I'd be so happy if I were homeless. Comfy couch!

Every now and then here in Chicago you'll see a semi jammed under an overpass. I've seen them before they get jammed trying to slowly inch their way by. I don't know why that would help, but it's what they do.

To #15: Weird. Back in 2002 I only had $12,000 US at my disposal for the year and I could handle it. I was going to stay. Went to Swedish For Immigrants classes, looked into finding work but in the end like a previous poster my husband found the people too cold and wanted to head back to Chicago. Maybe Ironic as he IS a swedish citizen and lived there until his early teens. And I always tell people this because it cracks me up, in SFI they had a video on how to interact with the native Swedes. It was a bus stop scene. A middle-eastern immigrant was attempting to make conversation with a fellow passenger he'd never met before. DON'T DO THIS! Was the lesson. Swedes don't like chatting with strangers at bus stops. Makes them uncomfortable. We were all laughing in class because it was so ridiculous, but I guess that's their culture.

To c0ldfish, I agree on some points and since I don't like getting comments about my excess weight I've made an effort to avoid making comments about anyone's weight (thin, fat, in between), because it really doesn't matter. Or at least it shouldn't. The fact is though that society seems to utterly DESPISE me just for existing in a physical form where I need to shop at places like Lane Bryant. I really don't think you can quite understand the shift in behavior people have around you when you get fat. I used to be thin (got the I hate you for being thin comments then as well), but now as a size 18 woman the negativity towards me is about 100 times more extreme. And it isn't easy to just lose weight. It can be done and I've done it. Over and over. Gained 100, lost 80, gained 80, lost 40, gained 40, etc etc etc. And the weight loss process for me is long, drawn-out, unpleasant, wrought with severely limiting food intake and exercising two or three hours a day just to stay a little chubby as opposed to morbidly obese. All I'm trying to say is that being fat is no cakewalk (no pun intended ha ha). People are disgusted with me and they also seem to have some delusion that I don't possess a scale or a mirror as many feel the need to inform me of my size. I'm not going to be represented by these models either, but it's definitely better than being bombarded with nothing but one type of image.