My kingdom for a _______

You move to a foreign country, and you leave a lot of objects behind. Furniture is an obvious one. Vehicles. Liquor supplies. And so on. Some stuff you can replace; some stuff you tell yourself it's not worth replacing, because who wants to tote--for example--a six-foot ladder back to the United States? Not this guy.

That's why this guy needs a ladder, badly. See, the building watchman/super is on vacation. It's not totally clear when he'll be back. This week, we think. In the meantime, all the handyman accouterments that I'm used to getting from him are, well, not gettable. When you're assembling a home, that's tough.

For instance, I need to change the light socket in one of these lanterns we just bought and hung. But I can't do it without a ladder--we have 11-foot ceilings. There is a mirror that needs to be hung in the pink office. But it's not gonna get done without a power drill. (or a hand drill--thanks, IT Support of the Blog Wes.) I need to spackle, but it's not happening without a putty knife. Well, that's a bad example. I bought a putty knife.

A Home Depot would make a killing here, if for no other reason than even the biggest hardware store in town has a more types of barbecue grills than it does sizes of nail... and I'm not exaggerating.

Anyway, ladders, drills, screws, hooks, anchors, spackle--turns out that's called polyfilla in this part of the world--all are needed in the Budget building. Meanwhile, our neighborhood is crowded with enough furniture stores to outfit 100 Budget buildings. I guess in a pinch, I could just stack gaudy chairs on top of each other....