Interesting things on our radar right now

Some interesting things to talk about

Drag Racing (no prep, track, motorcycle and cars)

Who doesn’t like a good race between 2 fast vehicles? It has become a pastime that Dave and I are almost obsessed with. Right now, we currently binge-watch Justin Swanstrom, Big Chief, Kye Kelley, and more on YouTube. Cars is one of our favorite and most interesting things to talk about. When I first met my hubby, I knew he’d had cars and trucks but I didn’t realize how much he knew about them. He knows the makes, models, years, and mechanics of all types of vehicles. I was, and still am, fascinated by what he can teach me every day about these amazing pieces of machinery.

Obsessed with fast cars

I used to think that mechanics was a boring and tedious knuckle-breaking experience that almost always involved holding a flashlight for a very angry dad. Well, I was partly right. The flashlight was NEVER going to be in the right place so you might as well just give up. Something that I noticed about cars, trucks, motorcycles, and pretty much anything with a motor was that each one of these little engineered miracles runs independently using teeny parts and pieces. The best part is that they can be fixed or replaced.

Learning to wrench a motor is exciting!

It takes thousands of individual parts to create a motor and even more stuff to keep the car running on tires. It’s kind of crazy. When I hear any type of funny sound in the truck or while riding my bike, I immediately find myself on the computer trying to figure it out. It’s liberating to understand how a motor works because as I barrel down the highway in the big diesel dually or zip in and out of traffic on my Harley, I am blessed at how effortless driving is when everything works correctly.

Which type of race car is your favorite?

It’s so exciting to sit down at night and watch a few hours of drag racing with my man (and to be able to follow along). This week’s new topic is screw blower motors. This description from www.dragzine.com sums it up. Between the pro chargers, the turbos, the nitrous cars, and screw blowers, I think racing is on the rise and won’t be slowing down anytime soon. Let’s watch some racing! I’ll get the popcorn ready.

Fresh baked bread

My mom taught me how to bake bread when I was a little girl. We had a wood stove in our boot room and mom could create an entire meal on that wood stove. From pie to buns, my mom could bake anything! I never remember her recipes but I always remember her techniques. Those things stick if you pay attention. I was constantly amazed at how perfect the buns looked when they were done. Brown on the top and fluffy inside. It was magical. They always tasted as good as they looked.

Continuing the tradition

Well, fast forward to today where I continue the tradition of baking bread. I was never that good at pastries or pies. I never had the patience with a crust. I would much rather eat one than bake one. What I have perfected is white bread. Fluffy, dense, tasty and nostalgic. Here’s the catch, I don’t use a recipe. I never have. I bake cookies and cake from scratch without even measuring sometimes. I just feel it. I have recently begun making my bread in a very unconventional way just to see if it works. It’s more like a science experiment now when I get the bowl and spoon out. I do everything by hand.

Unconventional baker

The kneading, the baking. I tried bread machines but it felt cheap. Like I was cheating. As I have the knowledge, I might as well use it. One thing I discovered about breadmaking is that there is no right or wrong way to bake bread. I use yeast, water, salt, sugar and flour. Always the same ingredients. Not fast rising yeast, just regular. I like good quality white flour. I buy a local brand. The difference in how I make bread is in the time it takes. After years of messing around, I discovered that a partially made batch of bread can go in the fridge for half a day, be set on a sunny counter and in an hour, it’s alive again. I don’t get it. I just do it.

Baking is like a science experiment

I also have been known to leave the dough out on the counter all day just to come back and punch it, knead it and bake it. Nobody dies when I make my bread like this. I do cookies the same way. Throw the ingredients in the bowl and just wing it. I made my last batch of buns over the course of a whole day and they were as good or better than a store bought bun. At least Dave thought so. I think we have been fed lies about how food should and can be prepared. Do you use conventional methods or just wing it like me? Let me know.

Completing A Will

A few weeks ago, I was looking through my papers and came across not one, but two old wills that I created but never completed. When I say completed, I mean to have it signed by a witness and notarized by someone important. I just looked at them and thought why have you not done this yet? My answer was pretty apparent. They are boring and tedious to write out if you do them yourself and they are really expensive to do with a lawyer. I thought that there must be a better way.

This will is simple

Isn’t technology amazing? I mean, it’s 2022 and everything is digital. We sign documents and scan things with a phone. My question is why aren’t wills that easy? I decided to answer this by doing my own research. I got on the computer and typed “Simple Will”. The first ad to pop up was a company called Epilogue Wills. I had tried a few will kits from the bookstore as well as other online “easy wills”. Unfortunately, they just didn’t have enough meat to them and they required installing a disc and using a printer. The Epilogue will was nothing like the other ones I had tried before.

No legalese, just english

It is kind of important to have everything laid out in black and white and wishes clearly set out. My dad passed in 2018 and the whole process without a will took months to complete. There are so many hoops to jump through when there is no will to spell out every detail. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy our wills were to create and finalize. Epilogue takes all of the complex stuff out and uses regular English in their instructions. No legalese, just basic words. I completed the entire thing in a couple of hours and just had to get my kids to sign stuff and we were all done! I did both wills for under $300 and no surprises. Quick, painless, and finally done. I highly recommend you take a look at www.epiloguewills.com to see if it works for you.

The Vagus Nerve- resetting it has saved me

You’re probably wondering what the heck the vagus nerve is and what it does? I had never heard of this body part until just today. I am writing this blog at the last minute because once I realized how important this information was, I had to share what I learned. First, let me give you a little background as to why I even looked this stuff up.

Vertigo is a nightmare

I have been experiencing some interesting symptoms in the past year (lots of vomiting and light headedness)and just today had one of the worst bouts of these symptoms to date. The terror actually started 3 days ago when I experienced the most confusing and long lasting vertigo in my life. Vertigo, as defined by google, is a sensation of whirling and loss of balance, associated particularly with looking down from a great height, or caused by disease affecting the inner ear or the vestibular nerve.

Checking in with God

Along with an intense case of the “spins”, I also had incredibly painful bowel movements, I was vomiting, my heart rate was dropping quickly, I was thinking irrationally, I couldn’t speak properly. I thought I might be having a stroke. I was almost passing out in the toilet (sorry, I know that’s too much information, but it is important to give you some backstory). While I sat there on the throne, contemplating my death (not even exaggerating here, I have severe anxiety and get panic attacks during heavy stress), I decided it was time to check in with God.

Needing some answers

I am serious when I say this but I seem to turn to a higher power for answers lately. Doctors haven’t been helping. My connection right now, to something “out there”, is very strong and I just said “God, I need to know what is happening to my body right now, I need a definite answer as to why I feel like I am dying.” I started to cry as I sat. I was just waiting and spinning, not knowing what else to do.

What is this word? Vagus?

I was alone with just the pup so I was getting really scared. As I sat crying in the dark bathroom, I heard a word. Now, I actually heard this word and felt it. It was the word vaga. I was confused. Vaga didn’t make any sense. Then, I heard vagus. What? What the hell is that word? As I left my bathroom, I quickly grabbed my phone and googled Vagus.

Why pay attention to the vagus nerve?

It WAS an actual word but there was more to it. The vagus nerve was what I kept seeing. This was some divine intervention. I thought okay, so what is this thing and why should I pay close attention to it?

What I discovered is that the vagus nerve is the largest nerve in the body and is responsible for a host of important things like digestion, organ function, heart rate and respiration. Holy shit! I had a problem with my vagus nerve! It was all making so much sense to me.

Be careful with the internet. Just get some knowledge, then walk away.

Having survived 5 tumors since 2006 (2 of which were in my gut region), I felt like I needed to get on this right now so I set off to find out what I could do to fix this. I tell you, when I start to research something, I immediately eliminate the garbage that I don’t want to absorb and go straight to the fixing part. I was not claiming this but I was going to get knowledge and make things better once and for all.

Reset the vagus?

So, here is what I discovered about this nerve and how important it is to “reset” it. The vagus is a cranial nerve that goes from the brain to the gut. It is responsible for control of the parasympathetic nerve system. This system controls heart rate, the immune system and digestion. The fact that it controls so many of the things I was having issues with was astounding. The best part about it was that I found out I can reset this nerve to get it functioning properly again.

A cold shower changed my life

Wow! How amazing is our body that we can reset a part? So, here’s what I did to reset this bugger. I hopped in a cold shower. Check out the Wim Hof Method. Doing this almost immediately made my heart rate go up a bit. I stopped spinning so much and started to feel calmer. I was elated! The second thing was to drink some water and go outside to get some fresh air.

Effective treatment to calm you

I already practice deep breathing and meditation so I did that too. Belly breaths are best. I sat for at least a half hour breathing and feeling an intense gratitude for not dying today. It was the most effective thing I had ever done to calm myself. I started to feel normal again. This was only a few hours ago and I still feel relief.

Why not give it a try

I think if you are experiencing anything similar and no doctor can figure it out, try some of these things. I sit here alive and writing this blog, living to tell you the story. I am full of gratitude for getting some divine insight. I have yet another reason to smile.

Kelsey Tobin – Film creator, director, actor, writer, my son.

I am so excited to feature my son, Kelsey in this blog. His content makes me smile and I am certain that if you take a look at some of his hilarious little short movies, you will agree. Kelsey has been creating content for years on YouTube. His longboard videos, shot by his little brother, Nicholas were always a highlight for me to see, after a long day at work.

Kelsey decided around age 23 that he needed to step it up and move to the next level. In a few short weeks, he will be a graduate of Vancouver Film School and I could not be more proud. He knuckled down, sold his home, quit his job and he and Sarah went off into the big city to pursue his dream of being in the business of creating films.

His directing, acting, and camera work is just fantastic. His writing is funny (or serious) depending on the subject matter. It’s hard to take him seriously sometimes when you watch his funny shorts. He resembles Napoleon Dynamite in looks and mannerisms so you can bet you will be laughing while watching his movies. He loves the genre of horror and you can see that with the help of school and a great team of actors, directors, and writers that a future horror flick will be on the horizon.

It is so fun to watch Kelsey grow and take control of his life and pursue his dreams. This is all a parent really asks for. I love watching what he creates and I look forward to every new film he puts out. Check him out on Instagram and YouTube.

Thank you for hanging out and reading this random post about stuff on our radar. I hope it was informative and entertaining. Stay tuned for more interesting blogs about everything under the sun. Be well. Shannon

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