helle thorning-schmidt behaves like a teenager at the mandela memorial service

"hey, wait a minute, i recognize you, aren't you barack obama." 

the danish prime minister helle thorning-schmidt must have been deemed pretty expendable to get a seat next to obama at the mandela memorial service. i'm sure no one could have predicted her schoolgirl behavior, flirting and laughing with obama throughout the service

it must have gotten so bad that michelle decided she had to separate them. helle was likely furiously texting her gay husband (who lives in switzerland), "you shoulda been here, stephen, obama is hot!"

i guess this will be the photo that justifies the OED's choice of "selfie" as the word of the year. it's really true, everyone is doing selfies.

these photos are circulating the interwebs, but i found them here (with a little help from my sister).

updated to include this, where obama tries to get michelle's forgiveness for the flirt with helle the star-struck groupie:

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i came across a linguistic turn i'd never seen before:

“The mood where I’m at’s ecstatic,”

at with an apostrophe s

it was in this article in the reno gazette journal.
i can't quite say that i think it's wrong per se, but somehow it is.
or at the very least very colloquial.

what do you make of it?

secret 16 - my marilyn phase

back in the pageant days, i went through a marilyn monroe phase (doesn't everyone?). as you can see here, i even had a white dress like THE white dress. and the hair--the hair was pure, platinum marilyn. i even did a whole photo shoot as marilyn and some of those pictures are actually pretty good. but i don't have any of them here (they're clearly in the parents' basement). this photo is from an appearance at the state fair (i was miss state fair), hence the rockin' tiara. if only i'd been standing on a grate so my skirt would blow up....sigh.

secret 12 - i am a beauty queen failure

back in the early 90s, when i suddenly found myself thin and full of thoughts of revenge after a particularly nasty break-up, i decided to try to earn my way to the miss america pageant. i thought the best revenge on the bad boyfriend would be for him to have to see me on t.v. and realize what he had missed out on. it was a brilliant plan. except for one thing. although i tried TWICE, i utterly failed to make it to the miss america pageant. i could be miss state fair, but could not win my state pageant to save my life. looking back, there were a lot of reasons for this which i didn't understand at the time...mostly having to do with the fact that i had a brain and they weren't looking for that. i thought i would be the first smart miss america, you see. silly me.

i proved i could walk and sing

while wearing heels.

and i had a fabulous sparkly dress, don't you think?

and i especially love this very

absolutely fabulous patsy look...

note: this is a previously-revealed secret, but it might have escaped your attention since a lot of you came to MPC quite recently. i originally revealed it here. (do check it out to see how i rocked the tiara.) and i made a little list about it here.

secret 1 - i still have a security blanket

i'm starting off with a whimsical first secret. and discerning readers of MPC will know that i kinda already revealed it once in a comment on ext's blog.

you know how some kids have a pacifier or suck their thumb? we have a sort of instinct for comforting ourselves in some way. but for me, it wasn't a pacifier and it wasn't my thumb, it was my blankie, pinky. my grandma bought it for me even before i was born, boldly buying pink, sure that i was a girl. and indeed she was right. and oh, how i loved that blanket. it started off soft with silky pink band on the edges. from the countless washings, the softness eventually became all nobbly and bally, but that just endeared it to me even more. i developed a habit of twisting a particularly good little bally bit between my fingers as a soothing act.

as i carried it around, it grew ever smaller. my parents tried to make me get rid of it, but i refused. they eventually gave up, as long as i didn't actually drag it around in public. but that was ok, i really only needed it to sleep anyway. eventually, pinky was just a faded greyish handful of knotted-together bits (which i still have tucked away in a chest). i moved on to another blanket that was equally bally and in fact, was dubbed bally--bally came to college with me. and after bally came ballette and then i think ballene. one time, i accidentally left bally in a hotel room (inside a pillow case) and we actually drove more than an hour back to get it. it was that important to my sanity me.

the one i have now, i don't think i named, or if i did i don't remember what i called it. and at my advanced age, i don't actually have to carry it around with me anymore in order to sleep, tho' sometimes i'll admit i  want to. my family thinks i'm a bit mad. husband tolerates it with an indulgent smile and sabin asks me frequently exactly what it is i love about that blanket. but it's hard to explain a lifetime of comfort derived from a shabby piece of fabric, so i guess i don't give her a satisfactory answer. and she keeps asking.

sabin seems to have inherited the predilection a bit, with her love for her ning. which you can also see in  this post. for her, it's more about rubbing the corners on her cheek, as her ning isn't bally at all. those corners are pretty worn out these days and i'm going to have to make her a new cover for her little baby down comforter, because she does like to have it when she's trying to sleep. just like her mom.

and the blanket in these pictures, not The Blankie, but #55 in the evidence of creativity--a soft fleecy cuddly that i made last weekend for those chilly nights in the garden, when i just can't bear to come in. i may be spilling my secrets this month, but the appearance of the real blankie will remain, just that, a secret.

you know you want to play along too...come on, tell me a secret.