I had small breasts for years, really small. Didn’t-need-a-bra small. Now they’re bigger and droopy. Priority to have fixed: 1

I never had washboard abs, but now they’re more like the entire washtub. Even if I lose 40 pounds, my stomach will still look tubby.  Priority to lose weight, and then have my stomach fixed: 8.92

I always had thin arms. They’re still on the thin side, but the skin that hangs from them must be hidden at all times. Priority to have my arms fixed: .5

I had my ears pierced when I was 17 and always loved hanging earrings. Now I can’t wear most hanging earrings because the holes have stretched and my earlobes look awful. Priority to have my earlobes fixed: 2

My hair used to be thick and curly. Now it’s thin and semi curly, semi frizzy. Sometimes I think I’m getting a bald spot in the front. Priority to avoid baldness, even if I have to buy a $4,000 wig: 10

My memory used to be razor sharp. Now, I’ve got to write notes to remember everything that’s important. I loved the show “Breaking Bad” and saw all the episodes over a few days a few months ago, yet it took me a few minutes to recall the story line. Priority to keep my memory as intact as possible, even though I sadly don’t have much control over it: 10

My thighs and hips have never resembled those of Natalie Portman, but now they look more like Kirsty Alley’s.  Priority to get them more in shape: 6.8

Despite the fact my body isn’t in the tiptop shape it once was, my emotional shape is better than ever. I’ve actually never felt as good about myself. I wouldn’t trade how I feel for the best breasts, abs or arms in town.

My maternal great grandmother died when she was 88. Her daughter, my grandmother Rose, was hysterical at the funeral and practically threw herself into the coffin, I swear. Grandma Rose loved her mother in a way I’ve never seen a daughter love a mother since. When great grandma had a stroke at 85, grandma put her in a nursing home near her apartment in Hartford, CT, and visited her every single day for a few hours. She also made my grandpa, Sam, go with her a couple of times a week.

I don’t know what created their intense bond, and I’m not sure it was enviable. I’m also not sure I’d be so pleased if my daughter loved me like that. It seems to me that it’s more natural for a grown daughter to focus love such as this on someone other than her mother. Interestingly, my mother didn’t love Rose the way Rose loved her mother. As a matter of fact, my mother and grandmother bickered most every time they were together.

I don’t see my daughter nearly as much as I’d like, but I know she loves me. I don’t believe she’ll throw herself on my coffin (especially because I want to be cremated) but, hopefully, she’ll remember me fondly.

My mother used to play Mahjong every Tuesday night with “the women” throughout the 1950s and well into the 1960s. That’s what she called her group of friends that came together for hours of play, banter and noshing. Each of “the women” (five of them) played hostess every fifth week.

I loved it when “the women” came to our house. They’d arrive around 8 pm and started playing minutes later, helping themselves to the tuna and egg salad, crackers, potato chips, pretzels and M and Ms my mother had layed out. After the game, they’d have coffee and cake. By that time, my dad was finished treating his patients in his downstairs dental office and he’d come up to join the festivities. “The women” left around 11 pm.

It all felt homey and warm and protective, especially on freezing winter nights.  All the moms gathered around the small octagonal-shaped Formica table in our small dining room. “The women” lived within a block of each other, none of them worked and they all could talk endlessly about absolutely nothing of consequence.

I started a monthly book group that lasted for a few years. There were about seven of us but not everyone showed up because our jobs were pretty demanding. Each of us brought a dish and we had great dinners. We also drank a ton of wine. We’d talk about sex, marriage, our jobs, travel, movies…and even the books.

Ever since the earth had two women on it, we have loved getting together, face to face. No matter how brilliant Facebook is, it is no substitute.

I am blessed I was born in the United States.  I could have been born in a country where women are sexually mutilated, forced to marry cruel men, not allowed to work, or dying of starvation. A email I received earlier today got my attention: “Women in Africa, who do up to 80 percent of all farm work on the continent, get as little as 5 percent of available support, such as tools, advice, seeds and training.”

Essentially, they are slaves. Self Help Africa, a development agency, launched a Change Her Life campaign that focuses on the “raw deal” for women in Africa. It calls on the public to sign a petition that urges Western governments to guarantee women a specific portion of international agricultural aid.  “This is not about asking for more money,” said Martha Hourican, director of development of Self Help Africa. “It’s about doing more with the money we have. These are tough budgetary times, so we want aid to be more effective and this is a clear way to achieve that.” Studies have shown that if African women farmers receive the same support as their male counterparts, food production increases by 20 percent, according to the press release from Self Help Africa.

“There is no other section of society on earth which is so marginalized, yet so productive,” Ms. Hourican said. “Governments in the West spend hundreds of millions of Euro each year on trying to develop agriculture throughout Africa. The women who actually work the fields are missing out on this support.”

Signatures will be presented later in the year to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. It doesn’t cost a thing.  I encourage you think about the fact that you are not plowing the land in Africa and then sign the petition.

Everyone has an opinion about unions, especially now that the Governor of Wisconsin is in a standoff with the government unions there.

I have a personal union experience that soured me to them. It was 1980 and the Daily News was hiring about 200 editors and writers to create a new afternoon edition. At 32, I was one of the newly hired writers. Practically from day one, there was talk about the new venture failing because the paper was in financial straits. I worked like a demon, writing nonstop to show my editors how valuable I was. They appreciated me, both for my output and attitude. I figured that if the afternoon edition folded, I could work on another section of the paper.

I had to join the writer’s guild. No choice. Meantime, many writers who had worked for the paper for decades, sat around smoking, loafing and turning out mediocre stories. (The paper was in bad shape because it had no energy or vision at the top, as well as tired, unmotivated writers and reporters.)

The old-time crew wasn’t worried about being laid off. Their tenure protected them. Only the newbies would be let go if there were cutbacks. One of the tenants of all unions is based on a principle called LIFO, which means Last In, First Out. It’s quite difficult for management to fire long-term employees, except if they commit egregious acts.

I could have been Mark Twain. When the Daily News had to cut back expenses, I was dismissed. (I also was seven months pregnant.) I was invited back to work a year later. “We thought you were so great, we hated to let you go. But we’d love you to come back now,” Terry, the editor, told me.  Ironic that management had thought I was great, but the union wouldn’t/couldn’t protect me.

I was flattered, and I thought long and hard about returning, but I decided “no thanks.” The paper wasn’t in any better shape and there was nothing to prevent a repeat performance of what happened the previous year.

If a company is good to its employees, its employees will be good in return, I strongly believe. The burden of responsibility should be on both managers and employees to be the best they can.  Collective bargaining doesn’t automatically mean collective intelligence.

I can’t remember if I enjoyed Herb Alpert’s trumpet playing in the sixties, but I sure liked it last night, when he performed as part of the Jazz at Lincoln Center series. What I liked even more was hearing and watching his FOF wife sing. Her name is Lani Hall. It was hard to take my eyes off her.

Lani sings every word crisply, clearly and lovingly. The lilt of her voice, the subtle sway of her in-shape body and her bouncy, curly hair captivated me. So did the way she adoringly looks at her husband of 36 years and alludes to their sexual chemistry. Watching the two of them made me think what most attracts her to him. Is it his music, his obvious adoration of her (he’s a decade older), his enormous wealth (he sold his A&M Record label in 1989 for $500 million), or something ineffable?

Beautiful Lani is a star in her own right, with 14 solo albums to her credit, and in English, Spanish and Portuguese, no less. She was the lead singer with Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66. I adored them, but never knew anyone’s name but Sergio. Herb met Lani when the group auditioned for A&M. Herb, Lani and Sergio are still “best friends.”

P.S. My friend and dental hygienist, Lali, treated me to the performance for my upcoming birthday. Thank you, dear Lali.

During World War II, when hundreds of thousands of Jews were confined to a 3.5 square mile section of Warsaw, Poland, and made to live like animals, the Nazis decided to produce a propaganda film about the ghetto. Downtrodden, persecuted Jews were recruited to be the actors and ordered to dress up, pretend they were dining in fine restaurants, living in luxurious apartments and buying meat to feed their families. In reality, two, three and four families were living in one apartment, the plumbing was broken and most Jews were starving to death.

The raw film, discovered after the war in an East German archive, became the centerpiece of a horrifying 2010 documentary, called A Film Unfinished. The 90-minute movie is riveting, start to finish. In it, we meet two FOF women who lived through the ghetto. One of them, a young teen in 1942, remembers stumbling on the street and falling on top of a corpse, one of thousands laying on the streets. “When I looked into the eyes of the dead man, it was as if I was staring into the eyes of all the dead people I had avoided until then,” she recalled.

“We had became indifferent to the suffering of others,” she explained.

“I cried and cried to my mother when I returned home. She gave me a slice of bread and jam. It was a slice of comfort.”

It is heartwrenching to see the suffering and sacrifices of those parents and their children. People around the world continue to suffer at the hands of others. Man’s inhumanity to man frightens me.

A woman in the nail salon was (loudly) telling her friend about a 40th birthday party another friend was planning for herself. It’s going to be a 40-hour party and the birthday girl has every one of the hours planned, from cocktail hour to breakfast, lunch and dinner to nighttime arrangements, plus everything in between.

Everyone who is invited received the complete schedule and can drop into any of the events. I don’t know how party girl decided the number of tables to reserve at restaurants, but I’m sure anyone who can plan a 40-hour party is on top of every detail.

A novel idea, I thought. Would be great when you’re turning FOF. If it appeals to you, make sure to leave enough time for planning. Two days and two hours of activity is a lot of time to fill.

When we’re in our teens, we talk to our girlfriends about boys; in our twenties, we talk about dates and potential husbands; in our thirties, we discuss our marriages; in our forties, the conversation turns to sex, and in our fifties, we talk about our health. We can’t help ourselves.

FOF friend, Sylvia, told me today about a test she recently had, called transvaginal ultrasound.  I never heard of it, nor had Sylvia, until a friend recommended she have one when she was perimenopausal and feeling bloated.  “My friend told me that pap smears aren’t good enough tools to detect cancers,” Sylvia said, “so I was on it immediately.”

The test is usually performed to view the muscular walls and lining of the uterus, including its thickness, as well as the ovaries. It is used to detect cancer and less grim problems, such as polyps and fibroids. Sylvia’s test revealed she had a uterine cyst.  It was removed two weeks ago and all is fine.

“If we’re bleeding at our age, doctors tell us we’re in perimenopause, but it can mean something else,” Sylvia said.  “Why take a chance that the bleeding signifies something more serious?”  I agree.  I had a complete hysterectomy 20 years ago, so ovarian and uterine cancers are not on my worry list. If I hadn’t had the operation, I’d already have an appointment for the ultrasound.

Like Sylvia, I like to take my own health into my own hands.  I don’t entirely trust any doctor, even the ones who have diplomas from fancy schools on their walls and act like God. They are not infallible.

As a journalist and magazine writer, I have been interviewing people throughout my career, from executives at big companies, such as Jack Welsh at GE, to like actresses like Lillian Gish and haute couture designers like Hubert Givenchy.  But no one, no one, has been as fascinating as each of the women I’ve interviewed for FOF.

Since I conjured up the idea for the website in 2009, I’ve personally interviewed well over 100 FOFs, including Bonnie Steen, who invented a hair coloring tool called Roots Only. Like most FOFs, Bonnie isn’t fascinating  just because she came up with a brilliant idea and turned it into a business (that’s not hard for FOFs).  She’s inspiring because she has a rich life on many fronts: A man she married when she was 15 and adored with all her soul every day of their lives together; a fulfilling career as director of financial aid at a college, which she earned by working her way up; a son, daughter and son-in-law who have helped her get through hard times as well as to achieve her success.

Like most FOFs, Bonnie is passionate, perpetually moving, and appreciative of all she has. She is 68, and although she likes to spend time fishing and golfing, she isn’t retiring any time soon.

I hope you enjoy reading Bonnie’s interview as much as I loved writing it.