Mid-Age and female friendships

When girls become teenagers, they usually have a best friend at school or in their neighborhood. As they become adults, life changes such as new jobs, marriage, kids and relocation sometimes makes the best female friend fall into the backdrop of life. Some young women while vying for male attention become very competitive, and prefer to surround themselves with male friends instead of female ones. And many of us while married prioritize the relationship with our husbands, children and the new family unit we build for ourselves.

Something happens though after our forties: we need our female friends more than ever. Middle age can be a time of our lives where big changes happens: menopause, divorce, empty nest, cancer, loneliness, aging parents…life stresses that all of us can go through. That is when having a network of good female friends can be a buffer, a respite, a support. Women are less competitive when more mature. We know we do not have the power to seduce every man that walks by any longer, so we are not so focused on who looks better than who. We don’t see other women as competition.

Additionally, we see many of our “sisters” going through the same life changes that we do, and a bond is formed.  Finally, we have more common interests with these women from our generation than with the men in our lives.  Ah, and we all share our cheap reading glasses when we go out

Daily irritants

Everyone has those constant irritants that make our day worse.  Here are some of them:

1. Slow drivers. Those people who apparently love to spend time in traffic…

2. Products that need scissors to open.

3. Products with instructions in very fine print (the population is aging!).

4. Loud talk show audiences screaming: they drive me nuts.

5. Ads that are much louder than the show you are watching.

6) Auto-correct on the iPhone when you are typing in another language.

7. People that write to you in caps.

8. People who send you corny chain emails in PowerPoint.

9. People talking loudly in a foreign language in a public space (I have been guilty of this once or twice..).

10. Medical bills sent sometimes 6 months after an appointment and you simply don’t remember.

11. Drivers who don’t signal.

12. Needing reading glasses for everything, and no laser surgery for that yet.

13. Parents who take all their young kids (and strollers)to the mall on a busy day

More to come..patience is not my strongest virtue

Doces Cariocas will have a show for David Goldman

Pierre Aderne, the leader of the Brazilian musical group “Doces Cariocas”, will have a show at the end of August for the Bring Sean Home cause. I am happy that a Brazilian artist decided to publicly show his support to David. The group received the “Premio de Musica Brasileira 2009″, which is like our Grammy award! They will be recording their DVD in August at the Teatro Tom Jobim and will be playing in great venues in Rio and Sao Paulo such as Teatro Rival, Copacabana Palace, Cinematheque and Estudio SP. Congrats Pierre and all the members of the group!

 

Here is Doces Cariocas’ Myspace pages:

www.myspace.com/docescariocas

www.myspace.com/abacateiro