Mrs. Schrier replaced the hollow door on the master bedroom with a reinforced wooden one, for instance. Mr. Schrier laminated a wallet card for each child, listing work numbers for both him and his wife plus their new cell phone and pager numbers. He and Jenny use the cell phones to connect every day around 7 a.m. while he is driving home when she has just arrived at work. Now, rather than resenting household chores, he says, washing the clothes and picking up the clutter at home help him unwind after work before his morning bedtime. What he's talking about is painfully clear on a recent August Wednesday afternoon.
Family members dash about.
I hardly eat here at the house. Primarily what I do is work and sleep. May. The hostess says there's a 70-minute wait, and both parents remark that it usually isn't so busy on Tuesdays. Make that Wednesday. And Mrs. Schrier currently puts in about 20 hours overtime per week.