🔥 Welcome to the Chaos: What You’ll Find in My Rants Blog

So… what is Rants from the Real World?

Think of it as a digital scream into the void, but one that’s funny, honest, occasionally educational, and always unapologetically me. This is where I let loose the thoughts that build up while I’m stuck behind the world’s slowest zipper merger, wrestling with insurance forms that were definitely designed by a cryptid, or watching someone duct-tape a mattress to a sedan and call it “secure.”

What kind of rants, you ask?

Oh, buckle up:

• 🛠 Real World Rants
  Everyday facepalms. Customer service horror stories. Petty parking lot politics. Times I was treated like a felon for daring to take a legally-mandated break.

• 💊 Medical Rants
  Ever try navigating healthcare with a rare heart condition and a stack of “this medication might kill you” warnings? Yeah. Expect a few choice words for insurance companies and clueless providers.

• 🚗 Flex Rants
  Life as an Amazon Flex driver brings its own brand of chaos: mislabeled heavy packages, GPS tantrums, and traffic that tests your will to live.

• 🧬 Darwin Awards Rants
  Those moments when someone does something so bafflingly dumb that your faith in humanity takes a nosedive? I document those. Because someone has to.

• 💸 Money, Bills, and IRS Rants
  From “surprise” medical bills and late fees on things you did pay, to tax-season purgatory and the mystery of how the IRS says you owe when you’re broke; this is where financial frustration gets aired out like laundry on judgment day.

Why this blog exists:

Because if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.
Because the absurdity of daily life deserves to be documented.
Because sometimes I just need a good verbal facepalm.
Seriously! What is humanity doing, and how did we get here?

And because reading someone else’s well-written meltdown can make you feel a little less alone in your own.

Whether you’re here to commiserate, chuckle, or mutter “oh my god, SAME,” welcome to the rant party.

Life’s messy; unfiltered, unpolished, unapologetic, unhygienic, and unexpected.
Bring snacks, hand sanitizer, a charger, and a towel.

New rants drop when the chaos strikes. Which is… often.

Dear Body: Get Your Life Together,

💧 Dear Stupid Bladder

We need to have a serious talk.

It’s been almost eleven years since the last kid evacuated the premises.
The trauma is noted. The sacrifices are appreciated.

BUT WHY ARE WE STILL ACTING LIKE THE DAM BREAKS EVERY TIME I SNEEZE, MOVE, OR EVEN THINK ABOUT LAUGHING TOO HARD??

I would like, just once, to:

• bend down,

• tie my shoe,

• reach for a grocery bag...

...without wondering if I’m about to get publicly humiliated by my own anatomy.

And then the fun bonus level:

You’re out running errands.
Your bladder betrays you like a cheap turncoat.
Now you’re shuffling into Walmart in the soggy Walk of Shame,
searching desperately for dry shorts before anyone notices.

And you think:
“Hey, no problem. I’ll just grab some emergency underwear while I’m here.”

BUT THEN
Walmart has the AUDACITY to charge $13
for one pair of sad, flimsy, emotionally fragile panties
that don’t even cover my full Sir-Mix-A-Lot-approved ass.

I’m sorry, what??

For $13, I want:

• Reinforced Kevlar panties

• Moisture-wicking technology

• Panty armor

• A force field around my dignity

Because listen
I may be old...
but I am not old enough to go back to wearing diapers.
I am still young enough to have dignity.

So what do you do?

You grab the cheapy No Boundaries booty shorts instead
because at least they’ve got enough fabric to function as emergency underwear and a dignity patch.

Welcome to Letters & Landscapes.
Where the bladders are traitors, the underwear is overpriced,
and survival stories are stitched together with sarcasm and cheap shorts.

Dear Insurance: Stop Trying to Kill Me with Triptans

This Post Brought to You by Pain and Prior Authorization

(I’m Not a Guinea Pig in a Lab Coat)

You say I need to try other medications before I qualify for the one that actually worked?
Cool.
Great.
Let’s talk about that.

Why are you prescribing me triptans when I have Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome?

That’s a heart condition.
You know the organ responsible for keeping me alive?

My resting heart rate, on a normal day, just sitting calmly and sipping water like a well-behaved adult, is 43 beats per minute. You should see what it is like when I am sleeping… I was in the hospital after my youngest daughter was born and the nurses freaked because sleeping it was in the 20’s.

That’s not “athlete calm.”
That’s “should she be in the ICU or is she just vibing in slow-mo?” calm.

A Little Backstory

I’ve had migraines since I was seven.

Yes. Seven years old.
Most kids were worried about recess and spelling tests. I was figuring out how to function while my skull felt like it was trying to implode.

Since then, I’ve tried it all:
Diets. Exercise. Supplements. Medications. Meditation. Caffeine. No caffeine. You name it.

And guess what?
I still get migraines. Way too often for anyone to call it “manageable.”

Amiovig was the only real break I’ve ever had.

For nine glorious months, I had just 3 to 5 small migraines a month.
Not perfect—but compared to my normal 14 to 19 mild migraines and 2 to 4 “sleeping-on-the-bathroom-floor, cuddling-the-porcelain-throne” monsters every single month?

It was heaven.

In that entire 9-month stretch, I only had about five of those catastrophic, world-stopping migraines.
It was the first time in decades that I didn’t live in constant fear of my own brain turning against me.

But then I had to stop.

Not because it stopped working, oh no, it worked.
I had to stop because I started developing severe injection site reactions.

Not your standard itchy red bump
I’m talking angry rashes that spread from the injection site to my entire limb
arm, leg, or even my whole stomach, depending on where I injected it. And it would last for DAYS after.

I had to choose between unbearable migraines or a full-body inflammatory mess.
Cool. Great. Thanks for the options.

And now insurance wants me to go back to triptans.
Back to medications that are literally dangerous with my heart condition.
Back to “try this first because policy says so.”
Back to roulette.
Back to “try this, maybe it won’t kill you this time.”

You want me to take something that constricts blood vessels and spikes heart rate?
Oh sure. Let’s just toss in a defibrillator while we’re at it and call it:

Migraine Survivor: Battle Mode

No thank you.

When my neurologist prescribes a CGRP inhibitor
something that has worked, doesn’t mess with my cardiovascular system, and has actual logic behind it
maybe, just maybe…

Stop rerouting me to the pharmacy version of the gladiator pit.

Because I don’t want a fight.
I want relief.

I want to be able to function.
To work.
To show up for my kid.
To go one damn day without my brain trying to kill itself from the inside out while your system delays treatment like it's playing some kind of bureaucratic dodgeball.

And honestly?

I am tired of having to outsmart a system that’s supposed to help me.

I am not a number.
Not a checklist.
Not some pre-auth code in a spreadsheet.

I am a person with a documented medical condition, a treatment plan, and zero time for medication roulette.

So dear insurance:
If you’re going to keep pretending you know my body better than my doctor does,
at least spring for the defibrillator and the helmet.
Because this guinea pig is done playing.

Here’s my actual ECG reading from today as I write this post:

Average heart rate: 50 bpm.
Still calm. Still alive. Still not a candidate for heart-constricting triptan roulette.

So dear insurance:

If you're going to keep playing "prove your pain" and rerouting me through unsafe meds for fun,
then let me show you what living with this looks like.

This is my body on a good day.
Imagine what it’s like when it’s losing the migraine war and dodging your bureaucracy.

At the very least, maybe now you’ll believe me when I say:
I’m not being dramatic
I’m being alive.

Real World Darwins on Two Feet:

The Roast of the Strutters, Stumblers, and Street-Strolling Chaos Goblins

Let’s talk about a special kind of Darwin Award candidate:
The pedestrian who’s less “look both ways” and more “main character in their own disaster film.”

I’ve ranted about them before individually, but not yet posted.
But today? We’re assembling the Strut Squad for one epic roast.

🏁 Exhibit A: The Runway Walker

So there I am. Driving. Green light. Minding my business.

And here comes Darwin, King of the Crosswalks, strutting directly into my lane
not jogging,
not hustling,
not even pretending to care that I’m in a two-ton steel box with momentum and right-of-way.

No.
He’s walking like he’s in Milan.
He makes eye contact.
Dead-on. Like he’s daring me to end his modeling career right there at Dairy Queen.

He strolls through my lane.
Then through the stuck turn lane where drivers are fuming behind a red arrow
like he’s Moses parting the Red Sea, if Moses had the IQ of a sleep-deprived houseplant.

Sir.
You are not the Chosen One.
You are not the main character in a tragic romance.
You are one smug eyebrow away from becoming tomorrow’s traffic cautionary tale.

Also?

I don’t care how confident you are
You are not “hot stuff.”
You are potential roadkill with a god complex and no sense of physics.

If I hit you, it won’t be because I wanted to.
It’ll be because reality doesn’t yield to delusion, and neither does a moving car.

🐢 Exhibit B: The Sludge-Walker

Then there’s the people who cross the street like molasses on vacation.
Light’s turning red? They don’t care.
Car waiting? Irrelevant.
You’re sitting there, engine running, bladder full, sanity dwindling and they are vibing in slow motion like their shoes are glued to the asphalt.

If you walked any slower, you'd start photosynthesizing.

Do you have a death wish?
Are you communing with the pavement?
Is this a spiritual pilgrimage we didn’t get the memo for?

MOVE. YOUR. FEET.
Please and thank you.

🧍‍♂️ Exhibit C: The Human Rug (a.k.a. Chew’s Cousin)

Let me set the scene:
I’m driving. Trying to be a responsible adult.
And then this guy
shirtless, jogging, hairy enough to star in a werewolf documentary comes running dead center down the road.

Not off to the side.
Not in the bike lane.
THE ACTUAL CENTER.

He was wearing shorts.
And running shoes.
And that’s it.
Just confidence, body hair, and a goal no one else could understand.

From a distance, he looked like someone rolled up a wool rug, gave it sentience, and a gym schedule.

I wasn’t sure if I should brake, call animal control, or film a National Geographic special.

Let’s be real:

The 1970s called. They want their rug back.

I don’t know what god he was trying to impress, but I promise you
no one was ready for that level of shirtless mammal energy.

Sir.
If you were trying to summon the spirit of Chewbacca mid-cardio, you nailed it.
But that much body hair is not a flex.
It’s a public safety concern when paired with speed and bad judgment.

Please jog on the sidewalk like the rest of society and leave the center stripe to the vehicles.

🎤 In Conclusion:

If you’re a pedestrian, act like you understand basic survival.

Cross when it’s safe.
Look both ways.
Jog if you must.
But for the love of Dairy Queen, don’t strut like you’re untouchable, sludge like time owes you money, or bolt down the center stripe like you’re the final boss in Frogger.

Welcome to the Real World Rants.
Where the bladders betray, the Flex routes glitch, and the street-walking Darwins just keep coming
barefoot, shirtless, and utterly unaware that they’re one awkward sprint away from becoming an urban legend.