Today, I officially filed the final paperwork to request Italian citizenship. Four minutes after submitting it, I realized that there was a mistake on it and my birthday was listed in the place where Jonathan's should have gone.

Our lawyer is going to call the Questura in Lucca tomorrow and see if she can correct it that way. In the meantime, we are holding off on the champagne.

The kids in Capriglia hang out in the evenings at the Bellevedere -- a low stone wall at the edge of town with a sweeping view of the coast below us and the sea beyond that. Sometimes, they write messages to each other on the wall itself -- graffiti of love and longing and heartbreak and bitterness. For many months, we followed the notes documenting the on-again-off-again relationship between Fabio and Laura. It was tempestuous.

But now someone has taken the the messaging to the next level and actually spray-painted the street: "La nostra storia che non finisce mai di finire." -- "Our story that never ends." I feel that this also beautifully expresses the essence of my story with the bureaucratic machinery of the Italian government.