Yesterday for Mother's Day we headed to the Longhorn Steakhouse in Ellijay, GA.  It opened at 11 am.  We arrived at 11:20 knowing that we'd never get in for an early afternoon seating.  At 11:20 we were handed a pager and told it would be about a 20 minute wait.  There must have been a line waiting for the doors to open because all tables and booths were filled.  We ordered our favorite Flo's Filet with a salad and a sweet potato.  Eating that early poses a problem because by 5 Cliff is hungry again and I don't feel like eating or cooking.  He suggested we hit the Sweet Tooth in Murphy and have an ice-cream.  He ordered the largest vanilla soft-serve dipped in chocolate and I had a small chocolate soft-serve dipped in cherry, not really what I felt like.  Eating chocolate and sugar that time of evening throws my system off and I don't sleep well.  That's exactly what it did and as tired as I was by 10pm, I couldn't fall asleep.  I tossed and turned so much I retreated to the spare room, threw open the window for the fresh night air, and finally fell asleep sometime in the early morning hours.  On any normal night here in the mountains, you can sleep with windows open and you're not disturbed by street lights, sirens, or cars engines and the bears don't climb in your window.  There may be a cricket chirping.  Coyotes can be heard yelping in the distance and sometimes the whip-poor-wills call to each other just before sunrise.  Except last night!  At 3:35am a whip-poor-will settled under my open bedroom window and decided to send out a call to any available whip-poor-will within a 2-mile radius.  And it found one to answer the call. 

As I sit here typing this post, with no TV drowning out the forest sounds, the songs of chickadees, the great crested fly-catcher, the Carolina wren, and the chirping of the cardinals soothe the evening hour as the sun dips behind the mountain. 

And the whip-poor-will needs to settle somewhere else tonight.