About

Often Unorthodox has been made over a few times, but currently it's a "journey to fitness" blog with some miscellaneous stuff about my family and other interests thrown into the mix. I started blogging before it was called blogging. I believe it was 1995ish, I was a shy and nerdy 13 year old with a strict mother that had just gotten a computer with a dial up internet connection. An online journal was born, and over the years moved from Angelfire to Tripod, to some other place I can't remember, to Diaryland and Deadjournal, and finally to Livejournal (which I still have, but update rarely) and now here. I have met amazing people on my journey and it really helped me get over being so shy and introverted. I have flown to Tennessee to stand up in an online friend's wedding. I have flown to North Carolina to road trip it to a concert with a girl I met on Livejournal. I joined a group for mothers due in March 2005 and was able to meet up with some of them - we are still friends to this day.

So when I decided to get off my ass and get fit, I figured I would blog about it. So many good things have come into my life from online blogging - I figure writing about this new journey would help bring me some motivation and maybe some new friends as well.

 This is me. Well, me altered by an Instagram filter - my skin tone is not that even. I'm Natasha, a 31 year old mom, girlfriend, clinical receptionist, book lover, gamer, geek. I can't wait to add runner to that list. See, I was always a skinnyfat girl - until I got pregnant with my son. If you don't know what skinnyfat is, I ganked this definition from Urban Dictionary: Skinnyfat is someone that always looks dead skinny yet seems to eat what they want and do very little exercise. It is presumably genetic.. their body is small in mass but they have a high fat, low muscle ratio.

Yep, that is/was me. I ate whatever I wanted and never had to worry about it. Until I got pregnant and gained 88.8 pounds. My body has never recovered. I got back to my pre-pregnancy weight once but have gained 20+ pounds back over the past few years. Those pounds need to go. I'm hanging onto the "normal" weight range for my height by a thread. Not to mention that my muscle mass is non-existent. I am so excited for that to change!

These are my men, the loves of my life. Pete is 30 and a hard worker who puts in lots of hours so I can get away with working part time and spend more time being a mom. He's also a gamer, but he's into first person shooters while I'm into RPGs. Our son Brady is 8 and the center of the universe as I know it. He is just an awesome kid. If I elaborate on that it would turn into manymany paragraphs, so I will spare you the mommy mush.

A fairly recent family shot from when we were looking for our first real Christmas tree. We live in Wisconsin and it's cold here - so it's totally normal for us to all be rocking the Carhartt hats. Really.

I'm one of "those" people that counts pets as family members, because they are. This is Jordy, our Bluetick Coonhound/Collie mix. He's smart and sometimes sassy, just like Brady. He knows enough to stay off the new couch and our bed - but sleeps with Brady pretty much every night. Can't come between a boy and his dog!

So there you have it. In case you can't tell, I have an amazing family. Now I just need to get fit and healthy so I can be around for them for a long time.