How to Tell When It's Time to Get Laid

1. While watching the PBS show "Zoboomofoo" with the children, your mind wanders to what the fit, handsome Kratt brothers might look like out of their adventure-wear shorts. In the duck pond. With you.

2. While flipping through the Sunday New York Times Men's Fashion issue, you begin to sweat a little bit. You think you have never seen so much luscious man-skin, so many firm torsos and pouty mouths in one place. Not to mention the photo of Posh Spice's husband modeling a pair of underwear between muscular, spread thighs. What a magnificent pack-

"Mommy? Can you get me a snack?"

-age! My, it really is gettin' warm in here.

"In a minute!" Flip.

3. Again, while in front of the TV (it's been a long, cold winter), Handy Manny's toolbelt holds your fascination for longer than necessary. Handy Manny is a computer-animated character. But he's a grown man. And he's in your living room.

4. You count the minutes until your husband is due home, and not just so that he can take the critters off your hands.

5. You suddenly understand what your husband may have felt during all those nights when he begged you for sex. You were breastfeeding or postpartum or exhausted by too many fights about apple juice with the toddler, so you more or less told him to go in the bathroom with a bottle of lotion. Suddenly you want to make it up to him.

6. After a quick calculation that takes into account the flu that recently ravaged the household, the business trip, the weekend away with your best friend, your period and the long night your wee one spent wired on pediatric cold meds, you realize: it's been awhile.

Then again, maybe you're just ovulating.