so if i'm gonna do this, starting out with Alice Munro is a pretty good choice. making myself get out of bed and make the coffee and then letting myself read an Alice Munro story before I get to work might be a little bit cheap: everyone would rather read an Alice Munro story than drag some goddammed words out of their brains to write their own stories. But whatevs. She's so goddammed good that this story, "Free Radicals," which starts out as an regular horrible story about getting old, about who dies first, and how the fuck are you going to clean up all that crap when someone is dead? what do you do with all the paint in the basement? I've been thinking about death a lot in the last few years--go figure--so this part hits home. And then all of a sudden we're in "A Good Man is Hard to find." except that Nita is not the asshole mother in Flannery O'Conno

r, she's kind of a sweetheart--well a homewrecking sweetheart--oh who knows. it worked. thanks Alice, for day 2.