Reflex Reactions: March 2014

Monday, 31 March 2014

26 Greatest loves of my life - Let's call him Adam. #atozchallenge

In Grade Prep my favourite game was kiss chasey, especially if Adam was playing. It took days before someone was brave enough to suggest another game. Some kids protested, but most of us had our secret missions planned.

It was the only game of tag, where I didn't mind being 'it' first. Maybe it was his lanky legs but Adam was always easy to catch. When it was his turn to do the chasing, I would slow down and deliberately skip across his path. The hardest part was making it look like we didn't want to be caught.

Adam's mum let him buy me a hair clip with a butterfly on it, and I was the first girl to get an invitation to his birthday party. It was a weekend party and the first I was allowed to go to on my own.

On Saturday morning his present was wrapped. Mum was making alterations to my party dress and I was playing on my favourite tree. A big walnut that doubled as my acrobatic bars. I tried to do a back flip off the sturdiest branch and I crash landed and broke my wrist. No party for me. Doctors orders.

We didn't have a telephone. I had no way of telling Adam that I couldn't make it to the party. I tried everything to convince my parents I was well enough to go. I even begged them to take me, so I could give him his gift and tell him I couldn't stay.

I was sure he would be upset, maybe even drop me. I thought about running away. I pretended my arm didn't hurt. I cried and yelled and got my knickers in a huge knot, until exhaustion finally wore me down.

By Monday morning, the martyrdom on my left wrist had set. Armed with Adams present my Mum dragged me to school. We met Adam and his Mum at the gates. He'd saved a party bag of lollies for me. My cast became the centre of attention.

I told Adam I wasn't allowed to play games like chasey. He suggested I walk instead of run. It made perfect sense to me. So we waited, until someone was brave enough to say "who wants to play kiss chasey?'

26 Greatest Loves of my life #atozchallenge
Image courtesy of Clker.com

I wonder if the next two times I broke my arm was for a similar type of attention?

Have you ever played games, or bent the rules just a little, to get closer to a person you love?

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Find out more about the A to Z challenge, my theme and links to all 26 Greatest loves of my life.

Thursday, 20 March 2014

A to Z theme reveal - Not quite what I expected... #atozreveal #atozchallenge

1) Aussie slang - (to tempting to copy and paste)

2) 26 Boyfriends - (to revealing)

3) A to Z of Alzheimers - (to heavy for a light hearted challenge)

Check out everyone else's themes on the link list here

26 boyfriends was a standout winner... Perfect. Until I stating writing the posts and realised that
not everyone in my life needs to know about how many or how deep some of those boyfriends reached.

What I really want to share is why and how I fell in love. The fun, mistakes and lessons. This was supposed to be about different types of boys, but as I started writing the posts it became glaringly obvious that it was all about me. I couldn't write about love and leave out some of my greatest loves of all, not just old boyfriends. So a new theme idea was born.

Welcome to The 26 Greatest loves of my life.

There will still be a little smut, including my first kiss and that unforgettable first quiver, but I also want to keep it PG. Some will read like a synopsis rather than the whole story. Some of my greatest loves aren't even human.

I want to exercise my writing muscles, challenge myself. My longest post is under 400 words, some of them are just a few sentences long. Some are first person, some are third person. There's even a poem or two and I might even chuck in some Aussie slang. Fair dinkum I've loved some larrikins.

This challenge isn't just about writing, it's about connecting with other bloggers. This year I've managed to get a good head start by scheduling half of my posts. This will give me a lot more time to visit other blogs. The more blogs I visited last year the more visited me back. It's a win-win. Positive comments are like rewards for effort, they become addictive.

Like many girls I started searching for love at a very young age. I don't remember a time in my life where my relationships haven't been the single most important thing to me. In order to have great relationships I had to learn to love myself. If you are anything like I am, that was easy at first, became very difficult for a while, then greater than anything I imagined.

I hope you enjoy my 2014 #atozchallenge theme. The 26 Greatest loves of my life.

Subscribe by email if you don't want to miss a post. I promise never to spam you, I don't even know how to find out who has subscribed :)

Make it easy for other people to find you and leave a link to your post in the comments below.

It's not to late to join the the them reveal link list. I've added it below (if the linky link works - if not click here.)

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Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list...

The challenge starts with the letter A on April 1st. You can join that on the official A to Z challenge page.

All the best to every participant. Let the countdown begin.

Sunday, 2 March 2014

How to add your twitter handle to blogger's share button - tutorial.

Most of us are familiar with the share buttons on blogger.

Blogger share buttons.

If you tweet a post, a share window appears that looks like this

How to add a twitter handle to blogger share buttons

Did you notice that there is no twitter handle on the above picture. Here is what it should look like.

How to add a twitter handle to blogger share buttons

Your twitter handle makes it easier for people to follow you on twitter as well as help you keep track of who is tweeting your posts. You can return the favour or show your gratitude if you know about it.

Honestly, I really didn't think this was a big deal, but I've linked into a group that seems to use twitter a lot (not big in my part of the world) and I figured a few more twitter followers might be a good thing.

I started with a google search and discovered that there isn't much information about adding a twitter handle to tweets from blogger. This could mean that it's common knowledge but I'm guessing it's something that has been overlooked.

Everything I did find and try either involved signing up for things I didn't want - adding things I didn't want, was too complicated or didn't work.

Finally after learning a few new things about bloggers Edit HTML template feature, and stumbling onto the right codes in this forum, I found a super simple solution that I'm sharing with you.

Under your design tab, click on template then edit html.

Then click on format template

Once you click on format template you need to search for some code to change. When you press ctrl f or command f, a little box shows in the top right corner of the html screen.

The code you need to search for is:

expr:href='data:post.sharePostUrl + "&target=twitter"'

just copy and paste this into the search box, and the code will show up highlighted in yellow.

You need to replace that code with:

expr:href='"https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=@YourTwitterHandle%20"+ data:post.title + "&url=" + data:post.url'

Make sure you change the @YourTwitterHandle, to your own twitter handle.

Click on Save template and all your twitter handle problems will be solved. Well at least I hope so.

Here's my new code with the right twitter handle, highlighted in yellow, after searching for it in the search box.

I am no authority on the subject, I'm just sharing what worked for me. I suggest before changing any code, that you back up the code you already have.

I did that by copy and pasting my template into a text document. Don't skip this step, it came in handy when all the other methods I tried didn't work. I was to scared to use the back up button because quite frankly I haven't got my head around what

This simple solution took me the better part of two days of searching, trial and error. Have you ever attempted to do something simple that took a lot longer than you expected.

All the best and happy sharing.