With thanks to Brenley Dueck from Brenelz Web Solutions, he linked me to the jQuery pagination script I actually ended up using.  It was SO easy to implement – it took longer to integrate it into the look of the site than it actually did to get it to work with the site – and ended three weeks of me fighting with frustrating scripts that weren’t doing what I wanted them to. :)

I used jPaginate, a super fancy easy jQuery script.  It’s fabulous and … yeah.  I just wish I had been able to find it earlier. :)