Learning The Ropes

Cristian is on his way to Waco. He's competing in the Texas Games there. My dad, in an effort to drum up an entourage for his Golden Child Grandson, invited my nephew Josh. I'm sure they are sitting in the back of the Suburban RIGHT now eating Hot Cheetos and playing Megaman IV on the PS1. They will have an entire four days of being spoiled.
FOUR DAYS.
I'm not sure what Julie and I will be up against when they get home.

But Grampa Joe lets us eat Hot Cheetos at 10 oclock at night!

But Grampa Joe just bought us new clothes when we ran out!

But Grampa Joe said we could swim in our underwear!

But Grampa Joe didn't care if we were loud and obnoxious! He said we're just little guys and thats how we are!

Of course there's one teensy problem. You see, my parents were both afflicted with this HIDEOUS eye infection recently. And when I say HIDEOUS, I mean...fucking gross. And wouldn't you know...upon close inspection of his grandson this afternoon, my dad noticed a slight puffiness and pinkish tint to Cristian's left eye. If Cris wakes up in the morning with an eye that is sealed shut with pus and is crunchy to the touch...there will be no tournament for him. So as his mother, it fell upon me to do what ANY OTHER Catholic mother of Mexican descent would do in a situation like this.
I busted out some Holy Water.
And I'm kind of new to this.
I situated Cris on my sister's bed, dipped my finger in the small bottle of water, and proceeded to make the sign of the cross on his forehead and chant fathersonholyspiritfathersonholyspirit. And then I prayed.
And then I fathersonholyspiritfathersonholyspirit 'd some more.
I'm an amateur, I know.
The funny thing...now that I think about it...is that Cristian was completely compliant in being wetted with Holy Water and having his mother place her hand on his head and pray for him. At least...he wasn't looking at me like I was some sort of nutty zealot.
Not that I noticed anyway.
So after I finished I realized I was of sitting on something hard...my sister's bed was kind of messy and I reached under the quilt and pulled out a huge bottle of liquor. I passed it to my mom and my mom looks at it and says...Oh! She must have got this as a gift!
Of course she did.
So this means I was praying for my son, meanwhile I had a bottle of booze in my crack. This isn't really the point of my story though.
I recall that once Roy told me about his Grandmother and what she did when the last hurricane rolled through here. He said that he could recall her standing in front of the house, the wind whipping her hair and her skirt...with a gallon jug of Holy Water and she was throwing the water out into the wind and praying all those prayers you learn in CCD classes and she was commanding the hurricane to spare the house. Of course the rain was drenching her and the Holy Water was being thrown back at her and she was screaming in a manner that must have made her look like a crazy woman but...the house IS still standing.
Sometimes I get the Ojo (the evil eye)...it's the price I pay for being so darn cute...and then I get sick and my mother in law is recruited to pray over me with that egg and within 15 minutes I'm good as new. And sometimes the babies get uncontrollable hiccups and we find them sitting in their little chairs with a wet dot of red thread on their foreheads and sooner than later...the hiccups are gone.
It's faith.
Call me crazy. Think what you want.
I rubbed Holy Water on my son's head and prayed over him this afternoon. In fact, my mom stopped me short of just pouring all of the water out onto his eye. I still think that would have worked better.
We'll see.
I better start taking notes.