Beaver's Dad has got it going on...

You know you've morphed into a Woman of a Certain age when...

*Sleeping on the couch makes your back hurt.

*A $5.00 bottle of wine is no longer considered "the good stuff."

* You go to the drugstore for Tylenol, Pepsid and anything with SPF in it, rather than condoms and pregnancy test kits.

*"Hey! You kids! Get off my lawn!"

* "I just can't drink the way I used to" replaces "I'm never going to drink that much again."

*You suddenly realize, while watching Leave It to Beaver that Ward Cleaver is a handsome son-of-a-gun.

When did this happen?

At what point did old Ward become really rather hot? And snarky, too.

At first I chalked up this rather unsettling opinion to sleep deprivation and exhaustion -- after all, it was dark o'clock in the bloody morning when I was tuned in. But after catching a glimpse of a LITB episode this afternoon, my new perspective was confirmed: Ward's kind of a DILF.

He's tall, dark, and charmingly dapper in that '50s suburban dude way. And had a bit of a wise-cracking side that I never noticed before -- it was very subtle, but evident in his interactions with June. Sure, he's uptight -- what man in that era wasn't (and Maynard G. Krebs does not count) -- but when he'd sport that cardigan sweater in his bookcase-lined den and light up that pipe... well. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

I'm a little disturbed by this -- it's frickin' Ward Cleaver for goodness sake. Does this mean I'm going to start finding Lou Grant a little alluring? Or Mike Brady dishy? See what Maude saw in Walter Findley? Look at Mel Sharples with a lascivious eye? Imagine an intimate tête à tête with Oliver Wendell Douglas?

Maybe. At this point in my hormonal evolution, nothing would surprise me. After watching a suddenly rather hot Ray Romano on Men of a Certain Age earlier this year, well...

I'll really only start to worry about my well-being if I find myself watching Matlock for more than Ben's courtroom wiliness... rowr.