I just want a laundry area next to the bedrooms---that vents straight out the back. I can't tell you how many new home owners have issues with the stupid idea of trying to vent a dryer straight up throught the roof, or worse, venting down through the slab where all of the moisture condenses and stops it up in about a month's time. And I want at least enough room to fold the clothes in the laundry room and some room to hand stuff up too. Put all of this in my master closet with a built in coffee machine and beverage fridge and I might never leave the suite! And while I don't care for the concept of a "formal living room" and want to have an open concept plan, I also do want a "den", sunroom, office, or other comfy space where I can shut the door and watch my TV shows or read with a minimum of disruption when the other half (or kids for other families) has friends over and monopolizes the "family" space. I want a vanity space next to a sink and running water, but not necessarily in the "bathroom" with good lighting and a mirror that telescopes to me because I'm blind as a bat and getting worse. Most of all, I want smaller square footage than most home plans that I see being built. As attractive as having a maid would be, it'll never be in my future. So, if I have to clean it all, it had better be all space that I use and no wasted space like a formal dining room that gets used once a year and accumulates dust the rest of the time.

Kathy, some years ago I borrowed from the library Florence Nightingale by Mark Bostridge. An amazingly detailed, and somewhat daunting bio. In fact it had to go back before I had got half way through it . . . I didn't even reach the time when she went out to the Crimea. An amazing woman who didn't believe in germs because she had never seen one. But through her belief in cleanliness and order greatly she improved the filthy Army hospitals and once home, and prone on her couch, used her considerable influence to start training for nurses. She lived to be a great age and there is still a recording of her from about 1900.

I am reading The Dressmaker's Gift by Fiona Valpy, loaned to me by my daughter because she liked it so much. It is a present day/Paris during the Nazi occupation story of a young English woman whose mother died young and who never knew her grandmother. She discovered that her grandmother had worked in a high-fashion house during the war. She is herself interested in fashion and has obtained a job in that same firm and has met another young woman working there whose grandmother worked with her own. So far, it is a pretty predictable but good story of young love, the resistance, and the dreadful Nazis.

I just finished The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, I enjoyed it. I finished All The Way To The Tigers by Mary Morris today, it was a great glimpse into India and a woman's quest to see tigers in their natural habitat after a debilitating accident. A friend recommended Scythe by Neal Shusterman that was ok, I am not really into science fiction. I also listened twice to the audible book Thicker Than Water by Tyler Schultz the whistleblower of the Theranos scandal. It was fabulous. I am now reading Pico Iyer's, The Lady and The Monk. Has anyone here read Pico Iyer? He is an amazing writer, poetic in a realistic relatable way. I am enjoying seeing Kyoto through his descriptions. This has been been my August reading. I also started The Island of The Sea of Women by Lisa See. I put it down halfway through, not for me. Lisa See is one of my favorite authors, but I did not enjoy this book.