cellini's Diaryland Diary

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My wife is about to decide.

I have Covid. Again It came on like an allergy on Friday. I wasn't sure that I was sick. Maybe just ragweed. By the time I woke up on Saturday it felt like I had a cold. I came into the bookstore with all precautions, mask and all, went up to my office and took a test and there I was.

So I have been home sick since then. Feeling utterly useless, back in the pandemic mindset and eating canned food and hating every minute of being away from my bookstore.

It occurred to me to ask how many books I had to look at in order to arrive at the first edition, first printing of Anne of Gr33n Gables that I found last week.

On average, every week I look at about 5,000 books that I could acquire for fifty cents to two dollars each That includes trips to thrift stores, boxes brought into the store, and going into people's houses to buy entire collections. That is about 180,000 books since I bought the bookstore. In that time, in addition to the 3 to 5% of those books that I have bought in order to sell at $5 to $8,50 each, I have found maybe two or three hundred books that I can sell for around a hundred to three hundred bucks, a dozen books that are worth around $500, maybe four for a thousand, and this one book that is worth $5,000 to $9,000.

Thinking about this math, I need to spend a lot more of my time away from the store looking at private collections. That is where the $100+ books come from. I have found exactly one valuable book at a thrift store, as good as those are at providing bread-and-butter books. i need to find more of those collections to look at, and I need to send employees to do the thrift store runs.

Alex is poking me on Instagram. She''s had some big surgery on her spine. The big one that she wanted her evil ex to be around for, because the evil ex is a nurse who can take care of her after the surgery. Whatever. Alex is incapable of committing to a relationship

Last weekend, Trish gave me this big thing where she wanted to dial our relationship back and take a break for two weeks. Because she is having trouble with me touching her even though she really wants to spend a lot of time around me. I offered again to pay for therapy. She really wants to have me next to her or conversation, and to rub her back and feet, and to take her on fun outings. I told her that if this ends, if she is not romantically interested in me, then I will not see her again other than to attend to the needs of our children. No more hanging out at the bookstore, no more formulating perfumes, no more concerts, no more long conversations about what islands homo erectus ended up on and needed boats to arrive on.

A few days ago she texted me to say that she thought that it would only be a week. Then, since I have had covid, she has sent me a few texts sort of checking in and almost giving a fuck about how I am doing.

I don't know if this is Trish prepping for a breakup or trying to set herself up for a reunion. Her effort is so shitty that I have no idea what is in store for me. I really hope that I will test negative tomorrow and be able to see her. But I don't fucking know. She isn't bringing me soup.

I have brought more than soup to strangers who were sick before this. I brought long lists of groceries to total strangers during the pandemic. I did it to the point where I had to delete my Facebook account and leave social media entirely, forever.

She laid down this week-long (or two-week?) thing a week ago, and I barely saw her for a week before that. Trish puts in so little an effort into this relationship. She promises to do the photoshop work into the Sh33pmouse thing, and then does nothing. She was going to make a list of everything we needed to do the H@rry P0tter room under the stairs, and this was her whole world not long ago, and she has done nothing. She was going to make a list of the scents to buy so that I can make a perfume for the bookstore and she just didn't do anything. I have tried again and again to include her in the creative life of this place but she repeatedly chooses to watch TV instead of getting anything done.

Trish is a massive exercise in disappointment. She cannot do the most basic creative things that I ask of her in order to stimulate her to remember who she is and to re-enter the world.

I hope that tomorrow I will test negative for covid. I spent part of todn ow ay writing copy for fliers that promote other weird businesses downtown which people who like D@edalus will enjoy. I have to find someone with experience making band fliers and posters to do the final thing for distribution.

Trish spent years after we split creating a narrative where I was Satan. The worst possible interpretation of anything that I ever said or did. Without anyone pointing out anything I had done or sacrificed for her benefit. The echo chamber of the divorced or separated woman, in which her ex-husband is a terrible man who desired her carnally and pursued his career and had probably blocked her from accomplishing anything. Except that 14 years passed after she left me, and she never accomplished anything. And maybe a husband carnally desiring his wife is actually a really good thing and having a career could have provided her with a pretty good life for the last 14 years.

Now she is trying to deal with facing the best possible version of me. The me that loves her. The me that brings her flowers and takes her to museums and asks her to collaborate on artistic ideas. And I do not know what she has decided. I do not know if her enquiries into how I am feeling with covid are polite bullshit or heartfelt questions.

I love my wife. I expect that tomorrow my covid test will be negative and I will go back to my bookstore and run shit. And I do not know what my wife will chose. I choose to spend the rest of my life with my wife and to love and cherish her forever. I choose Trish, and I beg that she will choose me. If she does choose me, I promise that I will spend the rest of my life devoted to making her happy. I will literally devote myself to Trish's happiness for the rest of my life if she chooses to try again with me. She has no idea that I have put ever half this amount of care or thought into this situation.

4:13 a.m. - 2024-09-02

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