CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: A FULL MOON, AND MARTHA STEWART WALKS THE EARTH

Any day now, little ghosties and ghoulies and goblins are going to come begging for candy.

I won't be home to see the little darlings this year, but I imagine Esmerelda, Quasimodo and various and sundry other Disney creations will be well represented.

I did my dress-up bit at a friend's Halloween party the other night.

I was Martha Stewart.

She's the scariest woman I can think of, next to Phyllis Schlafley, and I don't know what Phyllis looks like these days.

Martha cooks and cleans and gardens and entertains and decorates and does it all better than any of us could possibly manage.

It's a good thing.

She gets to spray-paint rocks gold and give them to friends for Christmas.

And she makes millions of dollars a year doing it and she gets to live in Connecticut.

Scary kids, very scary.

A friend rigged up a shaggy blonde wig for me. Actually, the wig was shaggy enough that I looked like Martha after a severe wind storm ripped through her Connecticut estate.

People kept asking me, "Martha, what happened?"

I replied the glue gun had overheated and tragedy struck.

Wigs are harder than they look. A very nice man in a Cher costume (it was an interesting evening) helped me with mine.

Sometimes Halloween is scary. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes, especially when a man in a curly wig looks better in a black leather mini-skirt than you ever will, it's just plain discouraging.

Maybe next year I'll go as Richard Simmons, pudgy thighs and all. I just to need to find some striped nylon jogging shorts and a mesh tank top.

And go out in public in them.

Very scary, kids.

My friend Sondra, who threw the party (and rigged the wig), loves Halloween. She goes all out for it, like some people do for Christmas.

She doesn't have any sparkly aluminum jack-o'-lanterns, though. Maybe next year.

Everything takes on a sinister tone this time of year. It's getting dark earlier, and it's windy and the trees are losing their leaves and looming in the shadows at inconvenient times.

Speaking of scary, my cat has a bladder infection. She has to take pills.

If you give a bear a cookie, it's a children's story. If you give a cat a pill, it's a Stephen King novel.

One little antibiotic shoved down her throat, and the fuzzy-wuzzy little fur ball who keeps my feet warm turns into a hissing, spitting mass of teeth and claws.

Maybe she's possessed.

Very scary.

Some people say Halloween glorifies Satan. Personally, I think it's a chance for kids to get candy and for the rest of us to remember, in a harmless way, the darker side of the human psyche. If we all carry a little bit of God within ourselves, we must also carry a little bit of the devil, as well.

We revel in masks and capes and skeletons, the wind is high and the moon is full (metaphorically, at least), and Martha Stewart walks the earth. It's one day a year.

It's a good thing.

~Peggy O'Farrell is a copy editor for the Southeast Missourian.