When I got home today and looked deeply into my dog’s eyes what I saw was lingering resentment. They seemed to say, “I know where you took me this morning, and I haven’t forgotten.”

Because this morning, my wife and I took her to the vet. With an option to die.

Opinions vary as to this dog’s age. She is a 3/4 Australian Shepherd and 1/4 Labrador Retriever we rescued from a disreputable shelter in February of 2000. A veterinarian at that time told us that she was probably one-and-a-half years old. This morning, my wife told our current vet that the dog is 16; I offered fifteen-and-a-half; as I said, opinions vary.

Last June, while our good friend Ross was housesitting for us and we were in either Florida (wife and kids) or Omaha, NE (me), the dog went for a misadventure in our back yard and let out a loud yelp. (This is from Ross.) Thereafter, she had a limp, which turned out to be a torn cartilage in her left rear leg. We popped for surgery (not quite the cost of a car, but certainly the substantial downpayment on a lease), then when that didn’t take, we cracked open the credit card for another go-round. But neither took, and our heretofore athletic and boundlessly energetically crazy but faithful dog was limping around on three legs. My wife has been medicating her, and stretching that leg out and massaging it, and cooking special meals for the dog, and really doing even more than any dog should ever hope for. And the dog has been bright and shiny and incredibly resilient — but limping around.

This morning with the vet, I asked the hard questions. Starting with:

“What is the life expectancy for this dog?”

Answer: “You’re at it.”

We were evaluating another surgery, not because we were thrilled with the potential expense, but because the dog is clearly a part of our family. Her name is Gem — named by my eldest, now 22, when he was seven and was enamored of the computer game “Heroes of Might and Magic II,” wherein “Gem” is a sorceress character one can play — and she has been here through most of the life of one of our children, most of my daughter’s life, and every bit of the life of our youngest. Gem’s time is coming, as it is coming for us all, but unlike the rest of us, Gem can’t communicate when it’s time to give in. So I had to ask on her behalf.

Decision: No further attempts at surgery, because we would be looking at diminishing returns, and because the recovery period (nine weeks or more) may outweigh her remaining time on this plane. But, also, no need to help her out of immediate pain with what I’ll call “the big needle.” As the vet said, “We go by whether or not the head is happy.” Her head is happy. As my wife said, Gem is bright-eyed and eager to play; she just seems to wish she didn’t have this annoying limp.

She’s happy — except today when I came home. Think your dog doesn’t know what’s going on? Then I wish I had videotaped the greeting I got a bit ago. Yes, I may be reading into it something that isn’t there — a resentment at even considering having her “put down” — but at the same time, I have lived with this dog for 15 years, and I know her moods. An elephant never forgets. This dog is a rememberer too.

So, she lives on. For as long as either God or nature or she herself decides, or until my wife and I decide that she’s had too much, and that all further returns are diminishing.

At some point, I will be in the same situation. I certainly hope so, because I’m planning on a long life — there is a lot, lot, lot that I intend to do still. I hope that some day my children gather around and decide whether to turn me off or not, and I fight them every inch of the way.

For that reason, I’m awfully glad to see the glare in my dog’s eyes.

I got a letter today from my Congressman. In it, he boasts that he is proud to have earned a 100% rating from a group of organizations that he enumerates. Most of these organizations I would probably agree with some or most of the time. But here’s my thought: I don’t 100% agree with anyone. Even myself. Because, after all, I have been known to change my mind.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said that “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” I abide by that.

My suspicion is that that anyone who agrees 100% of the time with 13 different national organizations isn’t doing much thinking for himself.

Don’t get sucked in by anyone’s cynicism. There are many good people in the world — far more than the narrow slice of people who ruin it for others — and every day, there’s something each of us can do to make it better for each other. While we can’t all rescue 669 children from the Nazis (because, thankfully, that time has passed), we can see in this brief video the impact just one person can make.

Kids, if you’re going to go out into nature, you should know: There are wild things out there, called animals, wild animals precisely, that are not like hamsters or kitty cats or little lap dogs. These wild animals either fear you or desire to eat you. In either case, they are likely to harm you. As these two found out.

And parents: If you’re going to go out into nature, and you’re going to take children with you, please instruct them in this. Jeez.

If you grew up anywhere near snapping turtles, as I did, you know what’s going to happen here. For those of us who know what’s coming, there’s more tension in this short video than anything that’s up for an Oscar this year.

Never do this in a hotel.

The Geffen Theatre has either canceled or put on hiatus or rescheduled its announced production of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party. Now the director, William Friedkin, and Steven Berkoff, the actor whose role needs to be recast, are squabbling over whether the latter resigned, or was allowed to resign before getting fired. In this piece, Friedkin is quoted as saying  that Berkoff “was allowed to resign to preserve his dignity. Had he not resigned, he would have been fired.”

If you’re going to be allowed to resign rather than face the indignation of getting fired, but then the person who would have fired you tells the world that you were allowed to resign before the indignation of getting fired, then I think you’ve suffered the indignation anyway. Which, I take it, is the point here.

I doubt these two will be working together again.

But, being Hollywood and the arts in general, one can never say.

Plus, as you grow older, it almost becomes a sport to do again things you said you’d never do again. I recall Sean Connery returning after a 15-year lapse to the role of James Bond. I’m just glad someone had the self-awareness to name that film Never Say Never Again.

Yesterday when I went to write a post for this blog, I found I couldn’t. Although the site and the blog were up, instead of the dashboard that allows me to post, there was a blank screen. Eventually, people smarter about such things than I am figured it out for me and were able to make the fix. It turns out that the problem was related to an upgrade of Apache on the server. And no, I don’t know what that means either.

This.

On Sunday, I awoke to find two blog-related emails. The first I addressed in the preceding post.  The second was from the star of The Whale, thanking me for my “kind words” here, which had just been forwarded to him. I told him they weren’t kind words, they were earned praise — that his portrayal was astonishing, reminding me all too well of a dear longtime friend who struggled all too mightily with morbid obesity.

After handling those emails and a lengthy breakfast consumed with reading two thick Sunday newspapers, I took my two younger children to play miniature golf.  There is something wrong with the miniature golf course these days, because one of these children finished with a better score than mine. I’m not sure how that happened, but I’m looking into it.

After that, we went to the Bat Cade in Burbank, which is a batting cage with arcade with pizza parlor — a sort of mashup of activities geared toward my internal age (about 15). Just add comic books and it’d be paradise. There’s something wrong with the air hockey table at the Bat Cade because my son beat me and my daughter also beat me. This is not how this thing is supposed to work. Luckily, the classic arcade game Arkanoid II: Revenge of Doh was functioning perfectly well and I was unbeaten. We ate pizza to celebrate my victory, then took turns in the batting cage, where I successfully defended my head from 30 baseballs flung mercilessly at top speed.

Even though satiated with top-quality local pizza, we stopped at the nearby Ralphs (that’s the name of a supermarket — make your own joke) to stock up on comestibles. I spotted bottles of $15 chardonnay mysteriously priced down to $3.99 and snagged two; I will let you know if they were bottled in a Chinese lead factory. (If I never post here again, you’ll know what happened.) On a whim, I also picked up an 8-piece container of fried chicken because at this point I had no vision of cooking anything for dinner. Later, I discovered that the 8-piece container of chicken held only six pieces — there were no drumsticks. Which left me wondering:  had it not been properly filled by the people behind the deli counter, or had someone surreptitiously slid two fingers inside and stolen the drumsticks out of the case before I bought it? Either way, I figured I’d just eat it.

Later, I watched Downton Abbey, enjoying the latest episodic effort to ennoble a landed lord with grace and human dignity, when I know he’s a pirate sucking off the desperate largesse of the lower class; the show is simultaneously entertaining and deeply infuriating (the way I imagine the new video biography of Mitt Romney will prove to be). I also watched the Grammy Awards. On DVR. So that the entire nearly four-hour enterprise, stripped down to actual content, consumed only about 22 minutes. Takeaways:  How does one sing when swinging upside down from a rope? (Answer:  one doesn’t — it’s lip synching.) Also, now that I’ve gleaned that Ringo’s touring show largely involves him singing, I’m glad I’ve saved my money. As a singer, he’s a passable drummer.

I also wondered how much regret the guys from Daft Punk were living in, wearing those hot robot heads for more than four hours straight, and leaving the man in the Dudley Do-Right hat to inarticulately accept every award for them.

Finally, I went to bed and dove further into a late Philip Roth novel, Indignation,  that I had somehow missed when it came out. (I’ve been reading all of Roth’s new releases for years; same deal with Paul Auster and Julian Barnes — they publish it; I read it.)

Then, finally, sleep.

In this post, I was poking fun at bad publicity shots for bad theatre. I ended that post by writing,  “I’m also struck by the hunchback on the left.” Note the relevant photo, which I’ve helpfully replicated above.

Yesterday morning I got a sincere email from a faithful reader of this blog. In a very kind way, he took me to task for calling the person on the left a “hunchback,” because he believes she has untreated scoliosis. And, I gather, whether or not she does, it’s wrong to call a person with a hump a “hunchback.”

I have to say, I’m not big on calling people out by being types. So if I’m guilty of that, I apologize. It wasn’t my intent.

The point I was trying to make was this:  Given the awful acting and over-the-top costuming and cartoonish nature of the photo, right up to that woman’s image, I had assumed she was acting impaired. Hence the offhand nature of my comment — I was criticizing the production and the photo, not her physical nature, and using a derogatory term to indict the intent. Looking at the photo again, I have to admit, I can’t say definitively what’s going on. (Though my suspicion remains that we’re look at bad character acting.)

In any event, I apologize for any unintended slight. And for the bad pun in the title. (Just couldn’t help myself.)