Typical Day
As the first rays of the morning sun seep into Helen's bedroom window at 6:25AM, her eyelids spring open like clockwork. After eighteen years of getting up with the sun, she doesn't actually need an alarm anymore. This perky turkey has always been an early riser and it's served her well so far. She knows her husband Paul appreciates it too; he's still got a couple hours of bed ahead.
Two people who only have moments of bed left are her two kids, David (age sixteen) and Courtney (age twelve). After brushing her teeth and hunting for today's outfit (black pants and a strong pink blazer), she wakes them up at 6:45AM and tells them to get ready for the day. After showering, she wakes them up again at 6:55AM, and this time she's not joking.
Helen buckles up at 7:35AM and starts the daily drive. Her commute to work is the same as every morning: ten minutes of easy suburban driving, seven-to-ten spent at a drive-through for an egg sandwich and coffee, twenty or so trying not to yell at everyone in bumper-to-bumper traffic, another ten off the freeway to the office, and finally anywhere from two to fifteen minutes to find parking.
Today the car gods must have listened to her prayers, because a spot opens as soon as she makes the final turn. At 8:29AM, Helen opens the door marked "Office of Public Housing" and greets the room with a smile.
The next few hours are spent in her personal office towards the front. She answers emails, takes phone calls from public housing agencies, signs off on grants, and generally keeps business moving. As her first responsibility is to the public, she leaves the door open to them whenever she isn't already in a meeting with them.
Or, whenever she doesn't have a conference call with the government, which happens today at 11:00AM. Since they're one of the principle funders of the OPH (or OoPH if you prefer), Helen answers on the first ring.
At 12:30PM, Helen and two other administrators head out of the office and walk a few blocks to lunch. Today, that lunch is a meeting with one of the local service clubs. It means two things: One, that it will be a long series of speeches and handshakes that will run late. And two, free lunch.
Helen is back in the office by 1:50PM. Good thing too; while she was out, a call came through from the state housing authority to relay a funding issue, asking Helen to call them back pretty please at her earliest convenience. Making the call with the office door shut and locked, she has a friendly yet completely unpleasant discussion with the head of housing at the state level, which is the closest thing she has to a boss.
When Helen mercifully hangs up at 2:20PM, the budget for housing expansion has been cut by $500,000. For the rest of the work day, she and the rest of her team of analysts and planners have to figure out how to make the next month work on 12% less than they did last month.
It's kind of like how the crew of Apollo 13 had to put a bunch of random spaceship junk together to build an air filtration system, except NASA's budget is way bigger than Helen's.
At 5:15PM, Helen has finally shut down the computer and packed up. She makes sure to flick the lights off (even that costs money, and, of course, every single cent counts). She says good night to the rest of the staff, who will likely work a little later tonight. She'd offer to order them delivery, but that doesn't seem like the best use of resources at this point.
After stopping at home for a woefully quick dinner with the family, Helen arrives at a PTA meeting around 7:30PM. Like a good parent, she takes an active interest in the lives of her children, and that includes using her particular set of skills to assist the school in any way she can.
Usually, that means helping the booster club order the shirts for the Friday football game or organizing a car wash before it gets too cold. Of course, to attend this meeting she has to leave her family. Helen tries not to dwell on this too long.
Back home at 8:30PM, she checks in with her kids to make sure they've done their homework. Good grades have earned them the benefit of the doubt, but David said "yeah mom" and went back to his video games a little too quickly. Hm. Too tired to argue, she heads downstairs to read while Paul watches some baseball.
And by watches, we mean falls asleep to, which he gradually does until the snores begin with the sixth inning around 9:10PM. After hours of constant human conversation, she can deal with a mild snorefest from the man she loves.