OK, I'm back but I don't know for how long.

I have a gorilla. His name is Kong. He was a gift from my wife and, believe it or not, he sets on our entertainment center, front and center, in the living room. Sometimes, when we walk across the room, he "rattles".

Who caught that the word "sets" was used in the last paragraph rather than the word "sits"? Kong is a plaster cast sculpture of a gorilla's head (life-size, though) and sets on a pedestal against which it "rattles" when he's not positioned just right.

Anyway, real gorilla or life-size plaster head of a gorilla, it's amazing how my wife allows it to be in the living room, in plain sight for our guests. Not many women would allow that.

Usually women visitors sort of wrinkle their noses at Kong. The men react differently. The best comment I heard from a man was "Now that's something worth having." Loved it. I like to say that Kong looks like I usually feel (sort of grumpy with a "don't mess with me" scowl).

Since I got Kong, different gorilla stuff became the standard gifts I got. I have stuffed gorillas of all sizes (from a couple of inches tall to about two feet), gorilla refrigerator magnets, a tiny gorilla that hangs on picture frames, even a drawing of a gorilla done by my son that I have in a frame at my office. It's right next to the pictures of my grandkids. :)

Anyway, Kong leads me to think about my wife and I and how we've sometimes failed to understand each other, and the trouble that causes. It's important in a relationship to cut your partner more than just a little slack. I think the best way to launch into the subject is to give an example of something which happened with my wife, something involving a black cup.

When we got married I was like most men, living sort of hand-to-mouth with little material possessions to my name (maybe having just gone through my mid-life crisis helped exaggerate that condition). And the ones I did have my wife wanted no part of. So we were in this tug-of-war over what would be in "our" house and what wouldn't.

It all finally came down to one small black plastic cup sitting in the bathroom. I would put it there, my wife would remove it. I would find it, put it back, my wife would remove it. Repeat. Eventually it led to a confrontation.

What do you do when you've brushed your teeth and need to flush your mouth out? Most men just stick their mouth under the faucet, guzzle some water, job done. I was no different. Mouthwash? Right out of the bottle, of course. But there came that first time when my future wife visited my apartment.

I had to "womanify" my place, make it a little nicer. Oh, it was still a man's apartment, but there were some little details I could add. Like putting the toiler paper on the roller (surely you don't think that men living alone bother with that), make the bed, wash the dishes, dust a little. You know, the standard stuff that most women do and most men don't.

I always take baths, so there was no need for me to buy a shower curtain. But it made the bathroom look a little sterile, so for her visit I went out and bought a shower curtain, black of course, to fit the male image. And there in the bath department sat that small black plastic cup (to go with the shower curtain, of course).

I was concerned that if she was checking up on me, looking at how I lived, what could I do to measure up. Would it look good that I was so crude as to stick my face under the faucet? And heavens, what if for some reason she wanted to rinse out her mouth? So I bought the small black plastic cup to place proudly in the bathroom, just like I actually used it.

So, in a way, I bought it for her. And she'd gotten rid of just about everything I owned (even my clothes), so that small black plastic cup became a real sticky point. BUT, to show you just how great a woman my wife is, she understood immediately when I explained WHY the cup was important to me. The cup is still there, and all the grandkids love using it, and we don't worry about them breaking a glass and getting cut.

By the way, turns out she sticks her head under the faucet too, but now, surprise, I find I like using a cup/glass. There were other things that we disagreed on, but with a little understanding and a whole lot of love we managed to come to agreements.

The bedroom no longer looks like a "bawdy" house (boy, was that a disagreement, one perhaps enlarged by my unfortunate choice of words to describe decoration that was too feminine for me). The bathroom is no longer pink.

I now place (most) of my clothes in the clothes hamper, use deoderant every day and don't sit around in my underwear. She (usually) doesn't tell me how to do things or, especially, how I didn't do them right.

By the way, women, that's probably the largest complaints I hear from husbands about their wives when the women aren't around. A word to the wise. Oh, actually it's probably second, after the spending of too much money, but that's such a universal constant I don't even think about it any more.

Oh, and the wire book rack (you know, the rotating kind that you used to find in bookstores) that I used to hold my hundreds of video tapes no longer sits in the living room. It moved to the bedroom and then was finally left behind when we moved one time. And that made my wife very happy.

Well, short post, but maybe later something of more gravity will strike me.