Virginia Homes was not named for Virginia Woolf. The building company was originally named for a lovely local lady named Virginia, quite a few years ago.  I visited Charles E. Ruma, president of Virginia Homes, because I heard about a big step they had taken in the right direction.

Remember how angry I told you I got at HGTV’s House Hunters in my first blog here?  Virginia Homes has appeased me a bit.

Their new house plans — designed by Design Basics ,  a firm that sells blueprints to builders, are trademarked Woman – Centric.  In a tough market for new builds , for old builds, for sellers, for buyers, Women-Centric homes would make Virginia Woolf smile.

The concept came from paying attention ( finally !) to the numbers. The “decider” in new home selection and purchase is guess who.  Women. Ninety one percent of the time.  According to Paul Foresman, president of DesignBasics, they looked at the numbers for awhile, while talking to men builders, men contractors, men suppliers.  Then, I don’t know, one day, maybe one of these men talked to his wife… and the house designed with the woman — the woman and not the “little lady” was born. Some houses have ” Inspiration Rooms.”  With a door.  That closes. I hear they’re going like hotcakes in Fargo.

Back to Virginia Homes and Charles Ruma.  He had me take a test, to see what kind of Women-Centric home I’d lean toward.  There were four “types”of women. Not stereotypes, Charles promised.  Just a way to begin.  I answered questions to see if I were a Margo, an Elise, a Claire or a Maggie.  I hoped I would be a Maggie, because that’s my daughter’s name.

I wasn’t.  I forget who I was, but whatever her name was, she was a hard – charging career gal on the go. This  surprised me, because I  think of myself  more as a hiding – out  recluse.  Scurrying home to my one woman/one dog centric house, I realized I was being that hard – charging me  at the Woman-Centric Virginia Home .  A woman has many me’s within her.  But you knew that.

Anyway, thumbs up and a nice step for WomenKind, Charles and Paul. Thanks for recognizing the need.

www.virginia-homes.com/

www.designbasics.com

Sorry to yell,but I am excited to tell you that today my blog, Designated Daughter, has been launched by WomansDay.com

Check it out here ( please), and often, and p.s. please tell a friend.

http://dailywd.womansday.com/

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I will be there.

And here of course!!  I have some interesting news on the solitude front to share with you…

I saw this story in the New York Times. Maybe some of you saw it, too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/garden/15alone.html

The story is about seeking  isolation and going to great lengths to find it.  Kind of the Eat, Pray, Love of the survivalist set.  The article, by Sarah Maslin, quotes one of my read- her – book – and –  loved  -it-so – I love – her guidance counselors, psychologist and author,  Elaine N. Aron.  She wrote The Highly Sensitive Person : How to Thrive When the World Overwhems You. My copy is old, with Post – its and comments everywhere, it so spoke to the seeker of silence in me and explained myself to myself.

You don’t have to run away from home to find your space.  Remember that.  God knows, sometimes we would like to, and we fantasize about it, but you know how they say ” No man is an island?

Well, every woman is.

What an inopportune moment to find in my spring clothes of yore, a West Coast Choppers, Jesse’s Girl ( as in James) red rhinestone – studded tee shirt.  With a skull.

I feel like I should call Gloria Allred on myself. I feel like I am cheating on Sandra Bullock, just having the thing. But I am not a Team Him or Team Her person.  I don’t like teams.  Solitary, right?

So here I am with this late – breaking Tee shirt, and it would cause a ripple and laugh if I were to go anywhere in it.  I’d kind of like to, but I don’t know if I can…

What would you do?

Coveting time alone can feel like the last taboo.  It is a hunger we are reluctant to acknowledge, except maybe to each other, whispering furtively on the phone .  Some married women admit to liking a night to themselves as if it were a sexual deviancy.  A woman whose husband travels a lot exclaims, ”You can have cereal for dinner if you want!”  I heard  a women say that she claps her hands when she comes home to an empty house.   Even little girls understand.  A friend read Goldilocks and the Three Bears to her daughter who then asked what was wrong with the bears.

“ I mean who barges in like that?” she said.

We crave solitude in secret because we know too well that “ I want to be by myself” too often translates to ” I don’t want to be with you ” and we don’t want to make excuses or hurt feelings. That’s part of the self – consciousness , the what’s – wrong – with – me  part.  We feel we have to ask for time to ourselves, as if it were a gift coming from another.   In a life of necessity, distraction and scattered forces, though, we instinctively rescue a sliver for ourselves.  We need it, we chase it, we get it, we breathe, and the world simmers down.

And, of course, there are the women who don’t seek solitude, but find it anyway.  A beautiful widow named Jane says she has to figure out a way to get used to the “new different.”  According to the 2006 U.S. Census, nearly half of women 35 or older live alone.  The largest percentage are 45 to 64. Some by choice, some by circumstance, some by eventuality.  Some would trade anything to get their old lives back, and some, like me, are exploring this quiet culture.

My preference for time alone has been so persistent I think of it as a pre-existing condition that has utterly shaped my life.  I acknowledge that I am an extreme case, if only from this memory.  I can’t believe that I can think back fifty years about anything, but I can and here’s what I see.

I am eight, maybe nine years old. I am awaiting the mail in my plum-colored bedroom, wondering if this, at last, would be the day. The day the first issue of my first magazine subscription would come.  My subscription to Dog World.

I loved dogs and had — and have the remnants of –  a bitchin’ china dog collection.  I wore a string bolero in my school picture, with a silver collie ornament pulled rakishly up against my throat.  I worked deliriously at a green desk I had gotten for Christmas on my three – ring manifesto : The Picture Book of Working Breeds.

The day the issue of Dog World arrived, my brother called out the news.  I was expectant, ecstatic.  I ran downstairs and then back upstairs to my room and shut the door.  It was only then, when I was sure I was alone, that I would allow myself the thrill of being a mature magazine subscriber, and the double thrill that the magazine was Dog World !

I carefully slipped the issue out of its paper wrapper and was devastated by what I saw.  Dog World had people in it!  It had pictures of people and names of people and it wasn’t a world populated entirely by dogs.

The German Shepherd on the cover had a handler, a human handler !  The dog was beautiful in its black- and –white photograph, and I noted the distinctive sloping stance. I would remember to draw German Shepherds that way in The Picture Book of Working Breeds.  But a person, a human, a handler, and right on the cover, too. My weird, little heart sunk, which should have been a clue to a lifetime of secret solitude seeking.  I got less neurotic after that.

Solitude comes in different shapes and sizes. I use the word to mean many things.  It is not always about being single; it is not always about living alone.  The solitude / privacy / space/ time I am talking about is the minute to yourself or the hour to yourself, the day to yourself or a room of your own .  Yes, I am a suburban hermit, but I do not live in untethered  isolation.  I have a mother, I have friends, I have my little dog ,Lausche.  I am a grateful neighbor whose first act of home ownership was to install a privacy fence.

This is the question I ask of you, as I tell my own story.

Over 80 years ago, Virginia Woolf  introduced this daring concept : A Woman Needs Time Alone.

Here we are, in 2010, many complicated generations later.  How do we fulfill that need amidst all the  clamoring others?