HR

I haven't talked about her for a while, but rest assured, Herminda is still around. I know she's still around because she saw me naked today. Twice.

For those unfamiliar, a few years ago I "hired" someone to come clean my house every other week. I put "hired" in quotes because I'm not exactly sure if that's what I did. Herminda is a good friend of my uncle and for years he would pay her to come do some basic cleaning so she could make some extra money. We're not talking hard labor here--Herminda is in her 60s, and while she's very healthy and would probably vacuum my roof without problem if I asked her to, we generally avoid letting her do anything that makes her bend over.

My uncle moved to California and Herminda asked him if he knew anyone else who needed help. He told her she should just retire and he would pay her "pension" but she rolled her eyes at that and told him she wants to keep doing actual work as long as she's able. So that's when he called me.

I felt like a snob even considering it, but at the time I was working eleventy thousand hours a week and was frankly eager to pay someone to come do my laundry since no one else was doing it anymore and it had piled up so high that I had to buy a second house just to store it.

After one Herminda visit I was completely sold on the whole arrangement and thereafter started speaking in a British accent and asked my friends to call me Lord McCann from then on.


Herminda has been coming for three or four years now and even though she doesn't speak a single word of English and I speak only like 10 words of Spanish, I consider her one of my closest friends.

But that doesn't mean I necessarily want us to see each other naked.

The first encounter this morning found me in my underwear. I woke up at some respectable time. Duncan was curled up next to me. Skylar had left at eleventy o'clock for school or mafia business or prostitution or something, so he was long gone by this point.

I wandered out of my bedroom and passed through the kitchen to get to the back door so I could let Duncan out to kill all of the grass in my backyard with his pee. And just as I went to open the door, I heard a sound. One that was coming from inside the house.

I whipped around, expecting to see a robber, instead discovering Herminda who was standing at my front door, having just let herself in, obviously pretending to look adoringly at a painting so it would seem like she hadn't yet noticed me.

I had to do a full sprint through the house to get out of her line of vision. She didn't break character once during this, and frankly I appreciated her professionalism. I'm going to keep that in mind when I reconsider her salary of 75 cents a day.

I'M KIDDING. It's 75 cents an hour.

Eventually I got into the shower and tried to forget the earlier encounter. But when I finished showering I realized that there were no towels left in the bathroom and so I would have to go to my bedroom closet to retrieve one.

Look. I thought I heard Herminda and Duncan down in the basement. I could have sworn I heard sounds of life happening down there. I assumed she wasn't in my bedroom. There's a door from the bathroom to my bedroom and so I just assumed I could travel that area in my birthday suit, safely.

You guys. The look on that elderly woman's face as she turned and saw a grown naked man, dripping, whistling, and walking toward her with a pep in his step.

Lord I hope she doesn't report me to HR.

~It Just Gets Stranger