Susan Hanafee's Blog

I was maybe fifteen, and we were headed on a long road trip when my mother decided to explain to me why it was perfectly acceptable to use the f-word on occasion.

My mother was an English teacher and an avid reader so any discussion she entertained about words was meaningful. Although I’m not sure what prompted this commentary on her part. Maybe it was the endless miles. The car that had no air-conditioning. The fact that my father didn’t like having the radio on while he was driving.

The ...

My late mentor and friend, Ray Humke, had a favorite saying: “Trust but verify.” If he were alive today, I think he would have a new mantra: “Believe nothing. Verification is impossible.”

I reached that conclusion a couple of years ago, and the past few weeks have only confirmed it.

First came the email from Oprah Winfrey. “I hope you are well. I recently had the opportunity to spend time with your work, and it stood out for its depth and resonance.”

Oprah Winfrey? Depth and resonance? ...

We were a little late getting to church the other day. It doesn’t matter whose fault it was, but I knew we were in trouble when the grassy knoll on which everyone parks was full. It wasn’t a good sign.

My man said he would drop me off and find someplace, somewhere to put the SUV. My job was to nail down our usual seats before the sanctuary filled up.

Now when I say “usual seat” I mean the left-hand side of the pew that is five rows down from the front of the sanctuary. I have sat in that p...

At first glance It doesn’t appear that I will be participating in the halftime show at the Super Bowl. An article in USA Today indicated that people who want to take part need to be between five-foot-seven and six-foot tall.

But I say hold on, Mr. Bad Bunny. In my case, you may want to reconsider.

I’ve never seen him or heard Mr. Bunny’s music, but anything with “bad” in the name has always appealed to me. Like Bad Robot productions, the Breaking Bad series and Bad to the Bone by George Th...

I never thought it would happen, but it’s come to this. I’m wearing support hose.

Not all the time. I’d become a hermit before wearing those things out in public. But the minute I get home, I reach into the drawer and pull on the stretchy stockings that reach up to my knees and beyond.

I put them on with some effort because the darn things are so tight. I guess that’s why they call them compression stockings. Getting them off at the end of the day is even worse. The encased skin likes to b...

I’d like to give a shout-out to best-selling author Catherine Whitney and all others of her kind. Never heard of her? That’s because she’s a ghostwriter and a very successful one at that.

I decided to find out who Catherine Whitney was when I tired of hearing journalist Bret Baier tout his latest book about Teddy Roosevelt. I like Bret Baier. I think he often does a good job presenting both sides of an issue. Besides, he’s a DePauw University graduate, and some of my favorite people went to D...

I received the blood pressure machine I ordered from Amazon today. It looked like it would be the perfect instrument for letting me know if my pressure was high or low. And it wasn’t cheap. It came packaged as neatly as any Apple creation. It had the superior look of a product that knew what it was doing.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be too smart for me.

I should have learned my lesson about “smart” products years ago when I bought ceiling fans for the lanai. They were beautiful. Sl...

I saved another life today. It wasn’t easy. My timing had to be just right. He was weak and not in a cooperative mood. When at last my good deed was done, I sat down and took a deep breath. Was I getting too old for such heroics?

That was gecko number three that I managed to get out of the house this year before he or she crawled into a corner and perished from lack of food and water.

It’s kind of a cause celebre for me to help these little creatures. I can’t rest easy until I have man...

A friend was telling me about her favorite nephew, a working college student, who recently called to ask for money.

“I’m drowning. I need your help to pay for a ‘new’ car for my part-time job. Mine is just an incident away from costly repairs that I can’t afford,” he texted. “Mom and Dad have already turned me down.”

My friend isn’t wealthy by any means, but she loved her nephew and wanted to see him succeed. She knew his parents were having financial problems, which is why they couldn’t h...

We were watching a popular Netflix series when the main character checked out a text on her phone. Stop action. Freeze. Let me walk up to the screen and see what the heck it says.

“What director thought it was a good idea to make the tiny phone screen an important character in this show?” That was the question I asked my man as I walked back to my recliner after reading the fine print.

He always hates it when I get agitated during a series or movie, and it has nothing to do with the plot.