smooth stones and attention

I have way to many online accounts that require passwords. The newest directions about passwords are that they need to have a capital and small letters and another kind of symbol, like numbers, and be longer than 8 of these. The password should not be a word or something that you can remember and you should change it four times a year. Am I the only person having trouble with these directions? I used to have a few levels of passwords -- the lowest security -- for things like websites with printable coloring pages -- was a certain word that I used for lots of sites. And then, I had another two or three passwords that I used for fewer and fewer sites, depending on where I saw the sites in my private security system. But I tried to use just a few passwords so that I could remember them. Now, of course, the letter/number/symbol combination is supposed to be unique for each site, and it is not supposed to be a word. Of course, there are no letter/number/symbol combinations that are words. Who remembers all of this!? Getting a student ID at UW seems to only complicating this (There is also the fact that I am only recognized as a student by some departments and not others who need to recognize me. But that is a whole other, long story.). The list of passwords grows.

Of course, there should be no pattern or system to passwords either. So, I have passwords for two email accounts, the bank, the investment company, credit and payment organizations, pension plans (both mine and David's), Apple, ebay, Facebook, etsy, and now UW, UW distance learning, and My UW, plus a long list of unimportant websites.

I think the UW three passwords have pushed me over the edge. I don't want to have any account of mine broken into, but I just may not be smart enough, young enough, savvy enough, or something, to keep up with all the security. Suddenly, I feel like my grandmother who never understood why she needed to put zip codes on Christmas cards.

Change of subject.

I am probably feeling more like myself than I have since David died. And there is something sad about that too. I can do more, I can almost multi-task, and that feels great. I have eased some burdens and I am being more and more able to make lists and then stop worrying about the tasks and concerns on the list (thank you, Jeannette!). But for this moving forward, it is also moving further and further away from David. If my grief is a very pointy edged stone, the water of time is smoothing the stone. Oh, there are lots of edges yet, but I can see where the process is heading. I can see how grief will become a smooth stone. I feel how I will forget the sharp pain, and I feel how I will have to let go of David more and more and more. There is no way to keep him near. I cannot stop the water, I cannot stop time. Who want to hold on to pain, to grief? I have to let go of the pain to move forward, but letting go of the pain, also lets go of the immediacy of the life that I lived with David. And letting go sucks.

Of course, I do it every day. The process continues even into my sleep.

Another change.

Julia is amazing. Another good report from school today. The therapist who was supposed to come after school, had a change of plans that I did not register completely, but I wound up with an hour to work with Julia. We worked on guessing the number of "eggs" without counting them each time up to five eggs. She is getting better at this. We did a page (just 4 problems) of addition, and another page of sentences to write. She needed to be reminded once to stay on task. She did the rest without complaint and without distraction.

Right now, I can hear her reading with Morgan. It is a book that she knows and we have worked on reading it many times. And she is getting more and more of the words correct. It does seem like she wants to learn.

Good meds, good maturity, good people to work with Julia all the time.