Introduction

Hi, my name is Sarah, though I also go by the nickname of Su thanks to a crazy day back when I was 13. I am 23, live in Alaska and have done so off and on since December 27, 1999. When I'm not living here I am usually able to be found with my family down in North Carolina. Overall, I prefer Alaska because people here just don't care! If you want to wear the same hoody every day of the week, so what! Most people go for comfort than for style, though it's not hard to find both here.

I am the youngest of three girls. My two older sisters are 25 and 29. My mom and dad divorced back in 2001 but it wasn't a big deal to me. My oldest sister, Katie, married her high school sweetheart, Brian, whom she met when she was 15 and they have a feisty 4-year-old daughter, Maddie, who I sometimes lovingly refer to as Moo Moo which was shortened from Maddie Moon (and I've no idea why I started calling her that). Katie is now pregnant with her second child. She will be due a little over a month after I am.

My middle sister, Christina, married a man, Matt, she met during a mission in Nome, AK. They have yet to have any children but their plan is to start trying sometime after Christina graduates college this summer.

Christina, Matt, and my mom are my only family living in Alaska. Everyone else besides two aunts, three cousins, and a grandmother lives in North Carolina.

Well, more about me specifically. I am definitely what you'd call a nerd. I love anime and manga and playing, mmorpgs like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Maple Story (this one only when I can't play the other two). I love playing Golden Sun and am currently in the middle of the most recent addition to that story line, Dark Dawn. I read teen fantasy books like anything and everything by Tamora Pierce, some Stephenie Meyer, and Garth Nix. I also enjoy romance novels but really only by Jude Deveraux and Celeste Bradley. I am a pretty picky reader.

I still love the 90s cartoon show Batman: The Animated Series and I own all four seasons. I believe that Kevin Conroy is the ONLY voice for Batman//Bruce Wayne and Mark Hammil(sp?) is the ONLY voice for Joker. I also have the cartoon series Gargoyles, and some Ed, Edd, and Eddy. As a kid I watched Batman, Spider Man, and X-Men. With my dad I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Kung Fu.

Kid shows don't get much better than Rupert, Little Bear, David the Gnome, and Bananas in Pajamas.

I have a crazy memory and a knack for picking up trivial information. Usually if you can name an actor I can name at least one or two movies they've been in. I love retaining some of the oddest information in the world. I'd give an example but thanks to pregnancy my brain has decided to only have me use maybe 5%, thus making me feel like a complete idiot most of the time.

Other than what I've listed, I also love to make little clay figures and write. My clay figures are all under an inch in height. My smallest one being just barely over 1/4 of an inch. I like to test my skills and see how small and how detailed I can make them. I've done Princess Serenity from Sailor Moon, Ichigo Kurosaki in his shinigami outfit from Bleach, Belle in her ballgown from Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark from a webcomic called Scandinavia and the World, and a nativity scene for my mom last Christmas.

My writing is mostly fantasy and I sometimes try my hand at romance. Mostly the romance is so I can stop being so squeamish about writing the words for reproductive organs in a naughty context. I'm fine saying them otherwise. Vagina! See, no problem! I do like to see how far I'll go in stuff like that by sometimes dabbling in writing erotic romance. There aren't many of those, though.

I am currently trying to make myself really finish this book series I've been working on since 2002. It's a struggle since I'm crap at outlining to the smallest of details so I usually get to a part that I have no idea about and get frustrated and quit writing for a while.

Other than that, I am a pretty simple person. I have three dreams in life: To be a wife, a mother, and to have something published. The mother dream will be fulfilled by the end of this year. I have a pretty optimistic attitude about life but it's not the easy thing to accomplish, especially right now. Most people say I'm upbeat and I have even been called perky from time to time, which makes me cringe. Perky people mostly irritate me. So while I may be a happy person, underneath I hide this wonderfully sometimes cynical side. Like my loathing of people in general. People annoy me. Well, okay, to be more specific, stupid people annoy me and it's amazing how much they breed. Some people like to say they weed themselves out, but not before they've left three or four clones of themselves behind.

I have been in love once and am still quite in love with this man. Met him when I was 15 and we were together for 4 1/2 years. Even though it's been over 3 years since we broke up, I still think about him all the time. No one has been as good as he has. But I still hold out hope that somwhere, out there, is a man who is as good as or better than my first love and that I will meet him some day.

Now, about the pregnancy. This is my first (and hopefully not last). I found out on March 3, 2011. I know the week I conceived because I am so weird about keeping track of what days I had some Three Letter Fun (my code phrase for sex that I developed last year while working at Starbucks) and what days I had my time of the month and even down to the detail of what the flow was like. I keep track for the sole reason of knowing when my next monthly is and for just in case I get pregnant.

My original due date was November 5, 2011 but at my first ultrasound in early April the baby measured a day ahead so now it's November 4th. Though I know that most likely it'll be about a week later, which means the due date is within two days before or two days after my birthday (Nov. 12). I am hoping for a girl which I will name Asa Kay (Asa being pronounced Ay-suh). Asa means something like born in the morning and also healer. Kay is my mother's middle name. It took me forever to figure out a middle name that worked and when I randomly tried out my mom's it fit perfectly! If it's a boy the name could be something like Devon or Evan. I know that name will change so many times if it turns out to be a boy. The middle name...well I have to have a talk with the father of the baby about that. He insists on it being Sean because it's a family thing for the males to have the middle name Sean. But he already has a son and I feel it's ridiculous to have every kid with the same gender have the same name (whether it be first or middle) in a generation. It's like George Forman naming all his kids George. It might very well end up that I take control and tell the guy to F off that I'm naming the kid whatever I want.

The father of the baby (FOB) and I don't have a good relationship. At the time the Three Letter Fun happened I thought we were dating, but found out the week after that he didn't see it as that. I'm wondering when he was going to tell me. I had to ask him one day.

FOB has suggested marriage but even if I was in love with the man I would have said no. I don't believe in a couple marrying due to a pregnancy. If the marriage doesn't work out then you've just created yet another divorce and it's a sure way for a parent to feel resentment of a child. I will not subject myself to a marriage I know will not work and I will not subject my child to any misdirected negative feelings from me or FOB. I put myself in there as well because I know I'm not perfect and I sometimes can't help sudden thoughts or feelings.

There will be more on what's going on with me and FOB later.

Now for the last part to this ridiculously long intro. The name of my blog, Beauty in the World, comes from the song with the same name by Macy Gray. Here's a link to the song on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qX7ZsxD3Ik

If there is an ad at the beginning, sorry, no control over that. It's a song that makes me happy and really reflects how I feel about everything. When I was younger I used to hear so many women wanting to hold off on getting pregnant because of how awful the world was. They didn't want to bring a child into such a horrible place. Every time I heard that I just couldn't understand how they could focus on the bad things when there was so much good to be seen. Yes the state of the world seems bad, but if you look, you'll find so many good things that the bad doesn't seem so huge anymore.

I'm all about the little things. Like today for instance, it was raining and it's all gross outside. I was having issues with FOB yet again, too. I got hungry and decided to go to the store to get some vegetable soup (one of three soups I will eat) and some American cheese for grilled cheese. As I was walking around I saw a worker leading a group of first graders through the store, having the raise their arms like airplanes as she talked to them about her job and how the store works. That made me smile. I saw these cute water bottles with the tops that flip open to reveal rubber straws. The tops were animal heads. They had a blue bear, a green frog, a pink tiger, and a purple monkey. I think had anyone walked by and saw the goofy grin on my face they would have thought I was mentally handicapped, getting so much joy from such a simple thing. And then I saw some awesome plastic cups with matching plates and bowls.  By the time I left the store I was in a very good mood, which was awesome because I've been seriously depressed for the past week.

You just can't focus on the bad things. You have to look for the little things that make you smile, because there are so many of them. This pregnancy being one of them for me. Despite how horrible things are with FOB and my being single and having to live with my mom due to losing a job last year (though I do have a job now), this pregnancy is such a beautiful thing and the little one that results in it will be the light of my life and I know that when I'm fed up with everything, including my baby, I can just look at it and see the innocence and beauty in my child and be happy again.