Now that my posts seem to have dwindled down to only once a month, I decided that now would be a good time to put down a new entry. So much has happened since my last post. And honestly, they haven’t all been very good. So let’s start off with the bad and end with the good.

About a few days after Valentines Day, Jenny was supposed to go back to Idaho to go to all these doctor appointments and spend some time with her sister and a few hours with her mom (because she had been away for the weekend). I wasn’t supposed to even go at all because I was supposed to be working doing some promotional advertising for a company. Jenny got about halfway into Utah when she decided to call me crying and saying she couldn’t go without me. The rest of my hours got cancelled over the weekend, so I decided I guess I could go with her if she decided to come back and get me. Although I really didn’t even want to go in the first place. One, because I anticipated her sister being mean to me, and second, because I knew it would be good for Jenny to spend some time with her family alone. Regardless, I went because I knew Jenny needed me.

To make a long story short, the weekend was a total disaster. Everything happened as I anticipated and I was just in a bad mood all that weekend. I couldn’t stand Rachel being a spaz and Jenny would go into these erratic mood swings around her and I just didn’t know what the hell was going on. And then something really weird happened. I fell asleep on her bed one evening and when I woke up, everybody was gone. I was having nightmares and my sleep paralysis attacks and I just started hallucinating things. Then Jenny comes walking into the room like a ghost and I thought I was about to have a heart attack. That hasn’t happened to be in a long time. The last time I remembered anything like that happening was when I was little living in the Philippines with my Mom. Argh… I really have some weird sleep problems.

So…the next morning, Sandy comes back from Texas. Meanwhile I’m trying to make conversation with her and she totally blows me off as if I may as well not have said anything to her at all. Well the night before, I hear from Jenny herself how her family thinks I’m trying to hard to get her family to like me. Yeah…I don’t get that either. But things start to make more sense later on down the road.

I start packing to make the 8 hour drive back to Las Vegas. Jenny’s upstairs talking with her mom (about how Sandy dislikes me of course). After a while, Jenny comes downstairs crying and her mom escorts us out the door. I know things are pretty tense, so I try to leave without making much of a scene. I can confront her mom later, I think to myself.

That 8 hour drive. About 4 hours of that trip was mostly silence. A good hour of it was me and Jenny crying. Crying about how our worlds seemed to be turned upside down. Just a few days prior, we were on Cloud Nine as happy as could be. Now everything seemed to be going up in flames. From just our conversation in the car, it just seemed that Sandy was upset that I hadn’t found work yet and that I was staying in Jenny’s apartment until I did. Where else could I go? I have nobody else out here! I was upset because I couldn’t see how it was all going to work out. So me and Jenny started fighting in the car. Not because of something either one of us did, but because of all these external factors that seemed to be working so hard to pull us apart. Now Jenny’s crying and I’m TRYING not to break down because I was driving. And then suddenly, her phone rings, and it’s her mom. She could tell that Jenny was crying and I knew I had to talk to Sandy. So I asked Jenny for the phone. But before I could even get a word out, I hear a “Howie, these are your ‘instructions’. You are to turn on some music. Stop talking to Jenny and just take my baby back to Vegas.” So I’m like, What the heck? “Yeah, I understand.” And so I hand the phone back to Jenny and she tells her the exact same thing. Whatever. I turn on some music and I’m nearly choking on the tears that I’m trying to hold back. Silence. Until finally, that frustration that I had been holding back for so long had suddenly swollen up into a huge eruption of tears. Jenny asks me to pull over, so I did. And then…more fighting? No. She hugs me. Jenny hugs me! This was the most crucial point in our relationship. And instead of breaking up like I had imagined might have happened, we start talking our way through this nightmare. I never imagined anything like that would’ve happened. Had this been any other relationship, most couples would have given up and just moved on. Sitting in the car on the side of a busy Utah highway, Jenny and I were able to find that place we always could go back to. Our friendship. We rationalized what was going on in our lives, reassured that neither of us would give up and would fight for each other, and everything was fine. So much for those ‘instructions’.

But the day wasn’t over. We finally get back to Vegas and Sandy calls Jenny asking for ME! As I nearly soil my pants, I take the phone and listen to Sandy, and to this day I still can’t figure out whether or not she was drunk as she was talking to me on the phone. “Well Howie, you won! You have her. You have Jenny. You won!” What the hell? I didn’t realize this was a contest. To make a long story short, Sandy goes on about how I’m a manipulative control freak who’s trying to steal her daughter away from her. She threatens that she’ll kick me out of Jenny’s apartment because she’s in student housing and I really shouldn’t be in there in the first place. Yeah we’re taking a risk, but I really don’t have any other choice. Then she goes on about how I need to get the hell away from her daughter. She asks me what do I have to offer Jenny. “At least Will (Sandy’s 2nd husband) has something to offer me. He offers me backrubs….and transportation!” Sandy, those are all MATERIAL things! And besides, where’s your husband right now? Oh that’s right, he left you just a few weeks ago because you’re an alcoholic, chain smoking, psycho! I guess he really doesn’t have much to offer you now, does he? And then she tells me how she “doesn’t give a fuck about my career” and how she really doesn’t see any reason to help me. So after about 2 hours of her oh-so-bitter words, I’m off the phone feeling like the biggest pile of poop ever. “Prove me wrong, Howie. Get a job and get the hell out of my daughter’s apartment.”

Ok, present day. The good part…sort of. I have a job. Just a few weeks ago, in fact, the very next day after my conversation with her, my employment agency sets me up with an interview with a well known bank out here in the West called Wells Fargo as a Credit Services Assistant. A full time job until I find something more in my field. So after waiting about a week for my background check to clear, I hear back from my agency saying that I should start working next Tuesday. Furthermore, I interview with Apple Computers, and it seems that want to hire me as well as a part-time Macintosh Specialist. Yay! And it doesn’t end there. I’m signed up with 2 branches for this employment agency, and the one has an interview lined up for me as a Web Designer for another company. So now the options are starting to pour in. Good stuff. Take that Sandy! So I’m expecting money from Anthony for a plane ticket I never used, and from Bill for some consulting work I did for IUP. So that alone is more than enough to get myself an apartment. But is that all enough? Apparently not.

After excruciating phone conversation with Sandy, Jenny thought it would be a good idea to lie to her and tell her that I went to LA for the weekend. After all, it seems to the both of us that Sandy really wants me to go to LA, fall in love with the place, and decide to leave Las Vegas and Jenny for good. But that’s not going to happen. First of all, as I had stated earlier, living in LA would near kill me financially. Secondly, Las Vegas is, simply put, the best option for me right now with its low cost of living. So anyway, we thought it would just give Sandy some time to cool off and maybe act like a real grown up and start talking to Jenny rationally for a change. And it worked…for a while.

Ironically, after I ‘came back’ from LA, Sandy’s mood turned again. I had found out that Well Fargo wanted me to work for them, and all this stuff with Apple. So now I really could stay here. And Jenny and I knew that’s NOT what she wanted AT ALL. Jenny got a job at a tanning salon franchise called Body Heat. So now the both of us have jobs. So after I ‘came back’, what was Sandy’s reaction to all this? Well first of all, she starts treating Jenny like crap again, which inevitably carries over to me as her mood is simply shattered thanks to her horrific conversations with her mom.

We take it a day at a time. Yes, it’s taking it’s toll on us. And it’s hard being intimate with each other with all this crap happening all around us. But we find ways to keep each other’s spirits up regardless. Right now, I just need to save up enough money to move out. And then perhaps her mom’s mood will get better. But I have a feeling that’s probably not going to be the case. I’ve fought so hard to be with Jenny and to make this work. And for once in my life, this is the only relationship that I can actually see working out for me in the long run, despite the forces that are trying to pull us apart.

Tomorrow, I have a temp assignment with the Bellagio, helping people register for this medical conference that’s going on, hopefully making a few contacts along the way. On Tuesday, I start working with Well Fargo. Apple Computers should be getting a hold of me soon also. The interview for that Web Designer position is also on its way. And finally, while all of this is happening for me, Dr. Viggiano from IUP is contacting some of his colleagues at Channel 8 and pulling some strings for me and this Web Designer job I had previously applied for.

There’s obviously A LOT that’s going on. Honestly, I just haven’t had the emotional capacity to sit down and write everything that’s been happening. Hopefully once the dust settles, I’ll have more time to write. As I’m sure many of you can guess, this whole soap opera that’s happening between me and Jenny’s family doesn’t end here. So I will keep all my friends from back home posted on what’s happening. At this point, I really have given up on what to expect anymore. But I can guarantee one thing’s for sure. I’m not giving up on Jenny, ever.

She’s worth fighting for.