This year, we took things in a more planned fashion (though, ahem, I still didn’t clean the house), and made it a birthday weekend. Friday night, we put the girl to bed, and played some video games. Sabbath, we went to Sabbath School and made an afternoon trip to visit the chickens (and steal their four eggs) and then to the park. Still looking for trouble, we hopped in the car and went blackberry picking. Veronica loved it.

Saturday night, we dropped V at the grandparents so she could play with papa Jarnes and nanna Vicki, then Ted and I went out for calzones at Sweet Basil, where he resoundingly beat me at Small World (on my birthday date, no less!), so I made him take me to the Patisserie for dessert to make up for it.

Sunday, on my official birthday, we got up early for some quiet time while V was still sleeping. Quiet time and a cup of coffee are awesome. Not quite sure yet whether they’re better than more sleep, but I’m considering it. Veronica presented me with my gifts—lip gloss and nail polish she picked out herself—wrapped in Duplos.

After a Costco run (Cos-co Veronica says), we returned home and Veronica and I worked on this evening’s masterpiece.

Then, we headed to the parents’ house, so Veronica could play with Brylie, Brennan and Ariana and we ate that pie. Happy Birthday to me!

Tonight, we washed the car, mowed the lawn and made headway on the omnipresent pile of laundry.

Now, how do I get the spouse to enter receipts so I can balance the checkbook and budget for last month?

Oh. My. Goodness. How many organization systems are there? California Closets. Closet Maid. Martha Stewart Closets. Plus all the random closet systems from Target, Shopko, K-Mart. We narrowed it down to the Home Depot offerings: Closet Maid and Martha Stewart. I like the Closet Maid system better, but here’s the hitch: their program for building your system sucks. Seriously sucks. Runs only on Windows and has a manual about 12 pages long on how to use it. The Martha Stewart program, on the other hand, is web-based and spit out a recommendation for me in about 15 seconds. Enter my dimensions and voila! an answer, complete with which pieces to buy and the total cost. And easy-to-use buttons to customize it any way I want with auto updating cost.

So . . . now I have to rethink which system to use. After all, I make my decisions based in large part on how cool or lame a company’s website is, so this is serious business.

Some stats for you:

Ted’s save boxes and hobbies take up almost one entire rack (that’s the one closest to the wall, for those of you who want to come steal forever his childhood crayon drawings, game consoles, graphic novels, and all of our printed pictures, which I lump in with his save boxes)

I have two save boxes. I say I’m not a pack rat. Ted says I’m not sentimental. (And he says it likes it’s a bad thing.)

Ted has 0 boxes of clothes. I have three boxes of sweaters and more. (OK, so maybe I am a pack rat.) Veronica tops us: she has 7 boxes of clothes that she’s worn or is going to wear. And that rack on the far right, that’s almost entirely hers.

The ginormous recycling bin is completely full of broken down boxes we were storing. Not pictured: the pile that needs to go to the dump. Also not pictured: the cabinets currently sitting next to our sidewalk, waiting to be hung on the wall of the garage.

Incidentally, we finally gave back the jogging stroller and we still have the edger, both of which appear here but are not actually ours. It’s a good thing we have friends who realize we’re slow to return things. . . and are still our friends.

Notice that I’m not posting pictures of our living room, which currently has two laundry baskets and three boxes of stuff that’s coming from or going to the garage in the organization scheme. Though some of you have had the misfortune to witness said living room in person over the last several days.

And there you have it, folks, the annual cleaning of our garage. This time, with the help of Costco’s shiny storage racks.

Conclusion: if we attract any more stuff, we’re either going to have to get rid of stuff or get a bigger garage. . . .

I only vaguely remember the financial discussion from our engaged couples seminar but it involved advice from Larry Burkett (whom I despise) and something about how opposites attract. I’m sure you can guess who fulfills the saver and spender roles in our relationship.

How do you deal with finances in your relationship? Do you “abdicate responsibility” to one gender, keep separate accounts, keep it all in the mattress? (And if you do, I have a MELOC offer for you: that’s mattress equity line of credit for you non-bankers.)

For you facebook haters, here’s an article on, er, facebook. Favorite quote: “there?s a difference between people who are good for a dinner party conversation or one at a cocktail party.” I believe the spouse would say the same for twitter. There’s only so much you can read about.

As for purging, I’ve found that waiting for everyone to start posting about the latest political scandal offers the perfect excuse for purging. If someone is lacking in taste, I just hide them from my feed; if the remarks are egregious, they get unfriended. Voila! Trimming complete.

Another problem with the facebook feed, as a friend pointed out, is the bragging. I don’t have very many such offenders, or they would probably be purged as well.

But the thing that I like about facebook is that I can keep up generally with those who are far away and with acquaintances . . . even though I don’t do cocktail parties.