In every episode of the Red Green show, Red utters the axiom, "if the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."

Well, I guess I have to just hope that they find me handsome, because I'm about the farthest thing from handy there is.

I know people who are home improvement wizards. Take my brother-in-law for example. He recently completely remodeled his downstairs bathroom, and it looks fabulous. A few years ago, he and my sister redecorated their family room and it looks fabulous. Now he's tackling their upstairs bathroom in preparation for the eventual sale of their house, and I'm sure it will look fabulous.

Then there's me. When we bought our first home, we got to look at a scrapbook that the sellers had put together documenting the improvements they'd made. They had redecorated and remodeled every room in the house, including the kitchen and both bathrooms, during the three years they lived there. We lived there for less than two and the house looked exactly the same when we moved out as it did on the day we moved in. Only more dirty. The only "improvement" I made was to have a dead pine tree in the backyard cut down and removed, and of course I had to pay somebody else to do that.

Our current home is no different. The previous owners had lived in it for twenty years, and made all sorts of improvements. What have we done so far? Well, we repainted and redecorated the nursery. How much did I have to do with that? Well, I helped paint part of the baseboards. My folks, who were here for a visit the week after we closed on the place, did the rest. My then four-year old son helped more than I did.

When the refill flow valve thingummy in our toilet tank broke last summer, I let it go for months. We had to take the lid off the tank every time we flushed and pull the thing up by hand to get the tank to refill. When I finally decided to fix it, I bought the replacement parts and then procrastinated for a couple weeks because I dreaded the job, and rightly so. When I finally got around to it, it involved a four-hour process, a second trip to the store for more parts, and a generous amount of red-faced huffing, puffing, and cursing. Sure, I learned a lot, including how to completely dismantle a toilet tank and put it back together, but I also learned that I still suck at home improvement.

Right after we moved into our house, the main sewage drain pipe from the bathroom sprung a leak. We discovered this when we noticed that every time someone took a shower, or used the bathroom sink, or flushed the toilet, that streams of water would start trickling down the dining room wall downstairs. Don't imagine for an instant that I tried to fix that myself. We called in a plumber who charged us over $200 to patch the leak and leave us with a lovely new one square foot gaping hole in our dining room ceiling. I let that lie for two years before finally taking action. I bought a bag of patching plaster. I bought trowels and taping knives. I bought lathe. I was going to do this.

We still have a gaping hole in our dining room ceiling, but now we also have some lovely plaster stalactites to complement it, hanging down from the few pieces of lathe that weren't pulled down by the weight of the plaster.

That was four months ago, and the plaster guy I phoned up after I botched the job still hasn't called me back. But please, don't offer me any plastering advice. Unless your advice is "let me come over and do it for you, Grishny."

Gri"I wish I had a landlord again"shny