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Our jack-o-lantern has an accidentally cleft palate this year, and lots of unintentional, Mike Tyson-esque facial tattoos.

When I was a kid, my mother told me that there was an age at which children stopped dressing up for Halloween.*

What was this decidedly unmagical age? I don’t know, because lame though some of my costumes have been, I’ve dressed up every year and I’m doing it again this year. My husband and I did have some issues with our dreaded couple costume, but those issues have been resolved and I think we’ve come to a compromise that is neither sickening nor horrific. (Here’s a hint:  Who would win in a fight?)

I love Halloween costumes and I plan to keep dressing up or the rest of my life, even if that means that someday I’ll  have to bribe a nurse to replace my dentures with plastic vampire fangs for an hour, when the little kids come trick or treating at the rest home.

* I don’t know where Mom got that you-grow-out-of-Halloween thing. She dresses up every year too. Maybe she just didn’t want us going door to door as teens and scaring the bejesus out of the neighbors.

This costume creeps me out, and not because of the obvious pun. I can't figure out whether it's the couple's stance or the guy's hair, but looking at this picture for too long makes me feel dirty.

As soon as my writing samples and third semester project were submitted yeserday, I was felled by a migraine headache. I’m just now coming out of it, which is annoying because today was the day I’d planned to figure out a Halloween costume before heading off to work.

I still have time, but we have a dilemma – my husband wants to do a couples costume this year and most of the couples costumes out there are either saccharine (Cinderella and the Prince) stupid (salt and pepper), demeaning (Hef and a Playboy bunny) or kind of vile (see photo.)

We’ve been going back and forth quite a lot on this. We both like mythology, so Odysseus and Penelope? What about Persephone and Hades? Leda and the swan? That last one is a little too gross.

We’re a more than a little little geeky, so I was pushing a reverse-gender Zoe and Wash from Firefly and he was pushing Arthur Dent and the Hitchhiker’s guide. Since my husband’s been Arthur Dent for Halloween for close to 20 years, I shot that one down. Then we thought of being binary code. Now we’re mining Arthurian legend, but we’re unexcited by the concepts we’re coming up with.

Essentially, we did better when we were coming up with our own costumes. Last Halloween, I was Carmen Sandiego and he was Arthur Dent. The year before I was Little Bopeep From Hell and he was Arthur Dent. The year before I wore a goth ballgown and he was Arthur Dent. You get the idea. So this year, unless inspiration strikes, at least one thing is certain: My husband will be Arthur Dent.