Ever since he retired, Peter has cleaned up the kitchen after dinner, no small job when I cook. He’s always been rigid about loading the dishwasher, as an engineer would be, but now he stacks and restacks, never sure he’s done it right.

These days he doesn’t actually  wash the pots and pans, but he dries them meticulously. I grit my teeth and remind myself to wash them before I use them. Recently, I got a pan out and realized it had gone directly from stovetop to pot drawer — mashed potato bits were still inside.

It has become my job to put the detergent in the dishwasher and either turn the machine on right away or set the timer. My husband has a history of putting liquid Dawn in the dishwasher because he forgets it’s only for use in the sink. We’ve had bubble floods several times. If that happens, and I’m not close by, he panics and can’t remember how to turn the dishwasher off, nor that the wet/dry shop vac lives right at the bottom of the basement stairs.

At least, by the time the mess is mopped up the kitchen floor is cleaner that it has been in weeks! Both the liquid Dawn and Cascade powder are labeled so he’ll know which to use, but he doesn’t always read them.

Over one Christmas holiday, the guys — Peter, Martin and Bill — were to have day out. Before they left, I noticed suds oozing up in the sink. “I hope you didn’t put washing-up liquid in the dishwasher…” I said to Peter. He was positive he hadn’t and it was already cycling with no apparent problems.

But a few minutes after they left, I noticed a dribble of water on the floor in front of the dishwasher, then a frothy stream. I peeked inside. Betty Grable needed those bubbles for her bathtub scene in “My Heart Tells Me” (1943).

Carolynn was here helping fix dinner. She ran to get the shop vac, I grabbed old towels to soak up what I could, and together we attacked the bubbles and water, proud that we were coping so brilliantly!

“Mom, turn it off!” she yelped suddenly.

Water was shooting out the vac’s exhaust and spewing across the kitchen. The vac was more than half full of soapy water, so we dragged it outside — that much water is heavy — and managed to dump it down the carport steps.

Then she suggested that she hold a big leaf bag over the exhaust’s opening, a prophylactic of sorts, while I finished clearing the dishwasher. The bubbles were nearly all sucked up when she yelled again, this time while laughing hysterically. “Turn it off! MOM, TURN IT OFF!”

The bag, inflated from the powerful exhaust, was pulling the vacuum cleaner into the laundry room. My daughter was skidding along behind it, while I slid to the floor laughing.

We were Lucy and Ethel in a scene even they never imagined.

2016 National Society of Newspaper Columnists’ contest finalist.