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I am really hoping that the trend of traveling with your parents continues for the next 10 – 20 years. I wrote 10 and then felt ill thinking about only having 10 years of trips ahead of us before the twins ditch us, so I extended it to 20. But in all honesty, I hope they’ll take me with them forever.

They are my favourite people to travel with. I mean, yes, Josh, too. But the twins are funny and clever, and they know interesting things, and the Wolvog is amazing with a map. Or even without a map. He somehow instantly memorizes how to get from A to B and gets us there.

They told me they’d continue to travel with me, mainly because they know we’ll stay in a good hotel. But I also know that I probably said the same thing, not imagining that I’d end up being okay with hostels and that airfare is cheap when you’re a student.

So the trend is exactly what I want. I just kind of wanted it to start later when I needed it.

I was sad to hear the news about Jimmy Carter. While Bill Clinton may have been my first vote that counted, Jimmy Carter received my first vote in the elementary school Weekly Reader poll. I gave him my vote because I loved peanut butter and heard people calling him “the peanut farmer.” It made perfect sense in my brain that a second term for Jimmy Carter would be the best situation for the country and ensure that I had continual access to peanut butter, pretty much the only thing I ate at the time.

I cried hard when he didn’t win despite his strong support from my elementary school class. My dad told me that this wouldn’t be the first time the person I wanted to win would come in second, which is how it sometimes happened with elections. I remember that every time I go to vote.

When I put Tell Me an Ending by Jo Harkin on my TBR, it had one cover. I didn’t love the cover, but it was fine. A black bird flying across a blue sky. But before I could buy the book, the cover changed. And the new cover made me feel uncomfortable when I looked at it. I almost didn’t read it.

But I’m so glad I did because it was a gorgeous, thought-provoking book about where the self comes from and the importance of memories. The book is set when we’ve discovered how to erase bad memories. For $4000, you can go to an office, have a simple procedure, and go about your life unburdened by the memory. You can either know that you erased a memory — you don’t remember what you erased, but you’re aware you had the procedure. Or, in the case of truly terrible memories, you can have the memory erased plus the memory of having the memory erased.

A lawsuit forces the company to offer to restore the memories of all the latter group’s people. So people receive a letter informing them that they once erased a memory and offering to restore it. You follow four people — really five because you also hear the story of someone working at the building — and whether they restore or don’t restore the memory.

It’s not as simple as “it must be terrible if I erased it, and therefore I don’t want it.” Because that memory is part of you, it’s about events that happened to you that you no longer remember. Maybe learning about the memory now would be different because you have different coping skills. Or maybe learning about the memory now would be devastating, and you’d never be able to get rid of it again. It would be hard to not allow curiosity to get the best of you.

So what would you do if you received the letter? Restore the missing memory? Or let it rest?

Carolyn Hax had a super thought-provoking piece of advice (it’s a gift link, so it shouldn’t count as one of your free WaPo views) this week that had me nodding until a twist in the final paragraph. And then, I guess, it had me thinking.

So the situation is that a person is complaining that their partner doesn’t take care of their health. They are okay not nagging in the short term, but they’re frustrated thinking about a future when they possibly can’t go off on adventures together because they are caring for their partner at home.

Carolyn tells them to go on the adventures, especially if they made that intention clear now, to give the person time to adjust. She points out:

The two individuals in a couple have a choice: to resist their stark differences day in, day out, suffering the attrition of baseless hope, or to accept them and factor them in. Embrace the individual you love as-is, even if it means your long-term goals and short-term plans sometimes send you in different directions.

But she finishes her advice with a twist: “If you, for example, intend to adventure solo in the event that his health grounds him, then say so — urging him to do the same if you’re the less mobile one. (Anything can happen.).”

I’ve thought about it a lot since I covered the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. The point of social programs is to cover people who are living the “otherwise” with the understanding that any of us could be living the otherwise at some point.

For example, we don’t need X now, though someone else does, and I sure would want it in place if I needed it. X can be any help we would want for ourselves if we were in a different situation. I look at paying taxes and paying for social programs in the same way as paying for insurance. I hope I don’t need to use it, but if I do, I will be happy that it’s in place. And I don’t mind paying now and helping someone else who does need this program at the moment because that’s how insurance works. I don’t pay for it with the hope that I have to use it. I pay for it with the hope that I never have to use it. And in the meantime, someone else does have to use it, and I’m not bitter about it because I wouldn’t want to be in that situation.

Makes sense?

So Carolyn’s advice was sound, but considering that last piece, I don’t think I would go adventuring on my own just because my partner made poor choices now. I wouldn’t want them to leave me on my own if I wasn’t able to travel because the same action moves from a consequence (you did X, so I do Y) to a punishment (x happened to you, so now I’m going to pile on the frustration and do Y).

What are your thoughts?

We have accounts with a few streaming services, but I think we’ll give up a bunch of them when the kids leave for college. The conversation about Netflix morphed into a discussion about streaming services in general in one of my Facebook groups, and I learned that the kids would only be able to access one of our services (where I purchased five user slots) once they leave home.

So they can use Hulu while in the house, but once they move out to a dorm, we need to get them their own account for the months they’re away.

On the one hand, I get it. They’re not technically at home. But on the other hand, college is not living independently. They’re still coming home for breaks and the summer — a temporary situation with more in common with long-term travel than an established separate life. I doubt they’ll have much time to use the services while away, so better to cancel them and bring them back for a few months over winter break or summer.

I wish more services would shift to selling slots, and then I’d leave them running all year. Or make shows available for sale on another platform after some time. We used to buy shows we wanted to see a year or so after release. Now most shows never go on sale to own, so you need to keep up the streaming service to watch them again.

This system doesn’t really work for us anymore.