What an awful week!!!

If I was writing a story about my life, I would say that this has been the worst week of my life, but I guess in some ways, something good came out of it. One thing, mother nature really gave us the shits. Winds blow so hard here you could blow this whole town off the map. Doesnt usually happen very often, but at least it blew some of the leaves off the ground in the complex. And just when things couldnt get any worse, snow starts falling. We thought it was just gonna be a little bit, but it turned out to be blizzard conditions. YIKES!!! I hate those. At least they closed school. Diego liked it, he spent much of the day throwing snowballs at Spencer. I would have joined in except that I had a paper to do for sociology class. Took longer than I expected.
But blizzards are no fun, trust me. Last year, I nearly froze to death while I was waiting for a bus. It wasnt so bad when I first left home, but it got worse as I was on my way home. I only had on a light jacket and a pair of earmuffs. I waited for nearly a half hour for that bus to get there, but at least it was warm inside. Then I had to walk 6 blocks from the stop to the apartment complex. I took it upon myself to sit in a hot bathtub to get the chills out. That works too.
How we survive such horrendous catastrophies? Us Daks are very tough and somewhat rugged. I think we share the same charactoristics as them Montana folks do. I get asked this all the time, usually by people who live in other parts of the world.
Here are some pics that I picked up of the storm that came our way. I only got the best ones that I liked the most. I didnt take these pictures. I borrowed them off the ND site on FB. But they're great snow pics.

This is about how much we actually got here in Bismark, but it got worse later on just enough to close school.

I hate to be the driver of this truck.

Or even this first floor apartment building.

That was how deep it was. Glad that dog was safe.

sleeping problems

I have been battling sleeping problems for the past several weeks. Sometimes I dont go to bed until 4:30 in the morning. Then about 3 hours later, I have to get up, eat, and head to school. I buy a coffee in the cafeteria to get me through, but that lasts for only a little while. By the time I get to art class, I am so tired I cant concentrate. I come home and the only thing I wanna do is drop to bed until Diego comes home from school, or when Spencer comes home from work on his work days. One night it got so bad that my mom had to take me to the emergency room. I hadnt slept for 3 nites in a row. Believe me, I'm not trying to go for the world's record here. And what do I get outta this, sleeping pills that make me drowsy the next day. All this not being able to sleep is just driving me to the state of insanity. Sometimes I feel like I just wanna crash through the wall, literally. I cant take it anymore. Mind you, I have one coffee that I buy at school, thats the only thing with caffene I have all day, oh yeah, and a couple of sodas. But sodas dont make you stay awake. I try hot chocolate milk, but it only works sometimes.
I think Derrick and I have split up, so I wont be hearing from him much anymore except to maybe in responses to my wall posts and a poke every now and then. He wants somebody that will share EVERYTHING with him including pictures of themselves, and my mom will not allow me to post photos on FB. I'm too secretive for him and he's upset about it. So for the best of us, its probably the far better thing to do. For the past few months, he has been sending me mails everyday as much as 5 or 6 of them. I enjoyed that. But everytime he brought up the subject of my sending him a picture, I dont respond to the request or I quickly change the subject. And I think it got to the point where he's given up, and now he wants to find someone else who will trust him better. I'll miss his mails and I am sad over the whole thing, but I cant help it if my mom gives me rules of using the computer.
The only reason I got FB in the first place is to display my artwork to the public. Other than that, my mom would never let us use these social networking sites. She's very concerned about our safety, but I think she's too overprotective. I guess she would have to be because I'm the only girl in the family. My stepfather's the same way too. He once chased a boy down the block just because he had his arms around me. I liked it when he had his arms around me and we were about to kiss, but my stepfather went crazy and chased him out of the apartment complex and down the road about a few blocks. We were both mad at each other and I threatened to run away from home. That was when I was in high school. I'm an adult now and my mom still lays the law in this house. Nobody can grow up here.

Damn California folks!!!!

My friend Derrick was telling me a story about how he fell in love with a beautiful young woman and was hoping to marry her. He was even gonna move to the states so he sold everything, but she took advantage of him and left him a broken man. And my hunches about her were correct- she's from California. It is so typical for those California people to treat others like crap. I think the sun fries their brains out. Why cant they be more like us Dakota folks? Well, you know the fact: they hate us, and we hate them. Its as simple as that. I'm not saying that they are all like that, but you have to admit, a majority of them are.
Poor Derrick, I do feel sorry for him. I told him to stay away from those California people. Most of them dont have the brains to blow themselves up with. And they probably wind up doing that anyway. But they will also tear your heart out. I think he's getting wind of my advice and maybe he will look for someone else. But now, I think he needs a friend, not a girlfriend at the moment. Its too soon for him to be working on a serious relationship. Just as long as he remembers to stay away from the California people, he's all right. He's better off without them.
And here's another thing that burns me up too. With the economy going bad and no jobs elsewhere, there starting to move up here looking for work. They bring their customs, their guns, gangs, drugs, and rotten attitudes and turn our lovely paradise into hell. We dont like them moving into our state, Bismark especially. If I ran this town, I would tell them "we dont want your kind here, so I'm giving you 3 minutes to get outta town." But I dont and I cant stop anybody from looking for work. I just wish they'd go somewhere else.
I know at times it sounds like I'm being a little bit prejudice, but this is my honest opinion. They have already begun to dominate a few places in this state. Here's a perfect example: there is this new family that moved into the building across from us, and they are just about the meanest people you can come across. This afternoon, I was walking by them and I stopped to watch them move in. This guy came out and asked me "What are you looking at?" in a real sarcastic tone of voice. I knew they were from California because I saw it on their license plates. I told them "nothing" then I looked at them with a go to hell look. What jerks. :P They are not gonna like the way they treat us, and were not gonna want them here for long.
I swear, here you walk up to someone and say "hello" they are nice and say hi back to you, end of story. I bet in California, you say hi to someone, they punch you in the nose. They are such cowards. But we dont take crap from anyone like that. But one thing I dont understand is that we live in the same country and why cant all states get along? I'm not sure what started this not getting along bit, but I have a hunch that its the California people that started it. If there gonna get mean to us, we will get mean back. My aunt Eva says they do it in New York all the time. Those New Yorkers are my kinda people, they dont take bullshit from anyone. We could really learn a lesson from them.
As for Derrick, well, I wish him a lot of luck in finding the right girl. I can tell that he likes whites in particular. He even asked me if Bismark had any black people and how we would treat them. The truth of the matter is that we dont have much culture here. The majority of the people who live here are white, usually German or Scandinavian heritage. The whole time that I have lived here, I've only seen about 3 or 4 black people. I remember a young girl in my 3rd grade class named Lashonda, she was the only black girl in the whole school. We were friends then. But her family didnt stay long, about a year later, they moved to the east coast. I dont really know how we would treat them. It depends on the person and their upbringing. But as far as I know, we are not a racist community. But I myself would give them the red carpet treatment because its not often we get to "see" a black person and we want to make them feel right at home.
People are different, and even in a small town like Bismark, there are gonna be people who might feel uncomfortable around people of color. We dont have a lot of diversity in this town, let alone the whole damn state. I can assure you that I'm not a racist, even though I have no idea what my race is. If I was, Diego wouldnt be living here. His real family came from Colombia, South America. I thank God everyday that he let my mom adopt him. Aside from that extremely long hair in his face that makes him look like a sheepdog, Diego's a great brother.
The last thing I'm gonna say is that sometimes you have to listen to your friends for really good advice, especially if your from another country and dont know the story about how well we all get along. Not everybody gets along the same way as others. Just something to think about.

My first blog.

This is my very first post ever. I'm new to blogger and I am hoping people will see it. First I wanna tell people about myself:

My name is Ephrata Whitley and I am 20 years old. I was born in Manitoba, Canada to a single mother. I have a half older brother, Spencer, who's 25 and mentally challenged due to an earlier accident. I now live in Bismark, ND where I have lived since I was about 7 years old. Shortly after moving here, we adopted my baby brother, Diego, who arrived here from Oregon. He's 16 now and a handful. My mom's a medical assistant, my stepdad's a trucker. We are a very close family.
I make my living as an artist. Some of the media I have worked with was drawing, painting- oils and acrylic, pastels, colored pencels, and watercolors. I like drawing and painting the best. I am currently under an intern position for the University of North Dakota. I sell my artwork to companies that need artists to do their advertisements, brochures, pages, ect. I got one lined up with the local paper, if I get that, I may be set for life. I am virtually unkown at the moment, but I hope to one day be famous like Picasso or DiVinci. The problem is that those men did not get famous until after they died. If I have to wait until after I die, so be it. At least I left something behind.

My drawings usually displays the feelings of a young woman from a small town who feels trapped in her own mind and by her family.....the story of my life.