Where I Might Have To Turn In My Balls - Part 2

Last summer we had to have our house tented for termites. During the process the fumigators had to tear down a piece of our fencing so they could get the tent on the garage. Since then there's been an opening on the side of the garage that allows a space going up to the front gate on the side of the garage. Last week M went out and bought some lumber so that I could finally close that up now that we have another dog and she likes to go chasing after our cats along that opening since that's where the cats travel through. Should be pretty easy right, it's only like a 3 foot gap. Wrong.

I tore off the old wood that was still attached to the garage so that I could start with fresh lumber that wasn't all rotted out. Easy enough, cut a 2X4 to length, level it, nail to garage. From there, I was going to put three cross members to the other side of the chanlink/wood fence that borders the neighbor's yard and then put up planking to cover the gap. At this point my neighbor here's me hammering and asks if I need some help. Sure I say, it'd be great if she could hold up the cross members so I could get those level while nailing them in.

She comes over and I proceed start putting up the cross members. After I get them up, she checks up the setup and the strength of the cross members (since they are only going to be attached at one point), looks at me and says, "Yeah, this isn't going to work. Let me tell you what we need to do." At this point she goes into great detail on we need to attach another 2X4 to her cross beams for her wood fence then secure the cross members to that with hardware. All the while I'm standing there just nodding, looking like a home improvement dumbass.

I have to say, if she hadn't offered to come over and help me out, I probably would have ended up with a rickety, Mickey Mouse fence section. Since it of course, with her input, came out golden and sturdy as hell. Though I did have to run back to Home Depot again since the planking M got from there was riddled with termites. I mean, WTF is up with that?! Just what someone wants, wood you're attaching to a structure that is termite infested. Nice quality control.

Oh, I almost forgot the part where I had to enlist the help of her partner to get one of the planks cut on an angle so that it would line up nicely at the end. Lesbians to the rescue! Again