“Be careful what you wish for” is a warning I seldom take very seriously, but an experience here at Chez Stevens yesterday has gone a long way toward changing my mind and attitude concerning that advice.

We have been wondering and worrying, cajoling and lamenting, and very much wishing for blue eggs from our two Ameracauna hens.  They should have begun laying several months ago and we have about concluded that a) they are barren, or b) they are waiting for spring.  Day after day we get one or two (and once, three!) brown eggs from the two Wyandottes but ‘nary a blue one has appeared.

Meanwhile, we have had more serious problems with the inanimate objects in our lives.  Well, not really inanimate; more accurately, mechanical.  As in appliances.  Every single one of our big appliances – washer, dryer, dishwasher, stove, refrigerator – is more than fifteen years old and every single one is approaching the end of its useful life.

The worst has been the clothes dryer.  Late last spring it began to take two full 60-minute cycles to dry a medium-sized load of clothes.  If there were heavy-duty things in the wash, it took even longer for them to dry.  That’s a lot of electricity.  We thought a heating element had probably failed.  But coming, as it did, during a low ebb in finances, we limped along.

It was the frightful noise that began about three weeks ago that finally drove us to call the repair man. Each time the dryer was turned on, it sounded as if it would screech itself into pieces.  It annoyed us right into taking action.

The noise turned out to be from a roller that needed replacing:  $25.  The lack of heat was from a plugged up vent that needed cleaning out: no charge.  The ‘new’ quiet efficiency of the dryer: priceless!  Of course, there was the expense of the service call, but it was oh so much less than a new dryer.

The blockage in the vent turned out to be a robin’s nest which had been built well out of sight almost an arm’s length inside the outer opening.  And now I remember seeing Mrs. Red Breast last spring, toes up, not far from that vent opening.  It had never occurred to me that she was working on hatching a family somewhere nearby.

But, there amongst the nest debris that had been removed were two tiny blue eggs and a third that had been broken in the removal process.  We had, indeed, found two blue eggs but certainly not the ones we have been wishing for!