Robert Ebsen

As readers may know, I save Duhs on my iPhone as soon as they occur. Otherwise, I would likely forget these amazing insights.

No. 75 – Dish Soap

For quite awhile I used a funnel to fill up the soap dispenser that is built into my sink.  It took quite a long time for the soap from the refill bottle to go through the funnel into the dispenser. The reason I didn’t pour the soap directly into the dispenser is because when I tried that, the soap would bubble up in the dispenser, quickly overflowing into the sink.  Recently I happened to stick my finger in the soap dispenser while pouring the soap. Duh. No bubbles. Now I can quickly pour the liquid with abandon.

No. 76 – Not-So-Plain Oatmeal

For a long time I was eating overly sweet, flavored Quaker oatmeal with my almond milk.  Then I switched to regular Quaker oatmeal but I missed the fruit flavors. One morning I was low on almond milk. I dumped my smoothie into the oatmeal after it came out of the microwave. Duh. My smoothie, which contains almond milk, banana and strawberries/blueberries/cherries, gives the oatmeal a great fruity flavor. And it is healthy.

No. 77 – Skimmer Solution

When I put on my new pool cove, it blanketed the entire skimmer, preventing water from being sucked out of the pool. For weeks I put a heavy rock on the cover to hold the cover away from the skimmer. Sometimes the heavy rock would fall in the pool. Duh. I decided to make two cuts at the edge of the cover.  I folded back the cover where the cuts were, and now the water flows out easily from the unobstructed skimmer.

No. 78 – Hose Heaven

When my old 100-foot garden hose blew up like a snake-like balloon last week, I went to Costco and purchased their “kink-free” hose.  Not only did it kink in several places, it was so unwieldy that I returned it the next day.  I decided, at that point, to measure my yard.  Did I really need 100 feet of hose?  Duh. It turns out that 50 feet of hose will suffice to cover all parts of my backyard.  When the new lightweight 50-foot hose arrived two days later, thanks to Amazon prime, I was delighted to discover that my new friend, the hose, was most docile.

Mr. Ebsen may be contacted at robertebsen@hotmail.com