Archive for the ‘Relationship Humor’ Category

Marital Squabble (Limerick)

Tuesday, April 25th, 2023

“I’ll get rid of that wasp nest. I’m on it!”
Said a man who was writing a sonnet.
“But you’re being a pest!
My verse has me stressed,
And I’m sick of that bee in your bonnet.”

Relationship On The Rocks (Limerick)

Sunday, April 23rd, 2023

Delores and Bill, once an item,
Had a fight. Now she won’t even write ’im
A text saying “hi,”
Or an angry “GOODBYE!”
She explains: “Can’t abide him, so BITE ’IM!”

The Not So Happy Couple (Limerick)

Saturday, August 6th, 2022

“I’ve been faithful! You’ve NOT been deceived,”
Said a gal to her spouse. “I’m aggrieved
And can’t handle your doubts,
Accusations, and shouts!”
“Don’t worry! I’ll soon be bereaved.”

Still Bugged By Mosquitoes (Limerick)

Monday, July 11th, 2022

Wherever I go (or I’ve been)
Bugs attack me, ignoring my kin.
I scratch and I itch
And I can’t help but bitch…
Cuz mosquitoes get under my skin!

Update: August 20 is World Mosquito Day.

The Off-Kilter Kiss (Limerick)

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2022

A young fellow sensed something amiss
With wife Fran from her lackluster kiss;
She had downed sev’ral beers,
Then compounded his fears:
“I’m not Fran, but her evil twin sis.”

(“National Kissing Day” falls each year on June 22.)

A Dickish Limerick

Wednesday, April 27th, 2022

The aptly named newlywed, Dick,
Refers to his bride as a “chick”
And never extols her.
He boasts he “controls her”
By using “both carat and stick.”

A Bad Match (Limerick)

Thursday, December 2nd, 2021

“Your new flame always stinks like a stable.
He drinks ev’ryone under the table.
Mabel, what’s the allure?
He’s unstable, for sure.
Worst of all, he wears fur made of sable!”

A Hampered Relationship (Limerick)

Saturday, November 20th, 2021

“Wet clothes in the hamper? That’s foul!”
Said a gal to her spouse, with a scowl.
“What is wrong with you men!?
If you do it again,
I’ll divorce you and throw in the towel.”

When I Rise, I Don’t Shine (Limerick)

Monday, November 1st, 2021

Ev’ry day when I rise, hubby greets me
With political news, which depletes me.
He’s eager to share it,
But I just can’t bear it,
Cuz pre-caffeine info defeats me.

Limerick-Off Monday – Rhyme Word: STATE or ESTATE at the end of any one line (Submission Deadline: March 27, 2021)

Saturday, March 13th, 2021

It’s Limerick-Off time, once again. And that means I write a limerick, and you write your own, using the same rhyme word. Then you post your limerick(s) as a comment to this post and, if you’re a Facebook user, on Facebook too.

I hope you’ll join me in writing limericks using STATE or ESTATE at the end of any one line. (Homonyms or homophones are fine.)

The best submission will be crowned Limerick-Off Award Winner. (Here’s last week’s Limerick-Off Award Winner.)

Additionally, you may write themed limericks related to CO-WORKERS, using any rhyme word. And of course I’ll present an extra award — one for the best CO-WORKERS-related limerick.

How will your poems be judged? By meter, rhyme, cleverness, and humor. (If you’re feeling a bit fuzzy about limerick writing rules, here’s my How To Write A Limerick article.)

I’ll announce the winners on March 28, 2021, right before I post the next Limerick-Off. So that gives you two full weeks to submit your clever, polished verse. Your submission deadline is Saturday, March 27, 2021 at 4:00 p.m. (Eastern Time.)

Here’s my State/Estate-rhyme limerick:

My neighbor was fined and then jailed.
“I will NOT wear a mask he had wailed!”
“It’s not up for debate,”
Said the judge. “In this state,
We follow the rules, and you’re nailed.”

And here’s my Co-Workers-themed limerick:

My cubicle-mate just resigned.
I’m relieved; he’s a boor unrefined,
Who chomps coffee beans — gross!
Glad to say “Adios!”
(Enough bitching! It’s back to the grind.)

Please feel free to enter my Limerick-Off by posting your limerick(s) in my comments. And if you’re on Facebook, I hope you’ll join my friends in that same activity on my Facebook Limerick-Off post.

To receive an email alert whenever I post a new Limerick-Off, please email Madkane@MadKane.com Subject: MadKane’s Newsletter. Thanks!

Happy 41st Meeting Anniversary To Hubby Mark (Limerick)

Friday, April 20th, 2018

I concede this sounds rather insane,
But I found my true love on a train;
Not a club, not a bar,
But the LIRR
Changed my life — gave me Mark Gary Kane.

Limerick-Off Monday – Rhyme Word: GRIND at the end of Line 1 or 2 or 5

Saturday, October 1st, 2016

It’s Limerick-Off time, once again. And that means I write a limerick, and you write your own, using the same rhyme word. Then you post your limerick(s) as a comment to this post and, if you’re a Facebook user, on Facebook too.

I hope you’ll join me in writing limericks using GRIND at the end of Line 1 or Line 2 or Line 5. (Homonyms or homophones are fine.)

The best submission will be crowned Limerick-Off Award Winner. (Here’s last week’s Limerick-Off Award Winner.)

Additionally, you may write themed limericks related to AUTUMN, using any rhyme scheme. And of course I’ll present an extra award — one for the best AUTUMN-related limerick.

How will your poems be judged? By meter, rhyme, cleverness, and humor. (If you’re feeling a bit fuzzy about limerick writing rules, here’s my How To Write A Limerick article.)

I’ll announce the winners on October 16, 2016, right before I post the next Limerick-Off. So that gives you two full weeks to submit your clever, polished verse. Your submission deadline is Saturday, October 15, 2016 at 10:00 p.m. (Eastern Time.)

Here’s my limerick:

A gal who was always behind
In her chores, said her spouse did not mind:
“My gifts in the sack
Make up for this lack.
I excel at a far diff’rent grind.”

Please feel free to enter my Limerick-Off by posting your limerick(s) in my comments. And if you’re on Facebook, I hope you’ll join my friends in that same activity on my Facebook Limerick-Off post.

To receive an email alert whenever I post a new Limerick-Off, please email Madkane@MadKane.com Subject: MadKane’s Newsletter. Thanks!

Happy Brothers Day! (Limerick)

Tuesday, May 24th, 2016

Oh brother! It’s Brothers Day. Wow!
I’ve got me a good one. And how!
With a heart off the chart
Arthur (now known as Art)
Is unrivaled. Please Art, take a bow.

Brothers Day (May 24) is actually meant to celebrate the bond between brothers. But since I missed Brother And Sister Day on March 26, and Siblings Day on April 10, this will have to do.

A Not-So-Romantic Limerick For “Propose Day”

Monday, February 8th, 2016

A fellow named Bill lost his will
To propose to a gal who was shrill;
While down on his knees
He’d started to sneeze,
And she said, “You are making me ill!”

Happy Propose Day! (February 8)

Dear Long Island Rail Road (Limerick)

Monday, April 20th, 2015

Happy “meeting anniversary” to my wonderful husband Mark. (April 20, 1977, aboard the LIRR)

Dear Long Island Rail Road, my debt
To your system, I’ll never forget.
Back in Seventy-Seven
Your train car was heaven:
‘Twas the place where my spouse and I met.

(More epistolary poems here.)

UPDATE: Someone on Facebook asked for more details about our meeting on the train. Here’s what I wrote:

Re your questions, for some odd reason (possibly love at first sight, which I don’t even believe in) I did something very uncharacteristic of me when I saw Mark come bopping up the train’s aisle: I smiled and gave him “the eye.” He just looked so handsome and cute, and I liked his eyes and willed him to sit across from me. (It was the end of a long, tiring day — a full day of law school, followed by a trip into Manhattan for a symphony orchestra rehearsal. And I was feeling both exhausted and hyper.)

Anyway, Mark smiled back and then, much to my chagrin, he kept on bopping past me and past lots of empty seats and went into the next train car.

I figured I’d never see him again and then, suddenly, Mark returned to my car, walked past the empty seats again, and sat across from me. His first words to me were: “Boy, you look tired!” Which provoked a monologue by me about everything I’d done that day, followed by a monologue by him detailing his rather full day.

Seven weeks later, we were engaged.

How I Met My Husband

Saturday, March 28th, 2015

My come-hither look
was all that it took.
Mark​ at first tried to book,
but returned … on the hook.

As Mark likes to say, true story:

Mark spots me, already seated, while he’s walking through a half-empty Long Island Rail Road car. I smile at him. He smiles at me. And then, instead of sitting across from me, Mark keeps walking and goes into another half-empty train car.

A couple of minutes later he rethinks this, turns around, comes back, and sits across from me.

Seven weeks later Mark proposes, and I say yes, wondering what took him so long.

(All this happened way back in 1977.)

The Almost Naked Truth

Tuesday, February 24th, 2015

I love this headline: “Mother, 29, who ran through hotel naked ‘after her friend stole her pants’ is slapped with an obscenity charge.”

Not only did it make me laugh, but it reminded me of my own personal experience, memorialized in this humor column I wrote way back in the Twentieth Century:

A Traveler’s Net Woes
By Madeleine Begun Kane

If your husband ever invites you to join him on a business trip, be sure to ask him these questions:
1. Will you ever get to see him while he is not — technically — asleep?
2. What will he do, if you accidentally lock yourself out of your hotel room in the middle of the night while you are not — technically — dressed?

Unfortunately, I didn’t think to ask these questions when my husband Mark invited me to join him for a six-week Boston business trip. So I had to learn the answers the hard way:
1. No.
2. He will remain — technically — asleep.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back when my husband urged me to accompany him, all I could focus on was:
1. Whether I could pack my cappuccino machine;
2. Whether I’d get any writing done so far from home; and
3. Whether we’d have reliable net access in our room.

Okay, I admit it: I’m a little — okay a lot — hooked on cappuccino and the on-line life. And I never — ever — go to sleep without reading my email and surfing the web.

Anyway, Mark managed to convince me that working out of a hotel room in a strange city would inspire new, creative ideas. He also swore that Boston is a modern city with lots of cappuccino and Internet connections. So I reluctantly accompanied him, after packing enough gear for a year.

We checked in late that first night, and the accommodations (paid for by Mark’s client) were luxurious. But I gave no thought to our lovely hotel, the sites and sounds of Boston, or the excitement of living in a new city. While Mark unpacked, requested a wake-up call, and ooohed and aaahed at the view, I foraged for a modem connection. Only one view mattered to me — the blank one on my laptop screen.

Finally, I had the computer set up. I began to relax, happy in the knowledge that any minute I’d … What’s this? An error message? What did they mean “no dial tone”?

It must be some mistake, I told myself, as I tried to sign on again and again and again. After a dozen failed attempts I was even reduced to violating my “don’t crawl on a strange rug” rule. Struggling to reach the wall behind the desk and bed, I squeezed my arm into places it didn’t belong, pulling and pushing and tugging at anything that looked important. And trying to spot a loose connection … aside from the one in my brain.

Now a normal person would probably have given up and gone to bed after 10 or 20 or 30 failed attempts to sign on-line. (By this time, Mark had been asleep nearly an hour.) But the more disconnects I got, the more determined I was to access my net account. Am I stubborn? Yes. Plus I really needed my pre-sleep fix.

So I persisted, all the while cursing out computers, the hotel, my husband’s client, and my husband, who apparently enjoys having his bed shoved across the room while he’s sound asleep.

Then it hit me — the kind of revelation one only gets way past midnight. I’d simply phone the concierge, and he’d do some concierge type thing and get it fixed. So I picked up the phone and — you guessed it — it was as dead as my modem.

You moron, I castigated myself, as I tried to guess whether I was being personally singled out for email deprivation.

Just then, I heard a sound in the hall. Eager to find out if anyone else had phone service, and forgetting that my attire (or lack thereof) would get me arrested in many countries, I rushed out the door, wedging it open with a shoe. Luckily (I thought) the sounds were coming from the next room, whose door was ajar.

“Do you have phone service?” I asked a female guest, who was still gripping her luggage.

She didn’t answer. Instead she stared at me blankly, no doubt wondering why some barefoot, barely clad crazy woman was standing in her doorway at 3 a.m.

“Do you have phone service?” I repeated.

“No speak English,” she said, as she put down her suitcase and looked around the room, possibly for a weapon. Now desperate, I attempted to mime talking on the phone. But she apparently didn’t speak mime either.

At this point, I’m afraid I did something that can only be characterized as insane; I strode into the room, walked right past her to the far end, and picked up her phone. It was dead. This was good news, because you need a phone to get someone arrested for trespass.

I put the receiver down and belatedly began to apologize. But the woman ignored me — she was embroiled in some incomprehensible dialogue with a man (her husband?) who had apparently been in the bathroom when I invaded their room. Were they plotting my demise?

I crossed the room as quickly as I could and darted past them, hoping they wouldn’t try to stop me. And that they understood the meaning of the word “sorry.”

Finally I made it out of there, and they slammed the door behind me. Relieved, I turned toward my room and, after tripping over my failed-wedge shoe, I discovered another shut door — my own.

Ten minutes of door pounding later I was still stranded in the hall, and Mark (who can sleep through anything) was still sound asleep.

By now I was more or less resigned to going to bed without reading my e-mail. But no way was I sleeping in the hall.

I probably would have continued my futile pounding, but adding the crime of “destroying the peace” to trespass didn’t seem wise. And getting thrown out of the hotel probably wouldn’t help Mark’s consultant/client relations.

But what else could I do? I couldn’t very well take the elevator downstairs and beg the concierge for a key while I was dressed like this, could I?

Apparently, I could. I started down the hallway, moving as quickly as I could manage, and fervently hoping I wouldn’t meet anyone en route. Fortunately, every reasonably sane person was asleep by then. So the halls and elevator were empty, and I even made it down eight floors to the lobby nonstop. I was so relieved, I didn’t even mind the strange looks I got from the couple getting on as I got off. Or the amused grin from the concierge when I told him I needed help.

“Phone problems?” he asked, looking me up and down.

“For starters,” I answered.

“Sorry, everything’s down at least until late morning. Anything else I can do for you?”

“Yes, I locked myself out of my room. Could you…?”

“Yes, I can see you did. Hold on and I’ll get my keys.”

“This is very embarrassing.”

He took another look and grinned again. “No problem. I’ve seen a lot worse.”

Throughout the elevator ride up and the walk to my room he regaled me with tales of locked-out guests stranded in garb that made me appear ready for a full dress ball. Then he placed his key in the door and said, “Do you have any ID?”

“What?” I said, beginning to panic. “Where would I…?”

“Just kidding,” he said as he unlocked the door.

Safely back in my room, I found Mark sound asleep. Exhausted and angry, I stared at him, willing him awake. I could have been kidnapped from the room in the middle of the night, and he would never have known. I could have …

Suddenly, Mark sat up. “What is it?” he said.

“Didn’t you notice I was gone?”

“What are you talking about? One sec. I have to go to the bathroom.”

“What were you saying?” Mark said as he climbed back into bed.

“Never mind. But you should set your alarm. The phones are broken, and you probably won’t get that wake-up call.”

“Thanks,” he said as he fiddled with the clock and lay back down to sleep. “What did you do to their phones?” he added just before he began to snore.

Dear Klutzy Gift-Givers (Limerick)

Thursday, December 18th, 2014

Dear Klutzy Gift-Givers (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Are your fingers all thumbs? Then beware!
Please don’t try to convince her you care
By wrapping your gift.
One quick look — she’ll be miffed:
“Why’s my present been mauled by a bear?”

Limerick Ode To National Unfriend Day (Nov. 17)

Monday, November 17th, 2014

Limerick Ode To National Unfriend Day
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Do Internet pests take their toll
And play an insidious role
In your Facebooking life?
You can deal with such strife:
Just unfriend all those trolls. Take control!

Limerick Beau (Limerick-Off Monday)

Saturday, May 17th, 2014

It’s Limerick-Off time, once again. And that means I write a limerick, and you write your own, using the same first line. Then you post your limerick here and, if you’re a Facebook user, on Facebook too.

The best submission will be crowned Limerick Of The Week. (Here’s last week’s Limerick Of The Week Winner.)

How will your poems be judged? By meter, rhyme, cleverness, and humor. (If you’re feeling a bit fuzzy about limerick writing rules, here’s my How To Write A Limerick article.)

I’ll announce the Limerick of the Week Winner next Sunday, right before I post next week’s Limerick-Off. So that gives you a full week to submit your clever, polished verse. Your submission deadline is Saturday at 11:00 p.m. (Eastern Time.)

I hope you’ll join me in writing a limerick with this first line:

A woman broke up with her beau…*

or

A fellow who’d once been the beau…*

or

A gal tied her hair in a bow…*

or

A musician was buying a bow…*

*(Please note that minor variations to my first lines are acceptable. However, rhyme words may not be altered, except by using homonyms or homophones.)

Here’s my limerick:

Limerick Beau
By Madeleine Begun Kane

A singer broke up with her beau
After learning he’d done something low:
He’d poked fun at her pitch,
Which compelled her to ditch
Him for somebody less in the know.

Please feel free to write your own limerick using the same first line and post it in my comments. And if you’re on Facebook, I hope you’ll join my friends in that same activity on my Facebook Limerick-Off post.

To receive an email alert whenever I post a new Limerick-Off, please email Madkane@MadKane.com Subject: MadKane’s Newsletter. Thanks!