Besides Wal-Mart and those teeny-tiny dressing rooms at TJ Maxx and maybe where you work, your house is the place you know the best.

Well, look. I hate to be the one to tell you, but your house might be trying to kill you. Mine was.

The first letters I got from the Alabama Extension System about excessive radon levels in my area, I ignored.

"Ha," I thought to myself, "they're just trying to sell me something. I'm too smart to fall for that."

But recently, I read about radon. I knew that the Shoals is a high-risk area - and that radon is linked to lung cancer.

"Why not?" I figured when the next letter came, urging me to pick up a $5 radon home test at the extension office.

Then, the results come back - and when mine did, I was shocked.

The test showed that the radon level in our basement; which is also our den, was 19 picocuries per liter.

Let's put it this way: The acceptable radon level is 4 pCi/L, which means that everyone who had ever been in our basement had been exposed to more than four times the acceptable level of radon.

Our house was trying to kill us. I was livid.

All the things I had done for our house - the paint jobs, spring cleanings and tender loving care I had lavished on it, and this was the way I was repaid.

Not good.

We blamed the cats, of course, for not warning us, forgetting that cats believe that humans who are stupid enough not to sense danger deserve what they get.

Even our local radon guy seemed nervous.

"Let's go back upstairs, if you don't mind," he said after I showed him the offending basement room. "We can talk in the kitchen."

Turns out, however, that things weren't so bad.

The radon guy's test showed our level at less than half the first test. Thank goodness.

Still, that's higher than it should be, so he installed a ventilation system that pulled the radon out of the ground before it got trapped in our house.

Cost? Much less than boarding up the basement - or moving. Checkout http://www.epa.gov/radon/index.html or http://www.aces.edu/radon or call your extension office for details.

Granted, January was Radon Awareness Month, so I'm behind, as usual. But, it's never too late to make sure your house is treating you right.

Now that our house is breathing easier, we are, too.

Feature Writer Cathy Wood Myers can be reached at 740-5733 or cathy.myers@timesdaily.com. Her column runs Thursdays.