We are still in the process of moving, although this is so embarrassing to admit that whenever anyone asks me if we have finished yet, I say, "Almost!" I have been saying that for a week now.

Putting out the (increasingly copious) trash at the rustic farmhouse a couple of days ago, I saw a young man standing in the middle of the road scrolling his phone while a little white dog on a long leash snifted at Fabio and Luciana's wall. I spoke to the dog, naturally ("Hai trovato qualcosa di interessante?") and then to the young man ("Buona sera. Come si chiama il cane?") The young man looked very startled and said, "Oh! Errr! Ummm... I don't speak Italian." And so I said to him in English, "I asked what your dog is named." And we chatted together for a bit. He is visiting from London and his dog is named Whiskey -- meaning that both of the dogs whose names I know in Capriglia are named Whiskey. At the end of our chat, he complemented me and said that I speak excellent English. I don't want to brag, but this is absolutely true.

I turned to go back in and realized that our electronic security gate had closed behind me while I was talking to dogs in the street and I was now locked out of our property.

"Oh, shit," I said, demonstrating that my mastery of the English vernacular extends even to the most colloquial and profane. "I'm locked out." 

"Ah," said the young man. "You can probably climb over it." And with that, he and Whiskey took off. It's a tall fence and he could see as well as I could that he didn't want to get involved.

But I did manage to climb over it, even though it is much taller than my head and even though I am 63 years old. I tell you this because I am prouder of this achievement than I am even of fooling ungallant English sops into thinking that I am Italian.

But really, I am hardened now to these sorts of trials and tribulations by having faced down, just this week alone, both an American insurance company and also my dire mortal enemy -- the Italian Post Office.

The battle with the Post Office involved me spending two entire days (10 hours each) sitting on the belfry house terrace overlooking our mailbox from a hidden position and then suddenly pouncing out on the mailman, taking him by surprise just as he was planning to leave a notice saying that he couldn't make the delivery because no one was at home. I mean, he still sent an email notification later saying that, but at least now he can't look me directly in the eye. And I did get the delivery the next day.

So I won that one. The American insurance company, tragically, is still up in the air. They are so evil, the insurance companies, that -- on the FIFTH international long-distance telephone call -- I did something that I have never done before in my life: I cursed at a service worker. The curse I used was "bullshit."

I'm not saying that I have never cussed anyone out before, but I think (as best I can remember) that that sort of thing has always before been reserved for boyfriends. (As one of my colleagues at Colorado College once said, apropos of a faculty meeting that went especially awry, "'Motherfucker' can actually be a term of endearment.")

So this morning, I went to have blood tests ordered by my doctor, who is upping the strength of my blood pressure medication. I am not joking.

But the big news these days is that Daniele is a finalist in the Tordelli D'oro Competition. Tordelli are a filled pasta, sort of like ravioli, a delicacy of this region, that Daniele serves with a zippy and aromatic meat sauce. He goes next week and all of the finalists will make tordelli for the judges at a public event in Bologna. We would go and cheer him on, but tickets are 60 euros each and it is a school day for Jonathan. But Daniele says if he wins, we will all eat free tordelli that night. "Aw, c'mon," Manuela says to him, "even if you don't win, we will all eat free tordelli that night!"

 

The Italian word for "ticket" is "biglietto" and there are various kinds of biglietti for all sorts of purposes. 

When you buy bread at the bakery counter in the supermarket outside town, first you get a biglietto from the little machine and then when your biglietto number is called, you go to the counter and get your bread. When you go to the post office, you get a biglietto from a little machine and then when your biglietto number is called, you go to the counter and get told to fuck off because you can neither send nor receive the mail you want. It is very orderly.

When you get a coffee, sometimes you pay first and get a biglietto from the cashier that you then present to the barista, who makes you a coffee. Sometimes, however, you get the coffee first from the barista and pay later. There is no way to tell which method any particular place uses, but if you are desperate and deprived enough, you can figure it out eventually.

When you take the train from Pietrasanta, there are no actual humans who work in our miniscule and unimportant train station, so you buy your biglietto from a machine at the station. Then you are supposed to go to another machine out by the tracks and stick the end of your ticket in it to be "validated." On the train itself, sometimes a conductor comes through and checks everyone's ticket and sometimes they don't. When I went with Jonathan to Pisa two weeks ago to watch him give his presentation in his mock trail for International Law, I forgot to validate my ticket and the conductor did come through checking, but she didn't care about my lack of validation. "They never care about the validation," Jonathan said and it is true.

When you park your car on the street, there is usually a machine somewhere around fairly nearby where you buy a biglietto for a certain amount of time to leave on your dashboard. You have to estimate how long you are going to be parked and, given our leisurely pace of life, it is prudent to overestimate that. By a lot.

All the parking biglietto machines work a bit differently so that when you park someplace new, it is always a bit touch-and-go trying to figure out the new machine and get back to your car with your biglietto before the parking patrol comes by and gives you the other kind of parking ticket.

When you park at a big parking garage or an airport parking lot, you get a biglietto when you go in and then you have to remember to pay at a machine somewhere else before you try to leave in your car at the exit gate, where there are no human attendants, but only a little machine that takes your already paid biglietto and then, for some reason, gives it back to you -- a little souvenir of your stay. I wander around with all sorts of used biglietti in my coat pockets and the cup holder of the car, like confetti. I'm pretty much always ready for a parade.

Jonathan came back from his trip to the US on Friday. His plane was an hour late leaving Newark and we were worried that he would miss his connecting flight in Zuruch for Firenze.

"If I miss my connection to Firenze," he texted me, "I'm going to see if they will send me to Pisa instead." Pisa is much closer to home than Firenze is. He had tried to buy tickets to leave and return from Pisa when planning this trip, but there were no workable flights from there that fit his schedule.

But he made his connecting flight in the nick of time and I jumped immediately into the car to drive the hour and a half to Firenze to get him. I got there just as the flight from Zurich was supposed to be touching down. But the info board said the flight was going to be 20 minutes late. Then it changed to 40 minutes late. Then 60, which is quite a lot for a 90 minute flight that is already in the air, so I settled in to wait.

At last, Jonathan texted that they were on the ground, but not in Firenze. They were in Pisa.

They had been diverted because of fog. So since he was already in Pisa, we decided that he would take the train to Pietrasanta and I would drive back there as quickly as I could and pick him up at the train station there.

Only when I tried to pay my parking biglietto at the little machine, the machine didn't seem to want my money. I tried everything -- turning the biglietto upside down, putting it in backwards, entering my license plate number into the keypad, inserting my credit card anyway. Nothing worked. So I got in the car and tried exiting the parking lot with the unpaid biglietto, but the exit gate was unmoved.

So I had to do the Exit Gate Backup Of Shame and then I re-parked the car and wandered forlornly around the airport until I found a man working in some sort of office.

"Excuse me," I said, "but this ticket is not functioning." ("Mi scusi, ma questo biglietto non funziona.")

He took the ticket and looked at it for a minute.

"Signora," he said very solemnly, "this is a biglietto for the train to Pisa."

"Ah," I said. "Well, that would explain it then."

In my defense, I need a lot of biglietti and, although they are all different, they are not that different.

But Jonathan is at last back home now. He brought a suitcase full of New York bagels and his old viola from high school. We stopped at the supermarket and bought smoked salmon before heading back up the hill to lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea.

Saturday, we went to lunch at the pub. Alice was there with Celeste. At one point, singing broke out. Jonathan is very happy to be back home.

 

Jonathan has been gone all week visiting his parents in New Jersey. I have been here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea living in the winter wind and the air that is washed clear and the sea that glows like a pale blue pearl.

I am supposedly working on some of the pre-publication tasks for Armadillo Massacre Number Three. People are surprised that it takes so long to bring a book out, but I feel like I have so much to do and so little time to do it. There was a big zoom meeting last Friday night of all of the authors in our "season" -- Fall 2027 -- with the publisher. 

Now we are busy grouping up to make book tours together -- arranging readings, signings, panel discussions. I am in both the North Carolina group and the Colorado group. There are lots of dates to coordinate and bookstores. etc. to contact. And, of course, we are reading each other's manuscripts, so I have like 10 books to read in the next few weeks.

But there is also paperwork -- my very favorite thing. Multiple questionnaires to fil out with questions that require actual thought: "Who is your ideal reader?" "What is the number one reason booksellers should stock your book?"

I have no idea. With the world both literally and figuratively on fire, I don't know why anyone would do anything rational and calm.

I got an email this morning from a friend in the US who wrote: "Things are heavy. I'm weary of marching, signing petitions and screaming into the void. Yet we must carry on. ... I'm not sure my nervous system was meant for this."

We also feel that way, even here. During my Italian lesson yesterday, we spent half of our time discussing whether the demented orange madman will start World War III over Greenland. It's all so unbelievably insane. And yet, I fill out my little forms and send my little emails. I take showers and brush my teeth and still make the bed every morning and continue to eat kale -- just as if I think the world will wake up from this nightmare one fine morning. Maybe it will.

 

When Tris started middle school, I got him his first cell phone so that he could reach me in case of emergency. He recorded his voicemail message with deep seriousness in his own voice that, in those long ago days, sounded like a baby bird chirping, "Hi! This is Tris..." Then when he went to high school, he got a new better phone (and new phone number -- and, indeed, a new deeper voice) and I took over his old phone.

That was more than a decade ago, but although I have upgraded phones, I have never erased that beautiful little birdsong greeting. It has, admittedly, flummoxed certain callers on occasion in the past. But it is nevertheless precious to me.

Now that I have had my birthday and the new year has begun, I am at last eligible for social security, which -- having paid into it all these years -- I am anxious to get at least something back out of before the republicans take it all away from us to give to the billionaires. 

Am I bitter? Maybe.

In any case, I went through the online application, affirmed that my spouse had not worked longer than five years for the railroad (for some reason), and entered all of my relevant personal information, including my American telephone number. (There were not enough spaces to enter my Italian number, which is longer.) After I submitted the form, I got an email saying that sometime in the next 30 days, they will call the phone number I entered -- again, as with the railroad employment question, for reasons that they decline to give.

But I don't leave my American phone turned on all the time because that would be ruinously expensive. So, when the Social Security Administration calls my phone number, they will inevitably get the voicemail message. Guess whose.

I hope it doesn't scupper my chances to start getting my monthly payments. But I still won't erase the message.

We went last weekend to meet with our new landlords and see our new house once again. Things are moving along at an elegant and serene pace. Unhurried. We did, after all, move to Italy precisely for this vita that is so, so dolce. But the painters are scheduled to start re-painting all the walls of the new house tomorrow, which probably means next Monday, and they estimate that it will take two weeks to finish the whole house, which probably means three. We are going ahead and scheduling the movers, anyway, to bring all of our furniture from the storage unit in Lucca up the bracing Via Capriglia and then carry dressers and beds and cabinets through the twisted passageways and up the winding stairs into our new house.

The celebration of La Befana (Twelfth Night) happened Monday evening. Jonathan was busy with meetings, so we didn't go to the little parade and festival here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea, but since the whole celebration kicked off right at the pub, we could hear it very clearly from our front porch.

After a full week of trying my best, Goodreads still refuses to acknowledge that the author known as Kathy Giuffre is me and Facebook refuses to acknowledge that I am a human being at all. It's disheartening.

On the up side, the boys at the pub are teaching me to play scopa, the rosemary in our garden is flowering and I'm having fun making promo trailers for my book. Here is the one I made this morning:

Nonno's birthday was at the end of July. We had a big lunch that lasted many hours at a long table behind the pub. There was seafood risotto and acciughe e gamberi fritti and lots of wine and singing. Late in the afternoon, I wandered inside and found Elena singing to Nonno.

But Daniele and Alice weren't there because they were at the hospital where Alice was in active labor. About five o'clock, the word came that the baby was born. Irene and Lucia Mora sprang into action putting up a giant pink bow and teddy bear on the front of the pub to announce the good news to all of Capriglia. Or, actually, they sprang into action directing Valerio -- "Up, higher, a little to the left, no, to the right, lower" -- who was perched up in the big sycamore tree actually hanging the bow and displaying superhuman levels of patience. 

"A pretty good birthday present for you," I said to Nonno.

"My birthday wish for the baby," he said, "is that she has a life as long and healthy and happy as mine has been."

Other updates:

Wheels: Now that Jonathan has a valid Italian driver's license, we have finally bought a car -- it is tiny and red and gently pre-owned. The people we bought it from also live here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea, renting a house from our friends Fabio and Luciana. We still don't actually have possession of the car yet, of course. That will come eventually. I hope it doesn't take two years to get, like the driver's license did. (There is a part of the movie of Under the Tuscan Sun where the heroine impulsively buys a house in Tuscany in only one day. Whenever I think about that, I laugh and laugh.)

Flora and Fauna: In the past week, overcome by the gorgeous abundance of the summer produce, I have made apricot jam, fig jam, cherry preserves, and zucchini relish. It's a sickness. And Milo went on a family trip to the mountains and brought us back some of the trout he caught. We cooked them with fresh ginger and garam masala and they were lovely.

 

Lately, Jonathan and I wander around completely dazed in a haze of heat. We don't trust ourselves with heavy machinery or tricky crossword puzzles. At night, I keep the bathtub full of cool water and go in every now and then to take a quick dip to cool off. But the forecast is for rain early next week, so we cling to hope.

We think we have now submitted the final forms for my Italian citizenship application. This is the third time we have thought that. But now that Jonathan has at long last achieved a valid Italian driver's license, we believe that anything is possible. Who knows? Next week it might actually even rain.

 Before:

After:

Jonathan passed his driver's license test!

 

Today marks 1000 days that we have lived in Italy. When we first came here to our rustic farmhouse in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea, we knew no one and understood almost nothing. We were so dazed (by the move) and so dazzled (by the beauty) that it took us a while to get our bearings. We are still getting them, still dazzled.

But we know people now and understand, if not the post office, at least how the grocery store works. We know our butcher and our greengrocers and the people at our olive press and our flour mill. We know our neighbors and their families. We know the old men down at the pub who sit under the shade tree and drink wine and gossip all day. We know Alice and Daniele and are happily waiting for their baby to arrive. We know the baby's name.

Yesterday, Jonathan ran into the owner of the lovely house next to the belfry that we hope to rent for the next ten years. He says that they are happy to rent to us -- so all is well there. We still don't know what the rent will be, but we have our fingers crossed.

We also spoke to our immigration attorney yesterday and she says everything is good to go for my citizenship application even though only one of my state-level non-criminal records has come so far. She is going to check in person today to make sure that is true and get back to us.

The poppies are blooming in our olive groves now and the olive trees themselves are covered in flower buds that are just about to open. The chestnut trees are starting to bloom. The cherry tree is alive with joyous songbirds eating all the cherries. I have an Italian lesson later this morning. Jonathan is busy right now baking bread.

 

We are still wrestling with the Arkansas state bureaucracy, trying to get my non-existent criminal record and the ever-elusive apostille. Who knew that petty government officials in Arkansas (ground zero for denigrating all education except Bible study) would have so much difficulty handling official documents?

Meanwhile, Jonathan is scheduled to take his on-road driving test in his now years-long quest for an Italian driver's license. Whenever we go anywhere, he practices driving according to the official regulations as mandated by law. This gets us honked at a lot and overtaken by cars behind us who figure it's probably worth risking death by passing us on a dangerously narrow and winding cliffside road rather than continuing to drive behind an obvious madman.

So to cheer ourselves up, we have made another trip to the flour mill and also one to the cannoli shop by the beach in Viareggio, where everything is beautiful.

And we went to meet the owners and see the house with the view of the church belfry that we hope to be able to rent. It is a gorgeous little house with starlings fluttering around it and a dazzling view of the sea from almost every window. From the top bedroom, you can, indeed, look directly over at the bell hanging in the bell tower. We are anxiously waiting now to see if they are willing to rent it to us and if we will be able to afford it. I am trying not to get my hopes too high. But, honestly, both of us were smitten and we may, once again, act rashly in pursuit of beauty.

 

The final step  in my application for Italian citizenship is providing proof that I have not committed any (heinous) crimes in the US. I have already submitted proof of that on the national level, but I am now in the midst of trying to prove it for every state where I've ever lived. There have been a lot of them. And given the bureaucratic difficulty that I'm having getting proof of my blamelessness, I cannot even imagine how complicated the process would be if I had, in fact, committed crimes. The mind reels.

The people in Colorado say they sent the completed forms to my brother's house in Washington, but they never arrived and there is no record of them anywhere in the postal system. So we had to start all over again with that and have our fingers crossed that the second time is the charm. The people in Arkansas did send the forms to my brother, but neglected to include the dreaded Apostille, without which the Italian government will not accept the forms as legitimate. We called the office in Arkansas (long-distance overseas phone rates, btw) and they said at first that we hadn't requested the Apostille and then transferred our call to a supervisor who didn't answer the phone. We called back and got a different person who admitted that we had, indeed, requested the Apostille and that they would mail one out to my brother, but not any time soon. We should not hold our breaths.

And when I say that "we" called, what I mean is "Jonathan." Jonathan called. The secret to a happy marriage is to find a partner who will call government offices -- repeatedly -- on your behalf when you yourself Just Can't Any More.

To reward ourselves for wading through so many automated voice mail menus, we then went to the flour mill. This was Jonathan's idea -- that we should start buying our flour straight from the mill, of which there are a few around here, small family mills stone-grinding wheat, but also corn, chickpeas, chestnuts, rice. One of them is housed in an old abbey.

So we went yesterday afternoon to the Angeli mill just outside Pietrasanta and had a lovely chat with the miller (who looked familiar to me) about different types of flours with different amounts of protein and gluten in them. Then he measured out our flour from a big sack into a small bag for us.

"Do you live around here?" he said.

"Yes, in Capriglia."

"Ah, there's such a lovely view from up there."

"Yes -- and we eat well, too, at the pub."

He laughed and his face lit up. "Yes," he said. "You eat well with Daniele cooking. Give him my salutations."

And so maybe I have seen him at the pub and that is why I recognized him. We will know his name soon. Jonathan baked bread from the flour and it was great, so we are going back next week for more. Mark my words: It is just a matter of time before Jonathan "Wouldn't It Be Cool To Make Our Own Olive Oil" Poritz has us growing our own wheat out in the backyard and then taking it ourselves down to our friend at the mill.

After much bureaucratic wrangling, Jonathan was finally allowed to take the written part of the Italian Driver's License Test this morning in Lucca. He has been preparing for the test by memorizing all the various road rules, road signs, marked and unmarked speed limits, etc. and as we drive around in town he has been pointing out all the many different ways that the drivers around here are regularly and shamelessly flouting the law. We have started turning to each other and saying "Citizen's arrest! Citizen's arrest!" like we're in an episode of the Andy Griffith Show.

But I am happy to report that he passed the written test this morning with flying colors and now gets to begin taking the practical on-street driving lessons. This should be fun.

Driver's License Update: 

To recap, Jonathan has a valid Swiss driver's license, which -- BY INTERNATIONAL TREATY -- can be exchanged for an Italian driver's license. We tried to do this exchange for about TWO YEARS. 

We failed. 

A rather fussy man in an office in Lucca refused (repeatedly) to grant Jonathan an Italian driver's license because the Swiss one came from exchanging an American license. So Jonathan eventually was reduced to having to take driving lessons, written and practical, with every teenager in Pietrasanta. He is the only one in class who ever takes notes.

The instructor at Jonathan's driving school told him on Wednesday that someone dropped out and there was an opening to take the written test next week and that Jonathan could sign up if he wanted. Jonathan, who has been studying very assiduously, said he would like to go ahead and take the test. 

On Thursday, Jonathan had to have his eyes officially checked and present an official photograph of himself and fill out many official forms and pay many official fees.

On Friday, the driving school entered his name into "the system" to register for the test this coming week. All should be good.

But, no. 

"The system" has now flagged Jonathan as an "anomaly" because he already has a Swiss license (which "the system" knows about from his previous attempt to exchange it) and so should not have to take the test, but merely exchange his license. In fact, he is not allowed to take the test next week. Maybe ever.

We are having fun.

Three mornings a week, Jonathan goes to town and takes classes for the Italian driver's license test while I stay home and write. If the weather is nice, he goes on his bike, but on rainy days, he takes the car. He says it makes him feel awkward to drive up to his driving lessons, but that's where we are now. He will take the written test in a couple of weeks and then he gets to begin his practice driving, which should be fun. The driving school has special practice cars with brakes on the passenger's side for the instructor to use as well as on the driver's side. My boys took driving lessons in cars like that back in Colorado. I remember Aiden having one session with a clearly spooked instructor who had spent one too many hours with teenagers learning how to merge onto a highway at high speed by doing it. "Well," Aiden said when I picked him up, "I was just a passenger in that car." I think about that man sometimes now and hope he is doing well.

Next week we will go to Viareggio to sign another one-year rental contract for this house. We came here thinking that it would only be for a few months. That was three years ago.

But the fourth year will be the last. We began last night to look on the on-line real estate sites for houses around here to buy. One of them was described as "rustic" and, from the pictures, was lacking a roof. I would have called that "very rustic." We never thought we would own a house again, but it looks like we were wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

 

We've been having a week here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea. On Monday, we realized that we put my birthdate on the formal citizenship request in the place where Jonathan's should have gone. You already know about that. On Tuesday, the doctor told Jonathan that the strange lump under his arm is probably not cancerous, but that it should nevertheless be biopsied. On Wednesday, in the middle of the pouring rain, I went into the cantina and discovered that the floor was a centimeter deep in water. Sitting on the floor, soaking it all in, were multiple boxes of our books. Now, the books are all over the house, opening up like crinkled flowers as they dry out. On Thursday, I got seven mosquito bites on my right thigh and one on my left. These are the Southern Tiger Mosquitos -- brought north by climate change -- that leave big red welts that itch like fire for days and days.

On Friday, we found out that on the day almost a year ago when we sat in our attorney's office and I said, "Don't I need my criminal record from every state where I've lived?" and she said, "Oh, no -- only the FBI federal one." and I said, "Well, how nice! Tra-la-la-Tra-la-la-Rum-tum-tiddle-um-tum," we were very much mistaken. I am now in the process of trying to figure out how to get a money order for US$7 to the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, and -- even more fun -- how to get the lovely Apostilles from all the states where I've lived. And of course, all week long, the political horrors coming out of the US continue to be godawful. I now personally know five people who have either already lost their jobs because of these monsters or are on the verge of losing them.

On Saturday, nothing too disastrous happened here at the house, although the cantina continues to be a flood zone (but we have moved all of our boxes out of there and they are -- once again -- piled all around the living room.) Jonathan and I went to the big Esselunga HyperMarket at Lido di Camaiore and bought a bunch of adorable mini-lemons and brought them home and candied them. We then invented a new dessert called Exploded Cannoli.

I don't want to seem immodest, but we are geniuses.

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.

My apostille is enjoying a leisurely transcontinental journey on its way to becoming (knock wood) the final document in my immigration folder. The DHL "overnight" service from here to Washington lasted a week and took in visits to New York City, Cincinnati, and Baltimore along the way before finally landing in Washington. My fabulous brother then took it to the US State Department where we learned that "5 to 7 business days" means "2 weeks," which was close enough for government work, I guess. Then we waited tensely for two weeks to see if the dipshit in the White House would completely destroy the US government in the next, apparently, 5 to 7 business days. 

But Mango Mussolini didn't completely ruin everything (yet) and so my brother went back to the State Department last Tuesday, retrieved the document and sent it (FedEx this time) directly to the translator in Lucca, who is on high alert for it. So far on its return journey, it has enjoyed trips to Memphis TN and Paris, France ("Package in Paris. I'm a little jealous," my brother texts). But it is now in Bologna*, where we ourselves could drive to get it if necessary. It is supposed to be delivered today (Thursday) and the translator has promised that if it arrives no later than tomorrow, she will translate it right away and take it to the judge to swear to its authenticity on Monday. Jonathan and I will then drive to Lucca to get it from her and take it immediately straight to our attorney with a cool 24 hours to spare to get it into the electronic system (which, let us remember, was completely down with a technical glitch the first time we tried to get into it.) Fingers crossed!

In the meantime, spring has burst out with all jubilation here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea. On Tuesday, the actual Mardi Gras, after several weeks of celebrating Carnevale, we went for a big final tordelli lunch at the pub. We waited out in the sunshine on the terrace for it to start, all of us chatting together of this and that, spread out among the tables and chairs like song birds in the branches of a tree. Ugo had shaved off half of his beard as a joke for Renata and there was some talk of getting every man in the village to follow suit, but (unlike Ugo) the rest of them (including Jonathan) are big wusses when it comes to their facial hair.

*The GPS on our Italian phones inexplicably speaks American and pronounces Bologna as "Baloney." Sometimes when we're going to Viareggio, we go a bit out of our way just to hear the GPS tell us to "turn left on Via Baloney." We think this is hysterical. We are a simple people.

Update: Three days after paying an eye-watering amount to "overnight" my non-criminal record to my brother in Washington, DC, the tracking number tells us that it is currently sitting, for unknown reasons, in a DHL facility in Cincinnati. I'm fucked.

 

Having passed the Italian language exam, I am now entering into the REAL test of fortitude and skill that will determine if I get Italian citizenship -- the Bureaucracy Challenge. This consists of: filing the appropriate paperwork. We have an immigration attorney who has years of expertise in this process. I have a husband who is an Italian citizen. I have an advanced degree. I have Italian heritage. I have grit and persistence and a real desire to be a part of this country. I may yet be defeated.

So, the last time I was in the US, I got fingerprinted and sent my fingerprints off to the FBI to get a copy of my criminal record -- a piece of paper that says I have no criminal record. You have to do this in the US because the FBI will not accept fingerprints made outside the US. There is a six month deadline for filing this piece of paper along with your citizenship request before it expires and you have to do it all over again. (And the current dipshit in the White House has made a complete mess of the government and is threatening to eliminate the FBI, so it may be that it becomes impossible to get this piece of paper at all going forward.) Mine will expire in just a few weeks.

I also got a copy of my birth certificate and the "Apostille" for it -- which is a piece of paper required by the Italian government when you are submitting official forms from outside Italy. The piece of paper says that the form you are submitting is, in fact, the form that you are submitting. It is literally a piece of paper that says "the attached birth certificate is a birth certificate." It is issued by the same office that issues the birth certificate. OK, Italian government -- you do you.

We then had to have these forms officially translated into Italian by an official translator who translates them and then has to go before a judge in person and swear that her translation is a translation. The judge then gives her another piece of paper that says she swore her translation was a translation. Then we pick up all that up from her in Lucca and take it to our attorney.

I then took the Italian language test for citizenship (which is only offered three times a year) at the next available opportunity. The results were released two months later -- which was 8 days ago. As you know, I was quite surprised to find that I had passed and immediately set up an appointment with our attorney.

At that appointment, the attorney tells us we have a problem because some of the documents say that a person with my exact name and Social Security number was born on my birthday in "Fort Smith, Arkansas", and some say that a person with my exact name and Social Security number was born on my birthday in "Arkansas" and some say blah blah blah "Arkansas, Fort Smith." So we had to make an appointment with the American Consulate in Firenze to go there to get a piece of paper that says that these three people are all me.

So yesterday, we woke up at 6:45 and drove to Firenze to make it in time for our 10:30 appointment. (We stopped on the way at a Tobacco Store -- yes -- because that is the place that you buy a 16 euro stamp called a Marca da Bollo that will be needed later.) Going into the U.S. Consulate is like going into a war zone. The heavily armed guards search you and confiscate your phone, your keys, a tiny little flashlight that I had in my purse, my umbrella. OK, American government -- you do you. Then I paid $100 (you have to pay in dollars, not euros, because the American Consulate in Firenze is technically in America) for two signatures on this piece of paper. 

Then we stand in line to get all our confiscated stuff back before we high-tail it to Lucca (the provincial capital) to make it to the office of the Questura, where they will "legalize" the signature we got in Firenze by stamping it with the 16 euro Marca da Bollo that we got in the Tobacco Store earlier and signing it. The office was only open until 1:00 and then not open again until next week, when we will be in Ireland eating nothing but pub food and getting scurvy.

So we sped to Lucca, arriving just after 12:00 and trying to find a parking place in a city famous for not having any parking places. But we finally got one and headed to the Questura, which was all locked up with a big sign on the door saying that yesterday, for no announced reason, they were closed and that if there was some emergency, go to the Prefettura instead, which would also close at 1:00, not to re-open again until next week. So we found the Prefetture on the map, ran there and wandered around trying to find the office that would "legalize" the signatures, but all of the doors seemed to be locked. (These government offices are both grand Renaissance palazzos with stone walls and giant wooden doors that can clearly withstand battering rams and 40-foot ceilings, which means that running up the lovely marble stairs to the third floor is like going up to the tenth floor of a modern building. It doesn't make exploring around to find the right office something to be undertaken lightly.) We finally got into a third-floor hallway by going in a door when someone else came out and we were able to slip in before the door slammed shut and locked behind him. We wandered around some more and finally found the right office. The lady was very nice (everyone is always very nice) and told us to wait in the hall. There was no one else in sight anywhere. 

Then there were lots of paper rustling sounds in her office and other strange noises and she came out and went into another office where we could hear voices arguing for a while. But finally, she came out and gave us the piece of paper with the 16 euro Marca da Bollo on it and a signature. This signature signified that the other signature was a signature.

Then we drove back to Pietrasanta to our attorney's office where we spent an entertaining forty-five minutes trying to log onto the automatic document system that I had previously had to set up an account for, at which point the attorney said, "Why doesn't your criminal record have an Apostille with it?"

The answer is that no one ever told me that I needed an Apostille for the criminal record and I myself had never heard of an Apostille in my first 60 years of being alive on earth and so have no clue when you need one and when you don't. An Apostille seems insane to me.

But now -- immediately -- I need it. I need it before the criminal record expires in a few weeks. And the only place to get it is in Washington, D.C. where I have to present the original piece of paper saying I have no criminal record (a piece of paper that was at that moment with me in Italy) and then wait two weeks and go pick up the piece of paper with the Apostille now attached. Then they will both have to be re-translated by the official translator who will go swear in front of the judge that her translation is a translation and then uploaded into the fun electronic system.

So we went to the DHL pick-up point (which is a computer store on the edge of town) and overnighted the letter to my brother in Washington (and by "overnighted" I mean that it will hopefully arrive someday in the not too distant future). The lady at the computer store had a tremendous amount of difficulty filling out the DHS form because my brother's cell phone has an area code which is not in Washington, D.C. where his address is (because he got the cellphone before he moved to Washington and the DHL system seemed to find this utterly incomprehensible to the point of it being just completely unacceptable), so at one point she kind of handed over the computer to Jonathan and he worked on it a while to try to get it to believe that a sane person would have an address in Washington and a cell phone that he got in Pennsylvania. So we will see if the package ever actually arrives. I doubt it. But if it does, my brother will then take the piece of paper to the U.S. State Department between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. M-F (the only time they are open) and drop it off and then go back to get it in two weeks and send it by DHL directly to the translator in Lucca who will translate, swear, etc.

I emphasize that all that is just the stuff that happened YESTERDAY. I await my next challenges in the So-You-Think-You-Can-Be-Italian sweepstakes with a mixture of awe (at the wonders of the best bureaucratic system in the world) and dread. Today I am resting up and carbo-loading to be prepared.

 

I finally got the results back from my Italian Language Test for Citizenship and it seems, in contrast to all reasonable expectations, that I passed. So we have made an appointment with our immigration attorney and I am now beginning the formal process to become an Italian citizen. This would have shocked all my ancestors who fled from Italy for the bright dream of America, the land of milk and honey. They lived in a very different world.

So I am looking forward to the bureaucracy of the citizenship process. It should be epic, given the red tape we have encountered so far. Even as I write this, in fact, Jonathan is down in town in class taking driving lessons because, two years in to the process, we have been so soundly defeated by the red tape and bureaucracy of the Italian DMV that it finally seemed that the only option was to just start at the beginning. He is the oldest person in class and the only one, he says, who takes notes.

But to counter-balance the good news, a wild boar got into the garden last week and dug up a huge amount of ground in the olive grove. It is difficult to even photograph because the area is so big. Jonathan is sad that we apparently slept quite peacefully though all the excitement. Jonathan would like to see a wild boar in action. Jonathan is nuts.

But in other pork-related news, Monday and Tuesday were the festival for San Biagio. We went early Monday morning and stopped in to the Duomo to get Jonathan's throat blessed. Our friends at the pub assured us that it was happening all day long. But we were such eager little beavers that we arrived too early and wound up being there right at the beginning of the early morning mass. So we backed out as unobtrusively as possible and instead enjoyed all the booths for the fair. Roast pork sandwiches called "porchetta" are the big thing for the fair and it is never too early around here for roast pork. There were whole pigs laid out everywhere we turned. There were also plenty of roast pig heads arranged to appear so as to be calling out to passersby, proving that the porchetta sellers of Pietrasanta know how to have a good time.

We bought some wild-rose-infused oil and dried citrus slices from our friend Manuela at her booth and then a big bunch of yellow mimosa -- the first I've seen this year -- from a flower seller. Then we went to see the animals that were waiting for the Blessing of the Animals in the piazza by the Uffizi di Commune and the mimosa flowers made me very popular with the horses. 

Barbara assure us that, having missed the official activities at the church, I can bless Jonathan's throat myself up at the house as well as any priest could. Yesterday we blessed it with celebratory champagne because of my language exam results. But it was French champagne, so the blessing may not have taken. We will bless it again with the boys down at the pub with good, cheap local red wine. That will do the trick.

Sometimes, lately, the sea turns burnished orange at sunset and sometimes it is deep ink blue. Last night Jupiter and Venus and Mars were all lined up with the moon in a bright band across the sky and Jonathan and I stood out in the yard to look at them and at our shadows on the drive cast by the moonlight. "Let's always remember this moment," we said to each other.