Whenever my husband attempts a home improvement project, he tries to kill us.

Oh, I don’t think it’s intentional--I’m sure a jury would only convict him of negligent homicide--but they definitely would find him guilty of serial attempts.

His preferred method is usually by burning, poisoning or a combination of the two, but occasionally we’ve been subject to hanging, botulism, and once by shooting in a road rage incident in the Lowe’s parking lot.

There was the time when he decided to make his own Drano. He mixed bleach, ammonia, and maybe some plutonium--I don’t think even Madame Curry could ever figure out what exact chemicals were used in that unstable compound. The mixture was so strong that it ate holes through the stainless steel sink. The fumes were so noxious that we couldn’t even survey the damage for 4 days until the Haz Mat team finished the cleanup.

Once, while cleaning out the basement, he decided to rid the room of junk furniture and put an old coffee table dismantled into the fireplace. It might have made for a cozy fire had not it been coated with about 47 coats of lacquer, paint and varnish; all of which produced a flame that registered about 800 degrees Kelvin. It was so hot that the glass doors actually melted away from the chimney. When the Haz Mat team returned, we got a punch in our frequent decontamination card and free biohazard suits.

Tree-trimming is also equivalent to certain death in our house. My 85 year old grandfather experienced head trauma once after an ice storm, and Baby Diva was almost delivered 4 months prematurely after Hurricane Jeanne and a fallen oak tree on the roof, with the last words of, "Just hold this rope and don’t move…"

To be fair, we’re not always the unintended victims--he sometimes goes on suicide missions as well. He’s burned the lining of his esophagus whilst ridding the yard of a snake with some contraband pest control. He’s impaled various body parts when hanging pictures or blinds. And with as many times as he’s received electrical shocks from hot wiring, I thought surely he’d perish by electrocution or at least suffer from sterility.

A couple of weekends ago, he began a bathroom remodel. I thought for sure I would orphan my children by drowning this time. But much to my surprise and chagrin, neither happened. In fact, it was a flawless installation. Not a leak. Not a drop. Not a neighborhood geyser. It was truly a miracle.

"See? You can’t even write about me," he bragged.

But I knew better than to turn my back for too long lest there be an Allen wrench plunged into it.

A couple of weeks later, he was feeling rather benevolent. He painted the nursery and assembled the crib with nary any bloodshed. I suppose we were all lulled into a complacency of sorts, and didn’t think twice when our son asked Daddy to fix his new lava lamp.

I don’t even know what was wrong with it to begin with, but it was certainly fixed if you define lava literally by a molten liquid being spewed from a mountain--in this case, Mt. Calphalon double boiler located on the Kenmore Range.

When the volcano erupted, the lava ran down the sides of the pot and onto the hot surface of the stove. Smoke, shards of glass, and whatever substance is really in a lava lamp--judging from the stuck bits on the kitchen ceiling I’d guess yellow marshmallow Peeps and plastic explosives--detonated and our kitchen became filled with a smoke soup that immediately set off alarms, asthma attacks, and Richter scales within an 80 mile radius.

The kids were perfectly prepared. They yelled out the code, "Father Chernobyl!" and implemented our emergency home plan by opening all of the windows and doors, grabbing the animals and important documents and dialing their Godparents on speed dial; a wrongful death attorney and the operator at Poison Control.

A couple of hours later as he scraped the remnants from the stove and applied Silvadene to his burns, he sheepishly declared, "It didn’t even come with a warning label."

"Would you have read it if it had???"

He lied, "Maybe," scraping a piece of pop culture shrapnel from the exhaust fan.

And that’s when I had one of those eerie prophetic moments where I saw the epitaph on my own tombstone in my mind’s eye:

S.D., R.I.P because of DIY.

©2007 Tracey Henry

Divamail me before my untimely demise. Divamail@Suburbandiva.com.