Saturday, April 20, 2013

#BostonUnited a week of events

Monday is my day off to catch up on things around the house, go to the stores if I need to, or sometimes just a day at the gym. This Monday my intentions were to stay home to catch up on my blog posts that I've been putting off and watch the Boston marathon online. It started off with my daily run to Dunkin Donuts and immediately I came home and turned on the computer.

I sent one last tweet out to my friend to ask if he knew of a TV station airing it. I knew he would be glued to this event watching very mile. As I expected he tweeted back and said no but have me the same website link everyone else would be watching on. I logged on and started watching as I did my work.
As each wave went off I got the chills and continued to tweet my friends watching. It was kind of fun to see some of them taking pictures at work with the computer screens showing the race. As I did my work my stupid computer kept claiming up. I would wait, hit play again, & the live stream would start again. I did this a few times but by 12pm it was getting old and finally I just didn't log on again. I still followed my friends on twitter and saw some of those finish line pictures coming through & congratulated them. A few others I had been following were being sent to my phone by alerts.
By now it was around 2:30pm and my kids were walking in the door from high school. We had to go out to do some errands with them & my daughter had to go to work so with crunch time we'd probably eat out before she went in at 5pm.
As we were talking about where we were going my sister texted me this message...

"Did you see the explosions at Boston marathon. People hurt "

I wrote back something I can not repeat because I was so shocked as I turned on the TV. NBC and CBS were very good at showing the news reports and videos. I sat there infront of the TV in awe & immediately called my running partner/ friend Kim. She had been one of my friends watching from work on her computer but left to pick up her young boys from school a few minutes before this. I told her to run in the house and put the news on. We sat there in our own homes and kept commenting on what we were seeking. I kept naming all of the people we knew running in this race from our Facebook group Team #runDisney & on Twitter and just kept saying "Oh my God! Oh my God!"over and over. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. I felt was like I was seeing something like 911 all over again. This wasn't just a fluke bomb I knew this was terrorism.
I had to leave to go do my errands I wished that I could stay home and watch but I couldn't. So with every moment that I had I checked my Facebook and Twitter on my phone for updates.Dinner was very hard to get through it without looking at my phone. As soon as I came home I turned on the TV and I watched all night but there was nothing more than I already knew.
The next day when I woke up, Tuesday, I felt a weight over me. I wished it was a dream but it wasn't. I couldn't imagine that all of those runners and marathon watchers that were there yesterday to celebrate and to have a day off from work to celebrate Patriots Day, a happy day in Boston, were now at home in shock or in hospitals. Today was suppose to be a day victories. This was not that day.
Instead, it was a day that runners, like myself, and supporters came together through social media and wore our running shirts to show the world that we were united as a community and that NO ONE could ruin our dreams, our hopes, and our love for the sport. Together we would stand together and be UNITED! 

Hashtags on Twitter read:
#PrayForBoston    #BostonUnited    #TshirtTuesday   #Bostonmarathon    #BostonStrong

You can read my 2 posts from this day 
and

Luckily I have a TV at work and I watched every day for updates but there was nothing new until Friday morning when I woke up to find that there was a shoot off in the streets of Watertown, Ma. with the 2 suspects in the middle of the night. My day was spent again glues to the TV. As I watched, I prayed for the safety of this neighborhood and that nothing else would happen to this town.
Later that evening the Boston Red Sox game was cancelled, people in Watertown, Ma were still in their houses, and the suspect was not caught yet. I was getting mad. How could these families gon to sleep and rest tonight? I was praying that God would intervene...and he did!  As I was watching the NBC Nightly News they first lifted the house lock down for the neighborhood and then a few minutes later... They reported shots were fired again in the neighborhood. What was going on had me on the edge of my seat on my couch. Tweeting back and forth to some friends that asked me to keep them updated because they weren't home watching TV was heightening the anticipation of this story. Every time there was something new there was conversation. The sun had fallen and now it was dark out "Come on! Catch this sucker before he runs in the dark", I yelled out loud in the living room...as if the Boston Police could here me. The stand off was a few hours and with every hour I grew more anxious. I didn't want to miss anything and I didn't want to go to bed until they caught him. I felt so bad for these people who lived in the Massachusetts neighborhood. What they must be going through..UGH! At this point my husband, my son, and the dog had fallen asleep on the couch next to me while my daughter was at work. I was solo watching this now. I still followed along with my friends, the Boston PD, and the NBC news on Twitter. There were rumors all over the place and so far fetched. But wait. Hold on! What did Brain Williams just say? They just confirmed that "The Boston Police have found the suspect by thermal images under a boat tarp"? OMG this is it. Yeah they are going to get him. Then the wait. Finally, after a long week the Boston Police, the Bomb Squad, & the FBI had him in custody and were taking him to a nearby Boston hospital.
At that point my heart was enlightened and I felt like a weight had been lifted off of me. These victims will have answers, this neighborhood can breathe, and hopefully justice will be served!

Note to picture below: As I was watching the capture of this monster I saw this posted on Twitter and retweeted it. I posted it on my Facebook wall. It made me laugh out loud and it summed up the situation.



PLEASE CONTINUE TO PRAY FOR THE HEALING OF THE TOWN OF BOSTON
THE RUNNERS OF THE 2103 MARATHON
AND THE FAMILIES OF THE VICTIMS.


No comments:

Post a Comment