When did it become necessary for me to have passwords to my own life, my own stuff?  It’s driving me a little nuts right now.   I’ve been struggling to keep a grip on my Apple account password, which I hadn’t used to buy music in awhile and needed for some background tracks.

It’s my own fault probably.  In a misguided attempt to keep my email organized I set up several email accounts – one for personal, one for family, one for business, one for shopping. And then had to add one for school.

I spent three hours last Saturday cleaning up those email accounts and have been pretty good about deleting emails immediately since then, but it’s been less than a week.  Also got rid of the “family” one as I soon realized I was not using it to send emails to my family, so they never knew whether to send it to the personal email or the family email.

The email passwords I have down pat, plus gmail keeps them on hand for me.   It’s all the other passwords.  The password for this blog, the password for Apple (needed for itunes) the password for you tube, the password for school, the password for teaching, the password for anywhere I’ve ever shopped online, the password for eBay, the password for Paypal, the password for the camping reservation site.

The problem is I don’t USE all those websites very frequently.  So when I zip through the 3-strikes-you’re-out password routine and have tried every password I have ever used, ever, then I have to go through the password resetting process.

Which leads to the security questions you have to set up in order to be able to have access to reset your password.  What is my mother’s maiden name? Easy but I never use that – what kind of security question is that?  Favorite children’s book? OK, done (it’s Babar – how cool is an elephant queen named Celeste?).  First pet – easy as well.  But I don’t like to use the easy ones because anyone can look up where I was born.  I doubt that a hacker would be that interested in my purchase history from obsessivequilter.com (hmm, nice name for website?) but you never know.

The worst question was just recently – favorite car.  I thought for sure I put down my first car – the Plymouth Valiant.  But it didn’t work – Valiant? Plymouth? 1996 Plymouth Valiant? 1996 Plymouth Valiant with workhorse slant six engine?  None of those worked.  Then I went for the Mustang.  Ford Mustang? Beautiful azure blue ragtop that was stolen Mustang? Beautiful azure blue ragtop that was stolen Ford Mustang?  Beautiful azure blue ragtop 25th anniversary that I intended to keep as a classic car forever and which Andy recently saw at a car show Ford Mustang? None of those worked.  (speaking of which, Andy was kind enough to send me a photo of that car.  I think it WAS my car, actually.  Let it go.)

So I somehow found a way to get through to my Apple account and change everything, including my user name (that’s another round – the personal email account? the PT email account? the shopping account? Just the name of the account without the @gmail.com?)

This morning I wanted to use it on my phone but hadn’t changed the user name and password on my phone and none of the passwords worked.  I was denied three times. I hadn’t written it down. So I had to go through the whole rigamarole again and none of my usual passwords were acceptable for reset because I’ve gone through this too many times in the past year and you can’t reuse the same password  in a year.

I’ve been using SecureSafe.com to keep my passwords safe (have to remember a password to get in though – and that one is really hard because if someone got in there they would have access to my howtogetawaywitheatingicecreamaftereveryonehasgonetobed.com account)

SecureSafe only works if you immediately go in after you’ve reset your password and change it in there.  Ok, I’ll try to remember to do that.

Now Mom lives here.  She has passwords.  Please pass the duct tape.  Time to do a little preventive head wrapping.  I’m one forgotten password away from my head exploding and having  “please use one upper case and one lower case and one number but not consecutive numbers and one character and not used within the past year” numbers and letters and characters rain down over the surrounding three counties.