I don't remember where I was linked to this essay from, but it's really great. The original essay, "The Spoon Theory" was written by Christine Miserandino and can be found here on "But You Don't Look Sick: The Stories Behind the Smiles" which is a website and magazine.

The gist of it (though I strongly urge you to read the whole thing, it's only 2 pages) is that people who are NT (neurotypical) and able-bodied (I think that one's mostly self-explanatory) have an unlimited amount of spoons every day. Actually, fuck that noise. They have cutlery drawers filled with forks and knives and melon ballers and chop sticks and, I don't know, zesters and shit. People who are not NT and/or able-bodied, they have a fixed number of spoons (Miserandino says 12). And certain things you do cost you a spoon. For example, if you have arthritis, getting dressed would be at least one spoon. Certain things you do could eat into the next day's spoons. Like if you take your medication too late in the day. The number of spoons things cost can change with the person, illness, whether it's a good day or a bad day, etc.

There's a post regarding Spoon Theory and TAB (temporarily able-bodied) people by Lauredhel that was posted both on FWD here and on Hoyden About Town here. The post is the same, but the comments are different. The comments on the former deal more with the term TAB itself and the ones on the latter about Spoon Theory as it applies to mental illness. There's more exploration regarding that in this post by Pharaoh Katt at her blog.

So from here on out, if I talk about spoons, you know what I mean.