''I never expected to play a wife and mother,'' says Patricia Richardson. ''With the exception of Roseanne, they're pretty boring parts.'' Richardson can now exempt herself, too. As Jill Taylor, Tim Allen's beleaguered mate on ABC's top 10 hit Home Improvement, the 40-year-old actress keeps the household's battle of the sexes a close match with an arsenal of power tools that includes dry wit, common sense, and smart, tart responses to anything her mechanically obsessed husband and three sons can plug in, blow up, or dish out. Richardson has an equally clamorous offscreen clan: her husband, actor Ray Baker (Down Home); son Henry, 6; and 13-month-old twins Roxanne and Joseph. ''I am never alone,'' she says, laughing. ''I bring them to the studio every day. The first week of taping, I was running back to the dressing room whenever I could to nurse.'' Richardson, whose last series was FM, didn't expect Home Improvement to amount to much (''In my experience, things last 13 weeks and that's it'') until her husband came backstage after the first night of shooting. ''He looked at me and said, 'Don't you know? This is going to run seven years!' So unless Tim goes and cracks himself up in a race car, I guess I'll have a job for a while. It's exciting and exhausting. About a month ago, I went to a doctor, and he said I have positive stress.''
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