Pulling my bed out of forced retirement

By TERRY R. CASSREINO

MADISON, Miss. (Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008) – After years in storage and covered in thick grime and dirt, we officially took my childhood bed out of retirement.

We brought the head board and foot board to my in-laws on Sunday. There, Pam’s mom hand-cleaned the wood with oil specially made for antique woods. And on Monday, we all got together at our house to assemble the bed and formally dedicate it for another 20 years’ of service. Fun was had by all.

The bed is Western-themed and dates back to when kids played the politically incorrect game of cowboys and Indians – you know, the game where kids pretended to be (and sometimes dressed up like) Indians and cowboys and then united to systematically destroy everything in sight.

We’d run around the house and the yard with cap guns blazing madly. Sometimes I would play by myself, hop on my horse (Blaze by Mattel), pretend I was someone in charge and high-tail it over to the bad guys’ hideaway (bank robbers, perhaps) and right whatever went wrong.

Man, we were violent kids. Shooting. Killing. Firing guns on everything and everyone in sight. And it didn’t stop there. We watched all the Western TV shows, watched Tom & JerryThe Three Stooges (who also were incredibly violent). cartoons (possibly among the most violent of the theatrical cartoon shorts) and laughed at

Heck, I remember being in my elementary school yard during recess when I was in the first grade and playing Bonny and Clyde, in which a bunch of us would (pretend to) rob banks and shoot innocent bystanders who just happened to get in the way.

And I remember being insanely jealous of a girl friend (not girlfriend, mind you, a girl friend) whose parents took her to see Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in “Bonny and Clyde.” I wanted to see it badly, but I remember Mom and Dad thought that girl’s parents were insane, nuts, screwed in the head. They told me that movie was too violent for me I still wanted to see it.

Well, I finally saw “Bonny and Clyde” on home video back in the mid 1970s (a VHS tape, no less) and thought then – and still think today – it is a motion picture masterpiece that says more about our American culture and lifestyle than anything else made in that period (what I like to call the dawn of the 1970s golden age of American cinema).

But I digress.

The photo on the left is my childhood bed as it looks today after me, my wife, my sister-in-law and my mother-in-law put it together Monday night. Pam found the actual bed frame at Goodwill and my in-laws had a couple of wooden slats on which the box spring sits.

Now it’s just waiting for a child.

Meanwhile, we have just about finished moving Camryn into her new room at the house – the room that used to be the guest room. We moved the mainframe computer from that room and into our official in-home office. And we have a new chest of drawers on order for Camryn’s room.

That’s about it for now. Check back on Wednesday.

Copyright 2008, Terry R. Cassreino, all rights reserved

Making final travel prepartions for China

By TERRY R. CASSREINO

MADISON, Miss. (Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008) – Paperwork, repeated telephone calls and travel planning have dominated the first two days of Thanksgiving week while I finalized plans for travel next week through LotusTravel, our travel agency in Washington state.

First: Our travel dates have changed slightly.

Pam and I will leave Jackson at 8:53 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 2, on Northwest Flight 2979 bound for Detroit. There, we will change planes and take Northwest Flight 25 for Tokyo at 1:45 p.m. when we will relax in the comfort and confines of coach seating for a 14-hour flight complete with what we expect will be breathtaking, gourmet meals prepared and served on board.

In Tokyo we change over to Northwest Flight 29 bound for Beijing. Finally, after nearly 24 hours of travel, we will arrive in Beijing at 9:40 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 3 (which – here is where it gets tricky – is actually Wednesday morning here in Mississippi).

Anyway, with my roundtrip flight finally booked (we return to Jackson on Thursday night, Dec. 18) late Monday, my focus then shifted to travel within China. After discussing our options with Lotus on Monday, we received our complete itinerary (and bill, of course) this afternoon.

Man, this is draining, confusing and frustrating – all at once. Besides planning our travel, I also had to wait at the house all day Monday for FedEx to deliver an overnight packet from Holt International Children's Services containing our official travel approval document from China.

We need the official travel approval for the trip, hence my inability to leave the house at all on Monday because the document needed my signature (and you know if you miss a FedEx package that requires a signature you never know when you will see it again).

Now that travel is complete, and my bank account thoroughly wiped out, I can shift my attention to taking care of things here at home during the time we are out of the country.

***

While in Beijing, we plan to take a few tours and capture as much high definition video footage as possible (to replace the more than 10 hours of video we took and lost from our 2006 trip when we got Camryn). We will visit the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven and a few other places.

We passed up a few other all-day tours, including these that would whet anyone's appetite for food and sights:

• Thursday, Dec. 4: Tour Wal-Mart and Sam's Club in Beijing, using my membership to see what bargains I can pick up in China and then return to Sam's Club in Jackson ready to tell the manager "What do you mean you don't price-match? I can get it much cheaper at the Sam's Club in Beijing." Lunch at Kentucky Fried Chicken lunch buffet (only 20 yuan for all-you-can-eat including the colonel's famous Chinese recipe). Evening performance of "Phantom of the Opera" live on stage (the Broadway touring company makes a quick stop in Beijing before heading to Mumbai, Kiev and Orlando, Fla.).
  
• Friday, Dec. 5: Free day. May catch a film at the China multiplex where you can hear more than one film while watch the one you paid to see (we do have a lot in common with other nations). Dinner at Picadilly Cafeteria.
  
• Saturday, Dec. 6: Tour Dollar General, stop by CVS Pharmacy. Afternoon snack time featuring scorpions and grasshoppers on a stick.
  

Serously, though, Pam and I do plan to take in Wal-Mart while in China. We visited and shopped there last time and found it fascinating (we have done the same thing when we've traveled to Mexico). I honestly don't think there's a better way to get a inside glimpse at life in other countries than to see what is selling at Wal-Mart.

And they do sell scorpions and grasshoppers on a stick on the streets of Beijing. Now don't ask what the taste like because I just can't bring myself to crunch and much on friendly little grasshoppers who spent much of the day impaled on wooden skewers.

***

In the photo on the left, Pam, left, poses with Camryn, our daughter, on Halloween night 2008. Camryn, who turned 3 on April 5, is excited about her brother and can't wait for us to return home with him. It'll be interesting to see how she handles being away from us for more than two weeks while we are in China.

Copyright 2008, Terry R. Cassreino