The women who loved Brian. The women Brian loved.

I wish I could say I was in a better mood when we all met up for dinner, but in fact, I was not.

(Patrizia needs to be walked, Brian used to say.)

I covered reasonably well. Maintained, as I used to say back in my druggy days.

I don't know why I wasn't in a sunnier place. All day long, I entertained vague intestinal complaints that I knew perfectly well were psychosomatic. If I tried to think about that for very long, I knew that I was a failure & that nothing very good or very interesting would ever happen to me again, so I didn't think about that, I let the edges blur, and instead I thought about the economic implications of the shift in nurse practitioner licensure to the Doctor of Nursing Practice degree, and the pie I was baking Flavia, and whether pigs have wings.

The pie did not turn out well. I am not good at making crusts, plus Icky's oven turns out to be just as difficult & undependable as Icky himself, so the crust burned:



It will taste good, though.

###

When I got back from dinner, I sat outside & watched the darkness rally.

It's practically the end of firefly season.

It's practically the end of summer.

I can't really remember anything much about this summer. This summer followed Brian into the void.

The day had been stormy, but the night sky was clear, and far above my head, I saw the conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn, the Chronocrator medieval astrologers called it, for it presages significant social change, a new 20-year cycle:



Propitious!