Question: What's Rich To You?

Thanks to an unexpected windfall, we're remodelling our kitchen... And yesterday, we found the fridge we wanted.

It has an ice dispenser.

The weird thing is that for me, "having an ice dispenser" means "you're rich." Which makes little sense, in a day when even moderately cheap fridges have ice dispensers, but there's something about getting a glass of ice water from the front of the fridge that means You've Made It. Now that I'll be getting a fridge with an ice dispenser, to me that's a signal that We've Made It. We're doing okay. We've finally levelled up to Ice Dispenser.

I was talking about this to Gini on the drive home, trying to dissect it: "It's silly to think that the ice dispenser is our marker, because we're upper middle class..."

"Middle class," she corrected me.

"No, upper middle class. We're a web programmer and a lawyer - maybe not fantastically rich, but we're doing well enough. Compare us to [x], who are genuinely middle class, and we make more than they do."

Gini did the math, then laughed. "But we can't be upper middle class," she said. "We're driving a ten-year-old car."

"Our car's fine, though. Runs beautifully."

"I know," she chuckled. "But to me, being rich is having a new car every other year."

Which leads to an interesting question: What's rich to you? What set of things will make you feel rich if and when you eventually get it? It doesn't have to make sense; at some point, "Ice dispenser" was what I saw rich people having, and so it became the universal signal of wealth for me. What's yours?

And Because I Care

If you'd like to know what the oven we're getting for our kitchen looks like, it's this:



The oven is the GE Profile™ 30" Free-Standing Gas Range with Baking Drawer, which is a convection oven, has a griddle in the middle, and has a baking drawer on the bottom. It's also extra-large, so we can stuff just about any damn kind of animal in there we please.



This is the mystery fridge we're probably going to get, barring some mild space considerations. It's of a set with the GE Oven, and as you can tell by the lascivious way that Gini is Vanna-humping it, she loves it too. it's about four inches wider than our current fridge, and four inches deeper, which adds a surprising amount of room - and it uses the space a lot more efficiently, thanks to larger doors that can hold milk jugs.

Also note: the real ice dispenser. Though thanks to @Mjausson, I know now that there are more amusing ways to get that illusion of richness.

Incidentally, we're probably going to go nuts posting the details of the kitchen remodel as it occurs. It will be sprinkled in with the usual array of bad puns, relationship advice, and occasional political commentary, but if this bothers you, feel free to defriend me now. Because man, our house is gonna be awesome.