I've always hated it when people give Martha Stewart credit for doing everything herself. Building the pine cone birdfeeders, churning ice cream the old-fashioned way, pickling ginger and red peppers, slipcovering Victorian chairs . . .

``I can barely microwave a bag of frozen green beans,'' a woman will moan, ``and Martha, with all she has going on, grows her own.''

``She gets help!'' I always want to yell. ``Her employees are out there picking the beans, tending the geese, quilting . . .''

But of course I would never yell at a Martha person because:

a) they're usually really nice, and (more importantly)

b) they are wonderful hostesses, and where else am I going to get an heirloom-cucumber-and-mesquite-grilled-gouda sandwich with the crusts cut off? Not at any luncheon I'll ever throw, that's for sure.

So there I was, all high on my Martha-doesn't-do-it-all-herself horse, when the news broke about her alleged insider trading.

I smugly assumed Martha had told one of her workers to take the morning off from glazing wallpaper and get on the phone to her broker. But no! It seems Martha spoke to someone at Merrill Lynch herself - even though she was on vacation at the time.

``When Ms. Stewart's plane touched down for refueling about 1:30 p.m. Eastern time in San Antonio,'' The New York Times reported, ``she called her office, and someone in the office patched her through to (her broker's) office.''

Patched her through.

So not only is she the chairwoman and chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, a woman whose love of celadon has affected half the nation, but she's an (alleged) insider trader, too. Now that's truly impressive.

I know, I know. Insider trading is not as admirable as, say, upholstering a headboard with antique linen (or maybe it is), but I can't honestly claim to be above it myself. In fact, when I recently got the chance to take advantage of a little advance notice, I jumped.

At this point, the only thing protecting me from an embarrassing series of investigations by a subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department is the sad fact that instead of dealing in nearly 4,000 shares of valuable ImClone stock, I was operating on such a low level as to be of no interest to anyone.

At the risk of getting dragged off in handcuffs, here's my story:

I was shopping at a store (which I'll leave unnamed), and saw a suit I wanted to buy. I was taking out my credit card to pay, when the saleswoman who'd been helping me looked around conspiratorially, lowered her voice, and whispered, ``We're putting that on sale tomorrow. But you didn't hear it from me.''

An honest person would have made the purchase right then and there at the full retail price. ``WWMD?'' I asked myself. What would Martha do? I headed out empty-handed, then returned the next day to reap a 30 percent savings.

As Martha would say, ``It's a good thing.''