The Longest Blog I've Ever Written...

[I wrote this blog over a week ago but I posted it on myspace first. But I wanted to share it here as well. It's a little bit out of order (as I still need to blog about Aug 6-16th), but I just wanted both blogs to be in the same spot].

The Longest Blog I’ve Ever Written
Current mood: drained

[I hope you have about 20 minutes... this blog is a doozy. But it is all very important. If you want to know what's been going on with both me and Ariana the past few days, and about my current state of mind, you need to read this blog. Sorry that it's so long, but I had a LOT to get off my chest...]

I'm in a pretty pissy mood right now. People all over the place are acting like idiots and I don't have the time, energy or patience to deal with their BS at this time in my life.

I'll give you all the quick background on the story (some of you know this, as we began to share what was going on, Sunday at Jordan & Maryann's place).

On Saturday night, Ariana's uncle, Carlos, decided to give her a call. Carlos is the type of person who doesn't call you unless he needs something, so we knew it couldn't be for anything good, but Ariana took the call anyway.

And right off the bat, Carlos begins asking a bunch of ridiculous questions and raising ultimatums and demands on both Ariana and I or else he wouldn't be coming to the wedding.

First, he asked what kind of food we were having at the wedding. My immediate thought was "the hell does it matter what we are having? Is he gonna help pay for it? Or cook something for us?" Ariana tried explaining it to him that we haven't decided on the exact dishes but it was going to be buffet-style with many choices- mostly consisting of Spanish and Italian food.

Then he goes off all like "why Italian food? we aren't Italian?" And I can see Ariana starting to get irritated with him and told him flat out "because we LIKE Italian food, but there are choices for everyone!"

Then he randomly jumps to the next question- "is John-Eric Puerto Rican?" Now I can see Ariana getting really flustered. First off, b/c he KNOWS I am, he's probably asked 10 times since we started going out 5 years ago. But then he's all like "Zulma (Ariana's biological mother) says John-Eric is Cuban!" Ariana then proceeds to explain to him that Zulma is mistaken.

And finally he gets to the big one. Apparently, he now has it in his head that our two families MUST meet before the wedding. This caught us totally off guard. Ariana explained to him that my mom and grandparents have already met Ariana's dad and godmother (the important people to meet). Heck, we've had Christmas and Thansgiving dinner with them multiple times! They're part of the family.

But my family has not met Carlos, his wife and son, or Ariana's other uncles. Sure that might have been an oversight on our part. In all honesty, I didn't even think of it. And even thinking of it now, I don't see how it's that bad of a thing. Plenty of family members meet for the first time at weddings (or wedding rehearsals). But fine, I can respect his feelings, just not less than 2 months before the wedding!!!

Ariana tried to explain to him that we are extremely busy in the upcoming 7 weeks or so before the wedding, and that we most likely would not be able to arrange a meeting of the families.

This apparently enraged Carlos and he started becoming verbally aggressive and insistent on getting his way. He began to curse out Ariana all like "why can't the families f***ing meet?" And he must have started throwing out conspiracy theories b/c I heard Ariana tell him that we have no "hidden agendas."

She kept trying to explain to him our situation (the wedding planning, the apartment renovation process, me with school work, dealing with dad and his stuff, work, and the fact that my mom and grandparents are busy people too, so they can't just drop what they are doing just to meet either). But he kept rudely cutting Ariana off and not allowing her to talk and began throwing out ultimatums and demands by threatening not to attend the wedding if the families couldn't meet beforehand. He even went so far as to say something along the lines of "if you're so F***ing smart, then you better figure out a way for this to happen, or don't expect me to be there."

That part INFURIATED me! I wanted to grab the phone from Ariana's hand and go off on the jerk. But she didn't want me to, so I respected her wishes.

In the end, he was just being verbally abusive, so at one point, my mom, who was in the room also, said "do you want me to speak with him? If he wants to meet so bad, I'll talk to him now." And Ariana was just extremely flustered at Carlos' verbal barrage that she told him that she was passing the phone to my mom. But when the phone got into my mom's hands, he hung up.

Since the conversation was now finished, Ariana was now able to let her emotions out, and she just began to tremble and cry and it just broke my heart.

I sat there feeling horribly sad for Ariana for the pain she was going through, but at the same time, I was also FURIOUS with Carlos and wanted to hurt him like I've never wanted to hurt a fellow person before in my life. And that was hard for me to deal with.

[Forgive this upcoming tangent, but I have to get some stuff off my chest]

I hate being angry with people. I've always prided myself on the patience I have with people. Everyone has a limit to what they will take before they explode. People with bad tempers will get set off over almost anything. Regular people have a range of what they can handle. Patient people will be able to handle more than most. As for me, I've been told before that I have the patience of a saint.

It takes a LOT to really get me upset. Mostly b/c I realize that it's silly to get angry and hold grudges with people because life is to short to stay mad. So I hold my tongue in order to not start anything that either person might regret.

But there are two things that have always been able to get me to my "breaking point" quicker than anything else and they are 1) my dad, when he would get verbally abusive, and 2) when someone hurts or threatens someone I love, especially if it's one of the women in my life.

Those are two things that I refuse to take. So when I saw the condition Ariana was in after speaking with Carlos, the man was VERY lucky to not have been within a 10 mile radius of me, or I might be sitting in a jail cell right now for the things I would have done to him.

And see, that's what scares me. B/c of the fact I give people more of a chance than people with average tempers, once you get me to my limit, there is no reasoning with me anymore. And getting to that point frightens me, b/c I don't want to ruin my life, just b/c someone else was being stupid. So I do all I can to avoid getting to that point, and release my anger and frustration in other ways.

And usually it works well for me. Overall, I'm a happy and content guy. But things have been really hard for me lately. I've got so much pressure and stress on me, that it's hard for me to handle other people's stupidity. I think anyone would be under a good amount of stress if they were in the same position I am in with the wedding and apartment stuff. But then I have the stuff with my dad on top of everything.

My dad was just taken back to the hospital this past Saturday night. His blood sugar was dangerously high (like 750, when the normal level is supposed to be below 200), and his B.U.N. levels, which in a normal person range from 7-25, was 188! That is a sign of kidney failure. The doctors believe these things were caused by an infection. So they brought my dad to the hospital and they are giving him insulin and antibodies so he is stable at the moment, but overall his health is not good. And that just freakin breaks my heart. When I got off the phone with the doctors I couldn't help but breakdown and cry.

And to make matters even worse, when I went to visit my dad on Sunday afternoon, I noticed he had fairly noticeable "bruises" on his left ear as well as on the side of his head. The nurses said those are probably "pressure wounds" from lying on it too much, but I'm skeptical b/c his bedsore is on his left side, so they mostly lie him either flat on his back or turn him to his right. So if anything, his right side would be bruised, not his left. I don't believe that his left side could get like that so fast even if he was put on his left side. So on top of all the other crap I am going through, I now also need to get on the case of the nursing home to find out why this occurred. Because to me, it looks more like he smacked his head against something. But even if the nurses are right and it is just from pressure, then the nursing home people are still at fault b/c they should be turning him more often! So it's just a mess…

****

-Now back to the whole thing with Carlos. We were able to calm Ariana down, and decided we would deal with him another day. He tried calling back, but we told Ariana not to answer, so we let it go to voicemail. And that was it for the night.

But then the next day, while Ariana was at her bridal shower- her biological mother (and Carlos' sister), Zulma, calls Ariana and starts trying to give her a lecture or something. She starts by saying "Oh, Ariana, you shouldn't be ruffling feathers." (And stuff like that! What the HELL?? She didn't do anything!)

Ariana obviously wasn't in the mood to have that conversation with her mother at the moment, so she told her that she was at her Bridal shower and couldn't talk, and that she'd get back to her later. Then Zulma says "call me back tonight, you need to fix all this, we have to talk." And Ariana flat out told her "look, I'm not in the mood to talk tonight either, I'll get back to you another time." (And I side with Ariana on this one, b/c we were busy after the shower and she didn't want to have her night ruined by discussing these issues).

Zulma kept insisting on trying to talk right there though and wasn't respecting Ariana's wishes to talk at a later time, so Ariana just got fed up and told her she had to go and was hanging up. And when Zulma kept talking, Ariana just hung up right on her.


Fast forward to Monday: Ariana decides she is going to write a letter to each, Carlos, Javier and Zulma just to clear the air about things.

[Just to clear things up, Javier is Ariana's other uncle, and the issues actually all started with him. Ariana had called him almost a month ago to ask if he could come down from Massachusetts with his truck to help his own father move his things to Massachusetts at the end of August. Well he starts to go off on her all like "I TOLD you this was gonna happen! You waited til the last minute! I told you I'm a busy person!" And we're just thinking "umm.. we're giving you over a months notice. What is up with you?"

And in all honesty, yes it would have sucked if he couldn't help, but if he wasn't available all he had to do was say "I'm sorry Ariana but I'm not free during that time, I can't help." But no, he starts to go off on Ariana all like "Why are you rushing into this wedding? Didn't you think? You've got too much on your plate. You should be dealing with moving out of the apartment and John-Eric should be dealing with his father!" And it's like "excuse me, is that ANY of your business?"

So Ariana flat out told him "listen, I called you for a favor for your father, not to get a lecture." And this didn't sit well with Javier. So he kind of just laughed and was like "ok, then. Good-bye."

So then, on the car ride up to the Poconos the other week, Carlos had called Ariana and told her that Javier called him, and that now he's thinking of not coming to the wedding. So now he was just being a petty little jerk. He wasn't even man enough to contact Ariana to tell her that himself, or just check off on the card "will not attend." He had to go through other means. So Ariana has not spoken to Javier since that conversation about a month ago].

So, Fast forward yet again, this time to Monday evening, when Ariana finally decided to listen to the voicemails that both Carlos and Zulma had left her.

I'm chilling at home online and all of a sudden Ariana calls me, sobbing on the other end, and immediately I knew the messages did not hold good things.

Ariana wound up forwarding all three messages to my phone (Carlos had left two) and I listened to them, and just hearing Carlos speak in the tone he was, got my blood boiling. The message was just laced with profanity and outright venom. And it pissed me off to no end, b/c Ariana does not deserve to be treated like that in ANYWAY whatsoever. So I consoled her to the best of my ability, and eventually she was feeling a little better about things.

But on Tuesday, we spent almost the entire workday, going over the letters she was writing to both Javier and Carlos. I decided myself, that I was going to write a letter to Carlos as well, to speak to him man to man and put him in his place. I wasn't trying to start a fight, but I had to let him know his behavior would never be tolerated again.

I've decided to attach the letters that we sent, just to show how careful we were with our words.

The first is the one Ariana sent to Carlos (I believe it is the final version she sent)

August 13, 2007

Dear Carlos,

I am writing you this letter because as of late it seems like we can't communicate well over the telephone and I can't bear the thought of arguing over the phone again. I'm not sure if you hung up on me the other day, but the reason I considered passing you over to John-Eric's mother on the phone was because I felt so upset and trapped that you were not listening to me and demanding to meet John-Eric's family when I was calmly trying to explain what was going on. I felt like you had me between a rock and a hard place. I felt you were being verbally abusive, which is something that I can't accept from strangers, friends or even family. The purpose of this letter is not to attack you but to hopefully set the record straight.

Carlos, I'm sorry that you and John-Eric's family can't meet before the wedding or the wedding rehearsal. As I've been trying to explain to you for a while, John-Eric and I have been extremely busy with wedding planning, apartment renovations, work, schoolwork, etc. As you have dealt with the food industry and events in the past, I assume that you know of everything that is involved in planning a formal wedding. In addition, I have to empty out my apartment and move within the next few weeks, while our new place isn't even ready yet. John-Eric's dad just went back into the hospital, and runs the risk of dying with any little infection that he gets. It's a really stressful time.

John-Eric's mom has been struggling with balancing helping out her parents and husband and taking intensive college courses and tests to complete her college education. I know you care for me, and that may be the reason why you want to meet John-Eric's family, but I can assure you that they are a good Christian family (his mom, his sister and grandparents) that has done nothing but embrace me in their family and support John-Eric and I (and even Ramon and my godmother Rosie) over the years. It would have been nice for you to meet John-Eric's family, but I wish it would have been addressed earlier during the five years that I have been with John-Eric. Unfortunately, two months before the wedding is a little too late.

My intention is not to give you a sob story and I would have hoped that you considered me a person that doesn't have hidden agendas. I know you and your family have been having a rough several months, and I've been praying that everything works out for you all in the end. But I don't think it's fair for you to lash out at me, make demands on my time that you are not entitled to and give me ultimatums and conditions for you to make it to my wedding. And if you think you are insulting me by questioning whether or not I am a "smart" person, I am sorry to say you are mistaken. I am a human being, I am an anxious person and I have too many things going on in my life right now that need to be taken care of before the wedding, to also have my family threatening to not come to my wedding and questioning the decisions that I make. I would have hoped to have your support, understanding and patience during this special time in my life, but that's the last thing that I have been getting from you and Javier.
I always thought we were close and I thought that our relationship was strong enough to overcome any argument. We were there for each other when we needed it at different points in our life. I never thought you would ever say that you would not come to my wedding, no matter what. I am deeply saddened that our family's relationship is so fragile and your anger issues are so strong that any argument would risk breaking it down.

I love you, Jodi and Matthew with all my heart which is the reason I wanted you all involved in the bridal party; you co-walking me down the aisle, Jodi as a Matron of Honor and Matthew as my ring bearer.

I hope you all in the end make it to my wedding, but if you no longer want to attend, I certainly will be hurt and disappointed but as you've said in prior arguments, I am a big girl and I will deal with it. I'm not going to let anything or anyone ruin my special day. I know Mami will be there in spirit that day and I know that she would be proud of me defending myself, even when everyone is against me.

If you'd like to call me and we can have an amicable conversation, I would look forward to hearing from you.

Love,
Ariana


Now this is the letter that I sent to Carlos:

August 14, 2007
Dear Carlos,

Ariana has no idea that I am writing this letter to you, but I believe we have some things we need to discuss man to man.

First, I want you to know that I was in the room when you were having your conversation on the phone with Ariana on Saturday night. I did not hear what you said, but I heard Ariana's side of the conversation, and I got the gist of what it was you were telling her from her responses. She also filled in some of the gaps for me after you hung up on her and she was very upset.

I understand that you would like both families to meet before the wedding. That would be great. However, if that is something that is so important to you and the rest of Ariana's family, then it should have been brought up months if not years ago. It is now less than two months before the wedding and we have absolutely no free time to arrange a meeting of families. There are too many people's schedules to consider and I don't believe it will work out. Both Ariana and I are busy with wedding preparations, as well as fixing our apartment, which must be completed within the month. I also have schoolwork I need to complete, as well as dealing with my father's failing health and his property. Plus, my mother is taking college classes and works full time as well. So even if Ariana and I were to somehow manage to find time to meet, we could not guarantee that my family would have the same free time. And I know you and your family have busy schedules as well, so with such a short amount of time before the wedding is to take place, I honestly just don't find it feasible for this meeting to occur.

I would hope that you understand that there are no "hidden agendas" at play. We are not trying to hide anything or avoid meeting. So I hope this wouldn't be a reason to get angry and decide to not come to the wedding. I know it would mean a lot to Ariana to have her entire family attend her wedding, and I hope you would honor that wish.

But now I need to address more important matters. I want to let you know one thing- I do not appreciate the way you talked to and treated Ariana that night or in the voicemail messages you left her. No man should ever speak to any woman in the way you did, especially not someone in his own family. Ariana is no longer a little girl that can be bossed around. She is a grown woman who can make her own decisions, and she was trying to explain to you the reasons why a meeting could not occur, but you kept cutting her off and not allowing her to explain herself.

Put yourself in my shoes, I'm sure if anyone dared to speak to Jodi the way you did to Ariana on Saturday night that you would want to kill them. Well as Ariana's fiancé and soon-to-be husband, I think you can understand that I am furious that you would dare treat her in that way and am still upset as I write this letter. You said in your message to Ariana that she shouldn't call you back unless she apologized. Well I'm telling you as a man, that it should be YOU who apologizes to her for the way you spoke to her.

I love Ariana with all of my heart and it hurts me to see her put through this verbal and emotional abuse for no good reason. She is the sweetest and most beautiful woman I have ever known and doesn't deserve to be treated that way and I will defend her to the day I die. So I will say this to you only once, and take me very seriously- if you ever treat Ariana in that way again and make her cry like you did- we WILL have words.

With that said, I hope you can respect my feelings on the issue so we can continue the cordial relationship we have always shared. I always thought we were pretty friendly and I am grateful for the times you invited me to Matthew's birthday parties and into your home, so I do not want any bad blood to rise up between us.

I hope that you can take these words to heart and reconsider your position and join us in celebration on our wedding day. There is no need to respond to this e-mail if you don't wish to do so;.your status on whether you are coming to the wedding or not is answer enough.

Sincerely,


John-Eric


And trust me, I had to edit that sucker down QUITE a bit, b/c my original letter was without a doubt the most vicious thing I've ever written. I have to give thanks to Kristen for suggesting to me to just write 2 drafts, one with how I actually felt, and then editing it down to be the one to send. I won't post the original letter here (unless I get requests, lol), but it definitely put a smile on my face to let all those emotions out, even if he never sees it.

And the following is the letter that Ariana wrote to her brother Javier (this actually might not be the final version that was sent to him but it is close):

August 13, 2007

Dear Javier,

I just wanted to let you know that we received the check this month and say thank you on behalf of Ramon.

Things are going well with the move. We are making decent progress with sorting and clearing stuff out. We were able to get the Super to help us take out the carpet and baseboards from most of the rooms.

On another note, I heard from Carlos that you had doubts about coming to my wedding because of the conversation/argument we had a few weeks back. I never asked you and Juqui to help in cleaning the apartment. I reached out to you on behalf of Ramon for help only in moving his stuff. Our intention was not to take advantage of you or of your time just because you have a car/truck. Since John-Eric's family has been so supportive in helping us out with the wedding and preparing our new apartment, I thought I would try reaching out to my family, not even for me, but for Ramon, especially since you have been so helpful with him in the past (and for that we are grateful).

You did not give me the chance to explain to you the other day, but as I've been trying to explain to Carlos for a while, John-Eric and I have been extremely busy with wedding planning, apartment renovations, work, schoolwork, etc. In addition, I have to empty out my apartment and move within the next few weeks, while our new place isn't even ready yet. John-Eric's dad just went back into the hospital, and runs the risk of dying with any little infection that he gets. It's a really stressful time and that's why I reached out to you for help.

We may have different ways of doing things, but it was very frustrating to hear you questioning the decisions that John-Eric and I have made about the timing of our wedding plans and our new life together. When we made our final decision on our wedding date, we weighed all our options and it was the timing that would work out best for both of us for a multitude of reasons. The issues with John-Eric's father came up after we had already put money down for the date, but even with all the challenges we are facing, we are handling all obstacles that come our way and are moving forward with our plans.

I asked you if were available to help Ramon move and you were not being obligated to say yes. I would have understood if you would have simply said "no, I don't think I'm going to be available the end of August." I know you and Juqui are busy people and I would simply have tried to find a plan B and try to figure something else out.

My intention is not to give you a sob story in order to help us. The purpose of this letter is not to attack you but to hopefully set the record straight. I am deeply saddened that our family's relationship is so fragile that any argument would risk breaking it down. I would have hoped to have your support, understanding and patience during this special time in my life, but I have not been getting that from you and Carlos.

I hope you all in the end make it to my wedding, but if you no longer want to attend, Ramon and I certainly will be hurt and disappointed, but I will deal with it. I'm not going to let anything or anyone ruin my special day. I hope to see you then or in the near future.

Love,
Ariana


***

So after reading these e-mails, I'd say they were pretty good right? I think we made strong cases in getting our points across without trying to start World War 3 amongst her family.

Well, we started to get some responses last night.

There was an e-mail from Carlos' address last night. Ariana and I opened it together and we discovered the e-mail was actually from Carlos' wife, Jodi. She normally always takes Ariana's side in arguments, and is one of the only level headed people in her family. But for some reason, while she didn't excuse how Carlos' treated Ariana, she went on to say that we are wrong for not having the families meet, and we should really try to get that done. She said that it was rude of Ariana to pass the phone over to my mom, and in the end that she should apologize to Carlos!!!

We were flabberghasted after reading this! Ariana felt so betrayed b/c this was her very own Matron of Honor telling her this. We thought of all people she would understand what is going on. I have to say, I wasn't pleased.

And then we followed up that wonderful e-mail with this little gem from Javier:

Ariana



There is no doubt, I am not going to your wedding. I suggest you learn what the word respect means and practice it.

I wish both you & John-Eric the best in the future!



Love Always,

Javier


And I don't know why, but that e-mail infuriated me even more than the one from Jodi.

Once again, I felt so terrible that Ariana had to be going through all this. And I felt like crap too, b/c anything that affects her, affects me. I really wish these people could just open their eyes and see all it is that we are going through. Because I think you'd have to be a cold person with no heart to not sympathize with our situation.

Ariana and I were up until after 3am last night on the phone just discussing the events of the past few days, and what we were going to do about everything. We wound up discussing other important aspects of our upcoming marriage as well, which in the end was very good, it just sucked that it took a situation like this to bring everything about.

-And that bring us to today. I could barely sleep last night thinking about Javier's e-mail. I prayed a lot this morning and I tried to find it in my heart to come up with a way to get my feelings across to everyone, make sure people knew they were in the wrong, but also make peace.

So I spent the first part of the day typing the following letter to Javier. Please read it, as I am very proud of it, and I thank God for inspiring the words I wrote in it:

***

Javier,

Ariana has no idea that I am writing this letter to you, but she showed me the e-mails that have gone back and forth between the two of you and filled me in on the phone conversations that have occurred.

Initially, I was very angry with the way you were acting with Ariana. But it was not my place to get involved.

Instead, I want to share something with you. As you know my father is very ill. He suffered multiple strokes after open-heart surgery back at the end of March. He's been in a nursing home the past 3 months and has been going back and forth multiple times to the hospital during that period. He can barely move, and it is very hard for him to communicate. He tries to talk but he can barely make out any words. He's basically trapped inside his body and it must be the most frustrating thing in the world for anyone to go through.

But the one thing I know about his situation, is that if there was only ONE thing my father could do, it would be to get out of bed to attend me and Ariana's wedding. So it upsets me greatly, that both you and Carlos have taken such minor arguments and used them as excuses to not attend your own niece's wedding.

One of the most important things I've taken from this horrible experience with my father is that life is too short to stay angry with people.

Tomorrow is not guaranteed to any of us. I've seen my dad feud with family members. For about 2 or 3 years before his stroke, my father had not talked to my sister at all- just because of a very stupid argument they had. Thanks to the good Lord, they were able to make peace this past Thanksgiving, but only because I encouraged both of them. But imagine if that had not occurred?? My father and sister could still be estranged to this day, and that would have been the most painful thing for both of them.

I do not want to see that happen to Ariana and her family. She's told me about some of the issues your family has gone through over the years, and I understand many of you still hold grudges with each other. Some may be for good reasons, others maybe for not so clear reasons. That's none of my business. But what IS my business is when it affects Ariana. She is my bride-to-be and what affects her affects me. So I do not take kindly when people talk down to her and give her warped versions of the word "respect." Respect is a two way street and you have to give it to get it. I have not seen respect coming from you or Carlos in regards to Ariana in current weeks. She has tried to explain our current situation to both of you, but neither of you has given her the respect to listen to her story and understand everything we are dealing with at this time.

I wasn't in the room for the initial conversation the two of you had a few weeks ago, so I don't know if Ariana snapped at you at all. I know she normally wouldn't do that unless she feels she is not being listened to. But even if she did raise her voice to you, as a family member you should understand that she is under a lot of stress and not have taken personal offense to it. Because I guarantee you that even if she did get into an argument with you, she meant nothing in a malicious way. On the other hand, everything both you and Carlos have done or said since that point has been to intentionally try to hurt her feelings. And man to man, I have to tell you, that isn't right.

Even in your e-mail response to her you wish both Ariana and I the best in the future, immediately after scolding her as you would a child. First off, she's not a kid anymore to be spoken to like that. And secondly, what you did is called being "passive aggressive". You tried to sugarcoat an insult with being "nice" immediately after, when in reality what you did was the equivalent of slapping someone in the face and then saying to them "I hope that didn't hurt, and I wish no harm to you." Trust me, the sarcasm in your statement did not go unnoticed.

However, I want to let you know that I'm a big boy. I forgive and forget. I don't want to start a family feud. I honestly and truly just want peace amongst everyone. I hope I haven't offended you, but as a military man, I figured you would be able to respect when someone stands up to defend the ones they love, as well as for what they believe in.

I hold no ill will towards you. On the handful of occasions we've met, you seemed like a nice guy, and I believe we got along amicably. And I would hope that can continue after this point. I truly think all the "problems" that have come up between you, Ariana, Carlos, etc in recent weeks can be looked past and peace can be made. In the end, nothing that was said or done is worth cutting off a family member. I don't want anyone to regret any decisions they make years down the line, so I ask that you please take my words into consideration.

I will not take offense if I do not get a response to this e-mail. As I stated, I'm not looking for a fight. I just needed to get these words off my chest and I hope they help mend the fences that are being broken.

Sincerely,

John-Eric

***

And that's about where I stand with the situation at the moment.

But on top of all this, I had issues on both Tuesday and Wednesday in getting the renovation permit for my apartment. I ran across an extremely rude woman on the phone yesterday, who really tested my patience considering all I've been through. But thank God, I called back later in the day, and got a different person, and was able to pick up the permit at the end of the day.

So now, I just need to get an electrician and a plumber to look at the place and have the people Jordan is hooking me up with start work on the apartment (that's actually another issue that came up today). The guy told me he'd call me this morning to meet early this afternoon, but right now it's almost 5pm and he hasn't called, and I can't meet tonight b/c I have a Yankee game. So I have to call him tonight and I hope he can meet with me tomorrow so that he can begin work on the apartment on Monday, b/c I desperately need to be FULLY moved into the apartment by Sept. 15th, so that I can be settled in for the final 3 weeks before the wedding, since I know things will be even CRAZIER at that time.

So yeah, as you can see, my life is a hectic whirlwind at the moment. I'm just dealing with a lot of crap, so please forgive me if I don't keep in touch as much, or if I might seem a little snappy. I honestly don't mean it, b/c I love all you guys.

I just ask that you please just pray for Ariana and I. We're going through a lot and we can use all the support we can get. Thanks a lot! God Bless.

JE