The Schmooziest of Them All

I get paid to schmooze sometimes, which is a-ok by me since I genuinely like most the people (men) I'm supposed to be schmooze. I suppose we can call them "schmoozees" as I can definitely be a "schmoozer."


An aside: Although I'm an office queen bee, I do get corralled into being a charming face (and let's face it, a pair of charming tits) during business lunches. It's nice on my end to meet the voices I hear so often and they can connect a face and tits to the voice that greets them when they are giving us business. Plus, I get free lunch so it becomes an all around win-win.


Again, luckily, I can find positive attributes about most the men I am forced into socializing with; some are big on family (I can relate), some like to drink wine during lunch (hooray!), some like dirty jokes or live music or cigars. Point being that I can usually find something, a common ground of some sort to deal with these strangers on.

You can see where this is going?


Alas, there are others which I cannot. One in particular gives us lots of work, lots of leeway while performing said work, is very talkative and loves to talk to me. But I can't take it anymore! He's so frickin' creepy and tells the most long-winded, sexist stories that I just want to scream.


He has a daughter a few years younger than I am so you would think he would think flirting with me is icky, but when he's with me, I feel like a bought and paid for object. Yuck, it's a bad feeling, let me provide you with an example.


His insurance office has adjusters spread throughout WI, but keep in mind that I've only personally met two of them. One day, I'm forced to meet this adjuster at a storage facility. Normally, I wouldn't have minded so much but I have Lo with me at work and I know this is going to screw up lunchtime and naptime. In Lola-world, these are two "times" of utmost importance, but I didn't really have much choice.


We drive to meet Adjuster and make our way through the maze of hallways to the storage unit. These hallways are really creepy because the lights are automatic, relying on motion sensors to turn on and once you are passed, they turn off. I fully expected zombies to start reanimating at any moment, Resident Evil style.


Fast forward thru all the dusting off and picture taking of contents and resume at the part where Adjuster begins taking pictures of me. HELLO? We are now an hour late for lunchtime and pushing into naptime as well, not exactly prime photo-op time dickweed! Eventually, we skedaddle, breathe a sigh of relief and let the exasperation fade.


Til a week later when Adjuster calls the office. No, he wasn't giving us work, apparently he just wanted to chat. He told me all about how he got his pictures developed and emailed them to all his little adjuster friends! "They are so jealous that I got to be alone in a storage shed with you."

Dude, eww. And we were not alone! We had a rambunctious, hungry, tired toddler there remember? Remember her getting cranky and ornery? Remember why? Because you took f-o-r-e-v-e-r. Because you were too busy taking pictures of me to send to your pervy middle-aged coworkers.

Ugh. Yuck. Ick. I hate being an unintentional object of lust. I wish I could shoot a lust-laser at the people I want to lust after me (Nesto, Scarlett Johannson) and everyone else could just leave me alone.

It's Raining Men... DUCK, RUN FOR COVAAAA!

I believe I've mentioned Ernesto and his extreme hotness. Well, let me just say that he is totally worthy of an entire post.

Have you seen Robin Hood, Men in Tights? If you haven't, you should. It's a stupid fucking movie in the absolute best ways. When I was wee, Little John and Will (Robin's sidekicks) were the objects of my adoration and they still evoke warmy fuzzies when I watch the movie. Little John is a huge man of little words while Will is sharp-witted, dark and has the prerequisite facial hair. Nesto is the perfect combination between these two, my ultimate crush.

Tall, a bigger (than my norm) man, with dark hair, eyes and sense of humor, and that saucy accent, oh the dirty things he makes me daydream...

We've worked together a little over a two years now and while there has been gentle flirting, it's not more serious than a workplace crush who, I suspect, knows of my infatuation.

He's had a hard life, being raised one of many children, first generation Americans on the nitty-gritty South Side of Milwaukee. He got into a spot of trouble when he was younger and is now focusing on flipping homes on his off-time and generally being a hermit. Literally, this guy qualifies for hermit-status, I've gotten him out with me once and I tend to be pretty persuasive when I have ulterior motives.

He's one of those people that can fix anything and proves himself invaluable to me by performing the routine maintenence on my car (while most women measure a month by menses, he has an inner 3-month calendar for oil changes and air filter checks) and also not so routine maintenence such as when my car window gets smashed in and he saves me 300.00+ dollars. And let's not forget helping me move, or setting up my bookcase (with books) or moving the enormous TV generously donated to me. And when I offer him some sort of culinary compensation (cherry pie, yo?), he graciously refuses with one of those killer smiles.

Other wonderful things about Nesto:
1. He likes me in pink - which I actually wear sometimes, although I hate it, for him. Gag.
2. He lies to me. "That split lip is barely noticeable..."
3. When he gets worked up about something, he speaks rapidly in Spanish while his voice gets louder and louder. It's really funny to hear, especially since I don't know what he's saying.
4. He's shy.
5. He's wonderful with Lola.
6. THE smile, yowza.

One HORRIBLE Thing about Nesto:
1. Longtime girlfriend, bum bum buuuuuummmmmm....

SO he finally made me an offer to go out tomorrow night for dinner and beers and I'm going to be on my best behavior. The mantra for the night will go something like "I will not put the moves on poor Nesto, I will put the moves on poor Nesto...."

But, dear audience... all I really want to do is put the moves on dear, sexy Ernesto.

PS. Another longtime crush of mine, a 30ish adjuster just let me in on the fact that him and his wife are splitting. To console him and take his mind off his grief, I'm taking him out on Friday night, ever-dependable Etta.

Crush, the only soda I'll drink

No, that's not me. But today, it could be.

You know that song, I Kissed a Girl? Well, I went one further and I fell in love with one. She's eloquent and innocent and brave and strong and an editor (!) and I've only gotten through a year into her archives. Wow, Mama likes.

In other news, I have an exam tonight at six. For which I haven't studied and it is now 1pm! I just can't cure myself of procrasitnatorrea, do they have antibiotics for this?

It must be something in the water! I just told Nesto that he's really sexy when he gets all worked up about things. Given that he's Mexican (from Mexico people) and has a tendency to get passionate about things and talk very quickly (in Spanish) about these topics in a raised voice, I've constantly got a twinkle in my eye when he's around. I want him to talk dirty to me, ha.

Now that I've spoken about two people I have a semi-crush on, let's continue this trend and comment on DB.

DB is actually what I call DB, another co-worker. He's mid-forties, pretty darn fit, shortish which makes him even more sexy than if he was fit and tall, dark hair with that wonderful salt sprinkled in, well-spoken, enjoys roller coasters, eating ethnic foods/trying new restaurants, traveling, concerts and other mature, interesting hobbies. I can be having the worst day in the world and DB will come in and make me grin. And not only is DB cool in his own right, but he has two sons 16 & 18, who will hopefully grow into mini-DB's to the delight of women the world over. Men like that should always have sons to pass the sexiness on...

Before you start to think that I work with a bunch of Playgirl foldouts, I might add that for every wonderful man I work with, there's a few duds more. A gentlemen with 2-3 kids, an equal number of baby-mamas and twice as many girlfriends. A guy who should NEVER be allowed to talk to ANYONE as his personality is too abrasive and he prides himself on that, yuck. And I just found out that a seemingly nice man is cheating on his wife, a woman I admire greatly. BUMMER.

This post is going nowhere fast so I'll just end it now. Wish me luck on my exam, I'm off to (finally) study. And maybe fantasize about my co-workers a bit.

The Unfairness of it ALL....

I'm doing exactly as I feared and my first "real" post is going to be one not concerning Lola at all. Or maybe it does concern her, in a Kevin Bacon-six degrees of separation sort of a way: Veronica is getting fucked. Veronica is part of the Lola fan club, chapter Servpro. She is also, unfortunately, an illegal alien. She happens to be one of the funniest, most genuine females I've ever met, with memorable mannerisms, charming spanglish and two of the cutest little girls this side of a chimichanga. And she's getting fucked.

When I say fucked (just so we're clear) I'm not talking "sweaty, grin-with-disbelief-on-how-amazing-that-was" fucked, I'm talking "oh shit, what the hell is she going to do now, let's hope there's some way she can stay in the this country" fucked.

Here's the situation: Veronica and her hubby don't have a lot of money (hear hear!) and she is applying for BadgerCare for her two little girls. This is all good so far since she has an alias, (I know it but I'm not going to reveal it since it wouldn't be such a good alias then, would it?) and we wrote her a check to show she works here.

Background knowledge: Veronica's alias actually works through a temporary staffing firm, Veronica herself doesn't actually exist in the US.

Yesterday, I get a routine phone call from her social worker (I know, couldn't they call them something else, like "useless") who is trying to verify employment. The problem comes in where Veronica is not employed by Servpro, she's employed by a staffing agency and she is not employed by the staffing agency under Veronica.

Chad is tied with this one. He can fill out the employment verification form stating Veronica is our employee (which she's not) and risk an audit which shows we hired an illegal resident. Or... he can deny that she is our employee and ruin her chances for affordable health insurance.

I know how expensive insurance is... for one child. For two, even with two working parents, it's got to be astronomical.

I'm heartbroken to know that this wonderful woman is getting denied health insurance because of us, that she'll be scrimping by each time a little one has an ear infection or god forbid, breaks an appendage. I sympathize and ache for the state of things.

It's just not fucking fair. And if one of you hypothetical readers even so much as thinks her illegal status is cause for being stringent, I challenge you: look into her little girls' dark, wary eyes and tell them that their mother is a second rate human whose nonexistent citizenship is reason enough to deny them quality health care. You hardhearted fuck.