School year wrap up

in a nutshell, this school year has had some ups and downs. my GPA has reflected my worst quarter yet as well as my best, which accredited me to the UW Dean’s List (hooray! my dad wouldn’t stop bragging about me the rest of the day at work so I guess you could say he was proud). i lost the adoration of a guy who has been close to me for over a year but I have also met some amazing new people who I am honored to be able to call my friends. i have been demoralized as well as uplifted. i have gone through stress over the #painintheass which is commuting from Puyallup and have also begun to enjoy the perks that come with being able to live on campus.

I have made some new bonds with my coworkers, my friends, my teammates, my classmates. it has been a hard year but it has been an important one. it is a big first step in moving forward with my life, and deciding which people are important to me. thanks to my friends and family who have stood by me in my tough times! the summer to come might not be much easier but i’m hoping that it will be a just and deserved break from the academic life and I hope to come back in the fall refreshed and ready to go! I’m super excited for my new apartment, my upcoming work digs in the new Lander Hall, and my next round of classes as a (HOPEFULLY) declared anthropology major. I look forward to seeing what the rest of my college career has in store for me, and what my future relationships with the people around me will look like. have a spectacular summer everyone, you deserve it!

Favorite Little Pins: This Week on Pinterest

anyone who knows me and follows me on Pinterest knows that I like to pin. a lot. more than a lot. some days it’s to the point where I actually begin to feel a little bad for my followers and remind myself to dial it back just a little bit. it’s been especially bad lately as my classes are wrapping up for this quarter and I am starting to spend more time in my college dorm room doing nothing. being completely and utterly bored. and brooding over my new-found single life (story for another time). or sitting outside in the UW quad being completely and utterly bored on my Samsung Galaxy S3 (there’s already an S4 now? wtf). and brooding some more. although not as much as when I’m sitting alone in my room. i just hop into my Pinterest app and bam, I’m rolling. there is literally no escape for me. i shamefully admit I often refresh the page several times to see if anything new has popped up since I last checked five seconds ago. #confessionsofayoungadult

anyway, above are just a couple of cute pins I pulled, nothing major. i’m very attracted to the pinks and the oranges, such pretty colors especially for spring and summer. bring on the sunshine, seattle! or just smothering heat without the actual sunshine, it sends that our way too. like today. and apparently tomorrow. the sun just hides behind this filmy layer of clouds. seriously, Washington?

by the way, I am indeed writing this at 1:44am. after complaining on Facebook that I just wanted to go to sleep because I was tired of thinking about my day and my week and the probably not so fun summer that lays ahead of me. turns out I’m just too agitated to sleep #Figures

Pony Up Equine Rescue

Last week I went with the UW Equestrian Team to Pony Up Rescue For Equines in Olalla, WA. They are an amazing group of people and put all of their time and efforts into sheltering and re-homing horses. One of their most recent new additions is the bay foal Zoey, taken out of the kill pen in the Enumclaw auction. She was weaned that day by idiot owners who drove their trailer onto the grounds, led the mare and her foal into the auction pen and walked the mare out of the pen while slamming the door on poor baby. Loaded up the mare and drove away. What bastards! By the time she came up in the auction no one else bid on her so Pony Up, bless their hearts, took baby Zoey home. Poor thing was infested with worms, mud scratched and rain rot. She’s doing so well right now though with her mini surrogate, Violet, and has even been adopted! She will be heading to her new home soon.

Stephanie and I went around and groomed the horses. Winston, with me in one of the pictures above, is one of two horses on the farm not up for adoption but he is a lover! Stephanie was particularly sweet on him! Next door was a big dark bay named Church who has been on the property for a while. He’s had double suspensory surgery and can’t really do much riding. He’s also a bit of a bully towards other horses so re-homing him seems to be a bit difficult. He had a nice little gash in his side when we went in to groom him so we had to clean that out a bit. Probably got beat up by Winston. Probably deserved it, too.

One of my favorites was the next in line, Weikaya!! Massively huge warmblood, a bit on the older side but trained in dressage. He’s a gorgeous guy, a bit head shy and cautious though. Valentine and JR, the two chestnuts, were chilling out in the pasture together. They thought it would be funny to run around and have us chase them, apparently. We had given up and decided to go back to the barn when JR decided that he was done with his shenanigans and came over willingly. We hoped that bringing him down to the barn would prompt Valentine to follow (he doesn’t really seem to know what to do with himself without his pasture pal), but he’s the most cautious horse on the farm and although he did come close, he didn’t come close enough to be haltered. Old guy wouldn’t fall for the trick. We had to let that one go. Point for Valentine.

I’ve only been out to the farm twice but I’ve come to find that I really love going and being involved with helping out. These horses are amazing animals and it is sad that most of them have come to this point. Some of them will be pasture pets, never to do any serious riding again. I would love to home one of these horses but I have neither the place nor the means to care for them. All I can do is care for them now while they’re here and recovering before they move on to their next (and hopefully last!) home. Good luck, guys!