It's Tuesday night in Corcoran, and 31-year-old Mary Barber is cooking a spaghetti dinner for her family. Three of the youngest kids are seated in the middle of the kitchen at a coffee table that has been converted into a dining table. Two older children stand at the countertop helping to prepare the meal. Barber's husband, Ivan, who has brain cancer, helps as much as he can.

Ivan used to drive trucks for a living. Now the family lives off Barber's $11-an-hour job as an EMT for American Ambulance. Barber simultaneously oversees the cooking, talks to a Sentinel reporter, tends to her children's needs and keeps an eye on her husband. After dinner, Barber heads off to Kings County Volunteer Fire Department No. 11 to help teach a CPR class. Then it's back home, put the kids to bed, and try to get some sleep before getting up again for a non-stop tour of work, caring for Ivan, raising the kids and getting ready for nursing school in January.

"My whole attitude in life is to get through the day," Barber said.

Barber could worry about the economic downturn, but she doesn't have the time.

It's a paycheck-to-paycheck existence of cheap dinners on paper plates, discount clothing and lots of careful budgeting.

The only way she can pay for it all, including the medications and doctors' visits for Ivan, is to work as much overtime as possible.

Local counselors say that many people are dealing with similar pressures as the economy heads into prolonged recession.

Especially people who were already on the edge financially or in their relationships.

"The stresses just exacerbate all those issues," said Deborah Carolan, a marriage and family therapist in Lemoore.

Carolan said she advises people to focus on "caring about each other ... things you can do in tough economic times that don't cost you anything."

Barber certainly knows something about that.

In their sprawling Corcoran home, she and Ivan occupy the dingiest room.

The best ones are occupied by their five children -- Logan, Caden, Riley, Vincent and Icela. Logan, Caden and Riley are Barber's by birth. Vincent and Icela are foster kids likely on their way to becoming permanent members of the Barber clan.

They are all supported by Barber's 60-plus-hours-a-week EMT work, which has her driving injured state prisoners from Corcoran to Bakersfield, lifting people off the ground and staying awake for as long as 48 hours.

Somehow, Barber manages to find waking time to spend with her family, do chores and keep the house presentable.

And she does it with seeming good cheer.

Her husband gets a $534-a-month disability check. Sometimes he's able to help with the chores, sometimes he isn't.

She mows the law, changes the oil, chops the firewood and takes volunteer firefighter calls.

She doesn't stop there.

She's planning to go full-time to nursing school at West Hills College in January.

Jaws drop when people hear about Barber's schedule.

"I couldn't believe all the stuff she had going on. She just blew me out of the water," said Justin Miner, an American Ambulance paramedic who worked with Barber for a year.

Miner described Barber's Corcoran-based EMT job as a "meat grinder" that keeps you awake "pretty much for two days straight."

He trying to raise money to buy Barber a laptop computer to help her get through nursing school.

"She continues to amaze me," Miner said.

Barber said that her husband's illness -- and watching him live long past the doctor's predictions -- has caused her to "not sweat the little things."

"So much goes on in your life that you don't have any control over," she said.

Barber said that one of the reasons she's so involved is to communicate to her children that "you get out of life what you put into it."

Barber's own life has been a struggle. She married Ivan at age 16. For years, she struggled with a serious weight problem. But she never capitulated. She had gastric bypass surgery eight years ago, a move that helped her lose 200 pounds. She got the job as an EMT, and was well on her way to stepping up to paramedic when Ivan's brain cancer hit four years ago.

That put her career plans on hold.

But Barber learned to adapt. She passed the prerequisites for nursing school and got accepted into the nursing program at West Hills College Lemoore.

"What am I going to get out of my life if I go in my room and scream, 'Woe is me?'" she asked.

That's a sentiment local counselor David Ball understands.

Ball, who works at Kings Counseling Center and Kings View Mental Health Services in Hanford, described all kinds of ways that economic pressures can wreck home life -- everything from bickering parents to neglected children.

He said it's important to see the positives in the middle of challenging situations.

"She's making grape juice out of spoiled grapes," Ball said of Barber.

"All of us are going to be impacted in the next four, six years, however long this goes," he added.

The reporter can be reached at 583-2432