My daughter sent me this:

I agree, though I don’t think those are the ONLY two things to fight for. But they both matter. Of course, I get almost all my books from the library, but if there’s an expensive book I really want – a Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook, for example, which is both beautiful and useful – I buy it. And since I’m on contract, I go in to work, do my job and leave – almost no meetings, no colleagues, no office politics. Where do I encounter assholes? Through the stories of my students and my children, on-line,  in the neighbourhood, on the streetcar. And then I move right along.

So according to this bon mot, I am rich. Even on this bitterly cold day – minus 20 with the windchill, they said – Wayson came over and drove me around to do errands in his car, and the sun was hot and bright. Rich.

Another sign of vast wealth – my dishwasher broke, and I bought another one, just like that. They say dishwashers last ten years and mine is ten years old, practically to the day. So I spent hours yesterday sitting in my chair reading Consumer Reports online, then checking websites of stores, then more consumer websites – had a notebook full of jottings, got more and more confused. Then, after supper, I saw a sale on a Bosch machine recommended by Consumer Reports, $400 off if I bought by the end of the sale, which was 8 p.m. Done. Today I read the reviews online – almost all negative.

My mother was such a ditherer, took forever to make even the simplest decision, asked the advice of everyone in sight, even complete strangers – What do YOU think? I want to be different, decisive. Sometimes that works out better than other times. But at all times, even if I’m washing a pile of dishes because my asshole of a brand new Bosch dishwasher doesn’t work – I am rich.