Beloved Boston...A Re-Post

You can't live in Boston today and not reflect on the events of a year ago. 
This was posted on Tues April 16,th, 2013, the day after the bombings.

I wasn't there.

Neither my kids nor my husband were there. We were all safe.

She in NYC, is the one who alerted me of the events via text. He, safe on the golf course with my dad, 70 miles away from the war zone. My husband ensconced safely at his desk and I, enjoying a rare day off with my mom.

I wasn't there, but I could have easily been there like I had so many years before.
I can only share with you how most of us Bostonian who live here felt when the first waves of info came in:

It was 3:15, and I'm shopping at Neiman Marcus in a local suburb. Frick texted me. It read, "Mom, did a bomb go off at the marathon?" "Are u there?" "No."I replied." H/O"

I stopped, and searched the web on my iPhone. I googled Boston Marathon 2013. Nothing. I searched some more nothing. I then searched "bomb at Boston Marathon." I found the footage. I clicked on to the raw video and heard the news that a bomb had gone off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The report  said it was a, "horrific scene". It went on to describe bloodied streets and loss of limbs and I immediately went into safety mode. I started mentally checking off my family members.

That's what everyone that lives here did.

The first text was sent to my best friend. She lives in Boston and is an avid runner. I knew the answer before I finished typing the text, so I immediately placed a call to her seconds after I pressed the send button. I couldn't wait. She answered, "I'm ok." She was crying.
"Thank God," I said. "Were you there?"

"Can," she said between sobs. "I was right there. I had just decided that it was getting cold and that I had shit to do and that it was time to go home." "I felt the blast behind me and turned to see the smoke."
I was so glad she was ok. So glad she was safe. So shocked that she had been so close. She hadn't even called her mom. I let her go, telling her I loved her and to call her mom.

Then I went over the familial list:
I come from a large family and the majority of us are 20-50. Prime Marathon viewing years. The texts began furiously. While I was walking through the store, word got out and people everywhere could be seen either talking on their smartphones or looking at their smartphones. I drove home because no one really wanted to NOT be in front of a TV at this point and we listened to Boston Sports radio, which turned into news talk on the ride home. It was an uneasy next few hours as we awaited word on the family safety. It wasn't until 6:15 that we knew for sure that both my 26 immediate family members were ok and my husband's 11 members were safe. We were lucky.

Then the worst news of all came.

3 people had died and one of them an 8 yr old boy.

Hundreds of people had been injured. It was worse than we could have imagined. I felt at that moment that life had changed.

We were glued to the TV for the rest of the night as I'm sure you were too.

Trying to make the best of a horrid day which was no happy holiday after all.

Let The Sunshine In

• With such a warm and gorgeous, sunny Saturday, I was struck by how many of us were "amazed" by the warm weather. It has been so cold here for so long that we forgot what good weather felt like....

• Frick and Frack spent the weekend together in NYC. Yes, I know they are old enough to handle it without Mama and the fact that I called and texted them both six thousand times has nothing to do with the fact that they ignored 90 percent of those calls and texts. Does it?

• Busy week for me. I have one of the biggest days ever at The Candy Bar on Wednesday..,wish me luck!

• I can hardly believe it has been a year since the Boston Marathon bombings. This week the news media of the world will descend on our fair city to tell the amazing stories of the victims and survivors. I pray God will keep the city safe and watch over us as we commemorate the tragic events of last year. I personally believe that this year's Boston Marathon will probably be one of the safest places in the world to be during the race. 

• I baked two incredible pies for Easter yesterday. Jus sayin...

• Looking forward to seeing "The Other Woman". Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann and Brooklyn Decker all team up to bring down Leslie Mann's cheating husband. I have a personal interest in infidelity since I have experienced it first hand. Cheating men are scum and deserve everything bad that happens to them because karma is a bitch and you don't want to piss off a bitch who is pissed off. I love it when Hollywood dramatizes the sweet vindication!

• Nurse Jackie on Showtime is BACK....speaking of bitches who you don't want to piss off..

Pin Up Terror

Really Rolling Stone?

There is a distinct difference between these two covers.
Discuss.....

Golden Moments

So, I literally just saw this on TV, and I hardly wiped the tear from my eye when I ran here to tell you about it.

See that gorgeous Golden Retriever there? That awesome animal is part of a wonderful organization called K9 Comfort Dogs. A charitable organization run by the Lutheran Church, K9 Comfort dogs are a group of 60 dogs whose sole purpose is to be pet and provide comfort to those in need. These trained service dogs are providing the country with a whole lot more than comfort. 

Since the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary shootings, Maggie, a K-9 Comfort dog has been serving at the Sandy Hook Elementary School everyday since the deadly shootings. Tim Hetzner, President of the Lutheran Church Charities, says the dogs are sometimes better than a grief counselor. 

"Some people hold onto the dog for five minutes or more because that's what they need," Hetzner said. "It depends on the person and what they're going through."


Soon, Hetzner said, the people begin speaking to the dogs. 

"They tell the dog the story of what happened," Hetzner said. "Dogs are great listeners…. They can sense when someone is struggling."


Those fantastic K9's jetted to Boston the day after the Marathon bombings and laid on the bricks just outside the First Lutheran Church on Berkley Street to provide hugs for those in mourning. Studies have shown that just petting a dog can decrease a patient's stress. 


"Being around dogs helps decrease patients' stress by prompting the release of oxytocin, which is the hormone that bonds mothers to babies. Studies have shown that patients who are around dogs have increased levels of dopamine -- the "happy" neurotransmitter that helps relieve depression – as well as endorphins and adrenaline."

I agree. 

And there's no better way to take away the pain, if just for a brief moment, by hugging or petting a loving animal. I think the world could use a little K-9 Comfort. Don't you?

I Love That Dirty Water

Yeah.....This is my 2013 X-Mas card. 

"Peace and blessings, 

Love, Candy and Tommy."

It turned out to be a "wikid pissa" Boston weekend, but I didn't intend it to be:

• Celts playoff game Friday night in the sky box. The Celts looked AWFUL, and I'm telling you they were awful from the opening tip off. We knew early on it wasn't going to be a great night for the Boston ballers. Up in Luxury Suite land, the walls are lined with a mini museum with all kinds of Boston Sports memorabilia. While I was walking around I spotted My Tommy all alone and I seized the moment for a photo op. *sigh* I love that photo. It made the Friday night loss to the Knicks hurt a lot less. 
• Sox game on Sunday in My Guy's new season tickets. LOVED the new tickets and LOVED the game. Sox won and ended up sweeping Houston and are sporting the best record in baseball right now. 
• Never one to miss out on a fabulous retail opportunity, I bought awesome Celts gear on Friday night and a killer Pats t-shirt and Red Sox hat on Sunday. I bought them from the BEST BRAND FOR TEAM GEAR ever. Super cute and sexy, and the quality is amazing.  
• Then last night, I attended a local fund raiser for Boston's One Fund. The party, held at a local restaurant called Tempo, did an amazing job! The staff, the food, the silent auction items, the raffles and the entire evening was so well done. They had a band playing and passed hors d'oeuvre's and the guests were feeling festive. I have no idea how well they did, but I know they raised a lot. It goes to the injured people in the marathon bombings to help with medical costs and funding. Right now it's a cause we can all get behind.
• The icing on the cake was a win by the Celts and another day to live in the NBA playoffs. I think I love all of my Boston teams equally, but I'm rooting passionately for the Celts right now. Saying for sure which team I like better would be like choosing a favorite child which would never happen and just not realistic. But one thing is for sure:

We all know who my heart belongs to....*sigh*

Facial Recognition

The beauty industry attracts people of all shapes and sizes. Women especially understand our society's obsession with physical beauty and maintaining it. We bond over shared beauty secrets and covet the latest, greatest beauty treatments. Beauty is something I love, and I share that love with my clients every day. Each woman, unique in their specific concerns and needs. It's a matter of trust I share with these women. A mutual respect for my expertise and the effectiveness of the products I recommend and the women who buy them. I take that relationship very seriously. Women are the biggest part of the formula for my success.

So I was quite struck by the interesting article I read this morning about the mother of both accused Boston Marathon Bombers, Zubeiat Tsarnaeva.

Zubeiat Tsarnaeva is a licensed aesthetician in MA, who worked from her 3rd floor familial apartment on Norfolk Street in Cambridge. Two of her longtime clients, Anne and Alyssa Kilzer of Belmont gave the Boston Herald's Margery Eagan an interesting glimpse inside the family. Both mother and daughter were said to have been to the Cambridge apartment many, many times in the six years Zubeiat Tsarnaeva gave them facials. Daughter Alyssa found it hard not to refute the media claims of no one seeing "extremism or radicalism" in Bombing suspect #2, younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Incredibly, Alyssa claimed to have seen signs of radical extremism in their mother:

"At one appointment, Tsarnaeva “started quoting a conspiracy theory, telling me how she thought 9/11 was purposely created by the American government to make Americans hate Muslims,” Alyssa 23, wrote on her blog of her visits to the apartment."

“I have to say I felt kind of scared and vulnerable when she said this, as I am distinctly American, and was lying practically naked in her living room.”

There has been lots of speculation in the media as to who or whom "radicalized" these brothers, who spent nearly all of their lives growing up Americans in Cambridge. There are those who question the Muslim community in Boston. Those who question the Internet influence; social media radical extremist groups and YouTube, and those who question the motives behind older brother Tamerlan's six month visit to Russia in the beginning of 2012. But the picture painted by Alyssa and her mother Anne is quite interesting, indeed. 

Mother Anne talked about the immaculately clean apartment that Zubieat kept and about the time she and her daughters spent in close proximity with other family members. Zubieat, she said,  would work on the mother and daughter in the living room while other Tsarnaev family members, who would sometimes argue, were in other rooms. Anne recalled her as "proud" and a "mother who worked hard and seemed close to her children." Anne Kilzer was one of the many who called police after recognizing the photo of the Tsarnaev brothers the FBI posted in the media in hopes of finding them.

She explained that 19 yr old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev presented himself as "helpful to his mother" and family and daughter Alyssa wrote:

"Alyssa also stated that Tsarnaeva’s two daughters, one about 18, were both in arranged marriages. When one daughter brought her baby home, Dzhokhar would look after the boy.

Sometimes, on congested Norfolk Street, he would also go down to put the visitor-parking pass on her car window."

“Yes” she said, “I gave him my car keys.”

"Once Tsarnaeva took the parking pass out but “first put on a hijab,” 
Alyssa wrote, as she’d 
become increasingly religious mentioning Allah and
 the Koran between confessions of worry and
 arguments involving her older son, Tamerlan."

Does this new information lend to the evidence that those boys were taught religious extremism at home? It very well could be, but it  also very well could be that the brothers taught their mother that same religious extremism at home too. I'm not accusing anyone of anything here, but what I am saying is this:

A lot of the answers to all of the questions somehow must lie inside that 3rd floor apartment and the people who live there on Nolfolk Street in Cambridge.

I Am Boston

The Daily Dandy is back up!
Due to a password error, Google locked me out of my account.

And of all days???

Things here in Massachusetts today are best described as "intense".
I awoke to police warning residents of a community no more than 10 miles from my home, to "stay indoors". I posted on Facebook at 10;30 this am:

""The Commonwealth watches and waits" We are literally witnessing the largest police operation in the state's history in real time. I am unable to walk away from my TV , not quite sure if life should go on as usual just outside my front door. The threat so real, the communities are under lock down no more than 10 miles around me."


Today we are all Boston.

• My high school and college friends continue to text. 
• My family, we have been keeping tight grip on each other. 
• My blogger friends reach out via Facebook to make sure I am ok.

Today I am Boston:

• I am the mother of a daughter named Crystal: 29 year old Krystle Campbell.
• I am a Boston University graduate student; class of 2000: Lu Lingzi age 23, BU graduate student.
• I am the the mother of a young man who was once an 8 year old boy: Martin Richard of Dorchester.

May their innocent souls rest in peace.

At 2:07 pm, April 19th, 2013,I sit in my store and I wait, watch and listen to the TV news. Unable to do anything to help.

Just a witness to a bizarre piece of history.

Beloved Boston

I wasn't there.

Neither my kids nor my husband were there. We were all safe.

She in NYC, is the one who alerted me of the events via text. He, safe on the golf course with my dad, 70 miles away from the war zone. My husband ensconced safely at his desk and I, enjoying a rare day off with my mom.

I wasn't there, but I could have easily been there like I had so many years before.
I can only share with you how most of us Bostonian who live here felt when the first waves of info came in:

It was 3:15, and I'm shopping at Neiman Marcus in a local suburb. Frick texted me. It read, "Mom, did a bomb go off at the marathon?" "Are u there?" "No."I replied." H/O"

I stopped, and searched the web on my iPhone. I googled Boston Marathon 2013. Nothing. I searched some more nothing. I then searched "bomb at Boston Marathon." I found the footage. I clicked on to the raw video and heard the news that a bomb had gone off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The report  said it was a, "horrific scene". It went on to describe bloodied streets and loss of limbs and I immediately went into safety mode. I started mentally checking off my family members.

That's what everyone that lives here did.

The first text was sent to my best friend. She lives in Boston and is an avid runner. I knew the answer before I finished typing the text, so I immediately placed a call to her seconds after I pressed the send button. I couldn't wait. She answered, "I'm ok." She was crying.
"Thank God," I said. "Were you there?"

"Can," she said between sobs. "I was right there. I had just decided that it was getting cold and that I had shit to do and that it was time to go home." "I felt the blast behind me and turned to see the smoke."
I was so glad she was ok. So glad she was safe. So shocked that she had been so close. She hadn't even called her mom. I let her go, telling her I loved her and to call her mom.

Then I went over the familial list:
I come from a large family and the majority of us are 20-50. Prime Marathon viewing years. The texts began furiously. While I was walking through the store, word got out and people everywhere could be seen either talking on their smartphones or looking at their smartphones. I drove home because no one really wanted to NOT be in front of a TV at this point and we listened to Boston Sports radio, which turned into news talk on the ride home. It was an uneasy next few hours as we awaited word on the family safety. It wasn't until 6:15 that we knew for sure that both my 26 immediate family members were ok and my husband's 11 members were safe. We were lucky.

Then the worst news of all came.

3 people had died and one of them an 8 yr old boy.

Hundreds of people had been injured. It was worse than we could have imagined. I felt at that moment that life had changed.

We were glued to the TV for the rest of the night as I'm sure you were too.

Trying to make the best of a horrid day which was no happy holiday after all.