Dear Darling Ones,

One of the small, simple pleasures I’ve missed since having a stroke is drinking hot coffee out of a regular coffee mug. It’s just not the same out of the lidded stainless steel travel mug.

That travel mug doesn’t warm your hand or let the coffee steam up your glasses on really cold mornings. It does allow a Floppy Scooped person who is incapable of walking and carrying things at the same time enjoy hot bean water, but it’s not quite as pleasurable.

I mentioned the missing of coffee in a mug to Sister #4 once when she was staying here. She tried to surprise me with a hot, steaming cup next to my chair in the morning, but I slept until noon that day and it wasn’t so steamy by the time I got up.

As I work on accepting this being as recovered as I get, I’m adapting by figuring out ways to bring back the simple tasks and pleasures I enjoyed so mindlessly pre-stroke.

For instance, as I type the dryer is tumbling away upstairs. I washed an extra blanket for my bed. I can do my own laundry again because I got a wheeled stool for upstairs. As with so many things in my life post-stroke it is annoying and difficult to scoot around on a wheeled-stool over carpet dragging a basket full of dirty laundry behind you. But, I can fucking do it. I haven’t had to have anyone do my laundry since Sister #2 was here in August.

I’m very much back in my “I CAN DO IT MYSELF!” stage. At least that’s what I said to Sister #4 when I told her I was going to start doing my own laundry again.

“Are you sure?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “But I’m gonna try.”
“I’m afraid you’ll fall getting the clothes out of the washer. I don’t mind doing it.”
“I’ll be on the stool!”
“Oh,” she said. “Your arms are probably long enough. I’m so short I can barely reach the bottom of the washer standing up.”

Another simple pleasure I’m trying to bring back, handwriting.

And finally the hot cup of coffee that inspired this post. It’s the first one I’ve had since my physical therapist told me to use lidded mugs way back in May 2022.

I might not be able to carry a steaming cup into the living room, but I can put an empty cup and the jug of creamer in my walker basket while hanging a thermal carafe from the walker handle.

And that’s what we call adapting.

Happily caffeinatedly yours,
Jodi