Day 22: Opa!!!

When we first got married my blind husband and I were the gracious receivers of some beautiful wedding presents. Being as poor as mice we started our life based on the generosity of others. Yes we got married back in the day when couples started with nothing, and built a life with each other learning to live frugally live and learning to appreciate the small things in life.

I remember just 6 weeks into our wedding we literally had no money and it was Deano's 22nd birthday. On a meagre budget I saved up enough money to buy him a few blocks of his favourite cheese. 

So when we were gifted the simplest presents, you know, knives, forks, spoons, sheets, iron, kettle, glasses, plates and the list goes on, we were so grateful for all that we were generously given and recognised that helped us tremendously in our life. 

I soon learned that we might have to replace a few of these presents sooner than we had planned. Partly my fault. You see,  I wasn't use to being a wife of a blind man, it was almost as if Deano's heritage should have come from the Greek Gods.

Greeks I believe love a bit of plate smashing. My blind man, whilst he doesn't exactly find the process of dropping plates on the ground a thrill, his technique was class A1. 

Whenever I left a plate to close to the edge of the bench, and it was my Blindmans turn to clean the kitchen, inevitably there would be a smashed item of dinnerware. Glass drinking  tumblers were the worst. We had replaced at least 20 glasses within the first year of marriage with plastic drink-ware. Our dishes were replaced with melamine, thats until I got the hang of where to leave them on the bench,  where they were not to close to be swept right off by an unseeing eye. 

These days 25 years on we are back to a mix of porcelain and melamine in our cupboard. (Only because it looks a little odd to our dinner guests serving their meals on plastic plates) For our guests we also still have the odd piece of glassware, but for the rest of us, we drink out of plastic cups or have a hot cuppa out of an enamel mug. I agree, to the outside world, visitors to my kitchen must think it looks like we are ever ready to take off on our next camping trip or we are eternally going on picnics...but hey it's practical and at least I'm not sweeping up glass every other day. First world problems- I know!