hanging out on the pool deck in just a diaper, or, drying any cloth diapers in the sun. And I've overscheduled myself to the point where there is no win to be had in wearing a cloth diaper - I wouldn't be able to spend enough time in one to make it worthwhile. There are only certain errands I can run in a large bulky diaper; I'd go to the post office or supermarket dressed thusly, under oversized jeans and an overhanging golf shirt or sweater, but I'm not going to go hang out with friends or visit family, in a big cloth diaper, and particularly not one I've been in for a while, as they don't inhibit microbial activity at all, whereas good disposables can go for 10-12 hours without developing a notable "untended toddler" scent. 

I am in a pinned diaper at the moment though... I had a Rearz Active Air experience a very, very rare tab failure a while back, and I've decided I will burn through it while I clean around the house today before my family gets back. Rearz tabs in general tend to be good, and the Active Air ones have, in my experience, proven bulletproof, but the top right tab on this diaper ripped off a while back when I was putting it on, causing me to just cast it aside and choose another one. Being a cloth-backed diaper, and a fairly sturdy one, I knew I could put a diaper pin through it in place of that upper tab, and that's what I did this morning. SO I am kind of wearing a cloth diaper. 

I'll be flitting around the house later today in the pinned Active Air, and a pair of printed plastic pants, ironically, cleaning toilets. 

[Little Sherri]

Crazy busy week this week. I'm theoretically on vacation since yesterday, although in reality I'm still dealing with issues at work. I got up early this morning to try to put some of them to bed before "taking the day off" (with an eye on my email anyway...). I went to bed exhausted last night after spending 12 hours walking around downtown with intermittent infusions of beer. I slept like a rock and woke up this morning... soaked! No leakage, but, I used my diaper fairly heavily and have no recollection of doing so. I guess my subconscious or the Universe were having me on, and with my wife back home, decided to have be engage in some risk-taking. 

My diaper, a Bambino Skooledoodle (sp?), held up, however. Speaking of (slight) risk-taking, at 5:30 this morning, I uncharacteristically walked down my driveway to my garage in just that diaper and a long-ish t-shirt, to check my emails, and I'm sitting in my office at the moment, thusly attired, but now it's 9:15 am. I can in all likelihood make it back to the house without passing traffic or my neighbours catching any disturbing views of a man in a saggy toddler diaper, but, I have to walk past two large kitchen windows... and the dog will surly bark at me if he's in there, leaving me to wonder what my wife will make of me walking about the property with no pants on. It IS a vacation day, I guess I'll say...

[Little Sherri]

I went to an amusement park this past weekend, and staunchly avoided the rides that could possibly have resulted in being wet - externally, anyway - preferring to go get a beer when the kids went on those. Longtime readers may recall when I went to this same park a few years ago, and ended up sitting in a contoured plastic seat on a "white water" raft that got filled with water from a small overhanging waterfall, when our raft got hung up on a corner. I don't recall what diaper I had on - I think maybe a Rearz Active Air - but I do recall squelching for a couple of kilometers through the park, trying to trail behind our group, so nobody got a prolonged view of the wet and swollen topography of my derrière. I made an excuse to go back to the car - damn, the sunblock is, uh, expired, so I gotta run to the car! - and then I contemplated changing my diaper in the car park, but decided instead to risk carrying one back through security, and then doing it in a washroom. 

I had no such issue this time. First of all, I carried a diaper bag in with me, in the form of a nondescript backpack that had sunblock and sweaters and water bottles in it. Security gave it only a passing glance. And, second, I avoided all water-themed rides, preferring my dampness to be the result of beer filtering through my kidneys. 

My daughter half-heartedly attempted to push me into the pool while I was cleaning it yesterday, prompting me to slam on the brakes and say "No, I'm not dressed for this!" She made a comment about if I was afraid my diaper would explode, because that had happened to her, years earlier, when her older sister had "helped" her get dressed for swimming lessons, but left her in a pull-up, rather than putting her in the swim diaper that was in her swim bag. I could understand the confusion - the pull-ups and the swim diapers looked very similar. But, they perform VERY differently when immersed. 

My wife has taken to referring to my diapers as just my "underwear", lately; last night she said something like "It's too bad you're already down to your underwear, because the dog needs to go out again..." while I was lounging on our bed in a diaper. I'll have to go back and pick through this thread at some point and try to extract all the different references she has made to them over the past few years. I recall "Pampers" and "Pull-ups" (even though I pretty much never wear pull-ups), and of course, the "d-word" I use with such frequency here. I don't think she's ever said "nappies". Still, she used to not refer to them at all, ever, so, a big printed plastic diaper being referred to prosaically as my "underwear" still constitutes a bit of a victory, I guess. 

[Little Sherri]

Well, I have another caveat emptor story for you folks. It isn't all sunshine and baby powder over here on the 24/7 highway. 

It began, as many of my stories do, with a trip to the pub. It was a quick touch-and-go, really, not a session - a couple of friends were getting together, one of them needed to borrow a piece of brewing equipment... it seemed like serendipity. I went to the pub, had a couple of pints of medium-octane IPA, and... had kind of a second dinner. I'd eaten leftovers earlier, but my buddies were ordering wings and the place smelled like wings, and, I got the half pound rather than the full pound. Suicide sauce. 

I headed home at a reasonable hour, drank a tall glass of water, put on a fresh diaper (Rearz Mega Inspire+), and fell into bed. I slept like a rock until around 6 AM, when I woke up, and realized that I was wet. I vaguely recalled having some kind of dream about it, but I retained no details. Maybe I dreamed that I dreamed. Who knows. Anyway, an Inspire+ is a bulky, comfortable, trustworthy diaper, and I enjoyed the sensation of falling back to sleep in it. 

My alarm went off at 7:00, and I got up and headed downstairs. I stood in front of the coffee maker and had my "morning wee" while the coffee was making itself.. my diaper still felt like it had miles to go, but there was a uniform feeling of wetness down there that didn't surprise me - as I've said before, I believe that I often roll over onto my back before I wet, even when I'm asleep. So the middle and back of my diaper having some bulk and dampness to it was par for the course. 

My coffee completed brewing shortly after I completed wetting, and I took my cup, and went out on the deck to look at the pool. There were towels hanging over the deck railing that made doing so in a big white plastic diaper relatively risk free - they'd have obscured sightlines from anyone taking a casual glance. It was nice outside, humid, the prelude to an unusually Florida-like day for Canada in September. I went back inside, got my phone off of the counter, came outside, and decided to drink my coffee on my patio furniture for a few minutes, before my wife came downstairs and I would have to duck inside quickly, rather than explain to her why I was lounging on the deck in plastic underwear. 

I sat down on one of the chairs around my patio table... and felt something shift underneath me, slightly. A fluidic response to pressure. But my diaper wasn't that wet, surly...? And, there was a sense of... viscosity. Like if some of the polymer had migrated up against my skin and was being pressed around. No way... that's what happens when you wear a soggy diaper for a really extended period of time. This Inspire was 12 or 18 hours from that fate. Maybe if I went hiking in it... after a pub crawl. Not at 7:30 AM when it went on at midnight. 

I drank my coffee and read the news. Things felt more or less okay. I wasn't perturbed. Well, except by the news. I made another coffee. It started doing it's job, and I heard the bells ringing for the incoming train, the morning express. I headed up to my bathroom, passing my wife on her way down. She didn't give me any strange looks - her husband in a diaper and a t-shirt at 8 in the morning is an everyday thing. 

I went into the bathroom, opened the tabs on one side of my diaper, slid it down... from here, I will add, view discretion is advised. 

I'd clearly pooped my diaper while I was sleeping. Not a lot, but even a little poop is a lot. Either you did, or you did not, crap yourself. The rest is angels on pinheads. 

I was, and continue to be, a bit astounded, both because it happened, and, because I didn't know it happened for some time afterwards - I suspect the earth was already scorched when I woke up feeling wet and drifted happily back to sleep. Apparently, once again, the memo that certain processes can be automated and decoupled from the chain of command had accidentally been faxed to both the liquids, and the solids departments. 

I'm just happy that my diaper contained it, and that my wife didn't smell anything in our bedroom, or in the kitchen or on the stairs when I squelched past her... I'm not sure how that would have gone. 

I cleaned up and took a shower and consigned that Inspire+ to an early grave, put another one on (comfy...), and here I am, thinking about my choices. Buyer beware. I suppose I could blame the wings... and say that my diaper saved me? But I don't think the problem started there...