Never fall in love with a bartender. You’ll end up sitting there at her bar, throwing down more and more money to keep drinking just to spend time with her. You’ll listen to every little thing she says and think that it’s brilliant and glorious. She’ll mention she was saving up to buy a motorcycle, but had to get her cat a spinal tap. You’ll nod and not know what she was talking about until your dog needed vision surgery. I’d grown up with Blue (no, I did not name him). For all of my life, he was always there. When I slept at night, he crawled in and curled up at the end of my bed. When I was just lounging around on the couch, he’d walk up and start licking me. Everyone liked him. He was a well-behaved dog and he looked interesting. He was a mutt, a cross between a German shepherd and an Alaskan husky. He lived for 18 years, which is quite a long, long lifespan for a dog. He started wandering into walls and the vet said he needed vision surgery and it didn’t bother me at all that he was going to die soon one way or another. He was my dog and needed that vision surgery. So I got it for him. A year later, he died, but I never regretted getting him that surgery.