Jon, when I was VERY new to the fiddle, I played with an old guy who had decided to start playing again. (I suspect he had been quite good at one time, and picked it up because he now had someone to play with.) Anyway, I'd keep trying to read the rhythm from the dots, and he kept telling me "Just get the notes, and figure the rhythm out later." It worked. Reading both the pitch and tempo confused me. When I read just the pitch, I could figure out the tempo from listening to him play or my memory.

Maybe the reverse would work. You could just stick the right number of notes in the staff. You could do a second staff under it, and work out the rhythms. In a lot of tunes, a bar is often similar to the next bit. If the first has the same "bounce" as the second, you could just type the same notes in, but copy the upper line for where they should go.

Your MIDI of how you think the tune should sound looks fine to me, BTW. (So what's the name of it, please, before I go crazy? Someone does this at our session.)