This morning was a lesson in utter frustration. I renewed a prescription over the phone, which is easy enough and went to go begin my work day. It was 9:03 am. Sorry, boss, I was three minutes late.
But that's not the issue. Em says to me, "I'm going shopping... do you want me to pick that up, or should I give you, 'the card'?"
The card in this case accesses the funds in our Health Savings Account, or HSA. For those of you who are poor, like we are, an HSA is a way for your company to wriggle out of paying premiums for decent insurance by foisting upon you a savings account that they put money, (your money), into each month on your behalf. Or in my case, they put money in when they can. It has proven sporadic and I'm pretty sure not totally legal, but I am gonna leave well-enough alone.
Em just hit the card pretty hard for a three month prescription, so I said I didn't think we had much of an available balance. "I'll look it up," I said as though it should have been the easiest thing in the world to do. And it should have been. But if it were, this post would be about something else, now, wouldn't it?
I forgot the password. I checked each of my myriad e-mails in whichI store important things in hopes no one could ever access enough of my important information to steal my identity and therefore my tens of hundreds of dollars. In fact, I spread important information around like Voldemort stores Horcruxes, or for those of you who actually have a life and don't understand that reference, like a squirrel hides nuts.
No dice. It was not in my Yahoo, other Yahoo, other other Yahoo, Gmail, old work, new work or any other e-mail I remember having. It donned on my that I may have stored the information on my Blackberry, in the handy feature called "Password Keeper". Its icon is a safe, which makes me feel like it is good and secure. Like a safe.
I couldn't find the app at first, because it wasn't on my desktop. It was in a sub folder. I finally found it and typed in my password. Yes, a password to access my passwords.
Wrong password, it informs me. 1 of 10 attempts used.
10 attempts? How safe is that? I think most of the people in my life, were they to really do a little homework could figure out the passwords I use in 10 attempts!
Except of course, me. I began rolling through my various iterations and permutations of my standard passwords until I burned up 7 of 10 tries. I was sweating.
Then I remembered I told Em the password with the preface that "if God forbid, something should happen to me, all my important passwords and accounts are on this, here. And this is the password to get the password."
I knew she would write it down as soon as I walked away. And I know where she keeps these things written down, so I went there. The first password I put in was the right password. I must have mistyped it. Damn, I hate when that happens.
The HSA account password was not in there. It is now 9:20 am. I have spent 17 minutes and considerable perspiration, all to see if I have $18.00 in this stupid account. That's almost a dollar a minute if my math is right.
I had to admit to the website that I had forgotten the secret handshake. This triggered the waterfall five security questions, which have to be answered within a specific time and cannot be mistyped. The questions are easy so this should have been an easy task.
Again, if that were true, this would be a different blentry. Because the five questions are things that everyone knows the answers to, (or could find out easily), I answer them wrong, with answers only I would know. Who's dumb now?
Still Me. Because I couldn't remember my wrong answers. I thought it out, though, and got in. I had forgotten this password required letters (at least one uppercase), numbers AND a special character. I was only just now getting used to mixing letters and numbers.
It is now 9:23 am, and I figured out the answer to the question I asked of myself a full 20 minutes before. Yes, there is at least $18.00 available in the HSA.
Ironically, the med I am refilling has something to do with anxiety suppression, or at least that's one thing it supposedly does for me. Perhaps every new password should come with a prescription.
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