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It's 6:30 p.m. and Miranda Babcock, an information technology specialist, is totally exhausted. Her company's mainframe computer had crashed early in the morning, and all day long she was feeling the pressure to get the system up again.
She achieved success about 5:15 p.m.-and then immediately dashed out the door. She had stayed at work an hour later than normal. Thankfully her neighbor was able to pick up her 9-and 11-year-old sons from their after-school program, since she wasn't going to make it there in time.
But if that weren't bad enough, she was getting on the jam-packed Southern California freeways at the height of rush hour. It took her a 75-minute commute and a near collision before she finally pulled into her driveway. Frazzled and drained, she trudged through the back door, greeted her kids and sighed. Now that she was home, all she wanted to do was put her feet up and rest.
But there was dinner to make, the boys wanted help with homework and the dog desperately needed a walk-ideally before her husband was due home from work around 7:30 p.m. when the family would eat dinner together. After that, she would have kitchen cleanup, bills to pay, paperwork from the kids' school to go through, lunches to pack for tomorrow and a mountain of laundry needing attention. Whew!
"If I'm lucky," Babcock says, "I'll be done by 10 o'clock, so I can at least spend an hour relaxing . . . I really shouldn't stay up past 11; I have to get up tomorrow morning at 5:30 to get ready for work, and it'd be really great to get 6 1 / 2 hours of sleep."
All in all, it's a pretty typical day. True, she doesn't always have to work overtime. But even on normal days when she leaves work by 4:15 p.m., that gives her just enough time to make it to her sons' school before closing time. Once she's picked them up, there are often errands to run-to the grocery store, dry cleaners, bank, post office, etc.-before heading home to make dinner.
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