"Experimenting sounds good. Maybe if other noise drowning it out helps I can wear the headphones all the time. My ears would get so hot though."

"...Yeah, they probably don't make cooling headphones. I was sort of wondering if they make cooling blankets or something - like, the opposite of an electric blanket? I was thinking I'd look it up online." 

And they can head into the library! It's not a spectacularly impressive library, but it does have a kids' play area, and a children-and-teens section which is mostly things like Captain Underpants, Harry Potter and other kids' fantasy series, and teen romance novels, but probably has some children's lit. They can go ask the librarian if Annie wants, or just browse? 

Annie looks happy to browse. She pushes a stepstool along so she can look at higher shelves. Grabs the first Harry Potter and also looks for, yes, classics.

She can find classics! At a glance, in terms of longer chapter books the library has Black Beauty, and also has The Phantom Tollbooth and Alice in Wonderland and The Wind in the WIllows and The Wizard of Oz plus sequels. There are also a lot of classic picture books like Winnie the Pooh that are significantly below her reading level. 

She is going to skip anything that relies heavily on illustrations because she is in fact completely and utterly blind unless specifically text is in front of her face, not that she can explain this to anyone really. She will grab Black Beauty and Phantom Tollbooth and Alice in Wonderland and Wind in the Willows and Wizard of Oz and Neverending Story and Number The Stars and A Little Princess and The Book of the Dun Cow.

That looks like an excellent selection of books! They can hang around here to read them if Annie wants, but being in a public place does risk someone coming in who has a musical ringtone on their phone or something, or hums. They could also check the books out - and tell the librarian they'll be back for more soon and it would be neat to have recommendations for similar sorts of children's literature - and then head straight home? 

Annie wants to check them all out and go home.

They can do that. (Evelyn did some browsing of her own and has a political memoir and a couple of murder mysteries. Annie does not have to directly observe her lowbrow taste in trashy romance novels.) 

It's still pretty early for lunch by the time they get back. Evelyn shows Annie the cupboard where the school supplies are, including notebooks and pens and pencils and erasers. "Let me know if you have more specific requests." 

"I think this is good." She grabs pens and a few spiral notebooks and goes over to the kitchen table to do some writing.

If Evelyn looks over her shoulder she will see that Annie is not writing in English, but in some sort of made-up alphabet.

That's clever and not incredibly uncommon in a certain kind of kid (the creative introverted bookish kind) though three is still surprising. Evelyn doesn't comment about it, and doesn't try to look over Annie's shoulder, Annie can decide what she wants to show her. 

She makes potato salad with corn and peas and chopped boiled eggs in a mayo sauce for lunch. 

"This is tasty!" Annie reports.

"Oh good! I'm a fan of potato salad, and it's good served cold. I might try a cold tuna pasta salad tomorrow?" 

"I bet that will be good too."

More reading in the afternoon? Another activity? Splashing in the wading pool outside? Evelyn still needs to get Annie a swimsuit but she is, at this point, inclined to measure Annie and leave her with a babysitter to go shopping on her behalf, Annie probably doesn't care much what color her clothes are and Walmart definitely plays elevator music in the background.  

(Evelyn is also going to call the pottery studio to ask about background music and whether they would be willing to have an unusually precocious three-year-old - with some disabilities, but they don't affect her that much except for her intense misophonia with music - work there. The person she spoke to needs to talk to the studio owner and manager before she can get back with an answer.) 

Maybe Annie can be half in half out of the pool and have the library book safely away from the water, so as to cool off while also reading.

...Evelyn would not normally allow books near water period, let alone with a three-year-old, but she is TRUSTING Annie to be very very careful. (Also it's not like it's a huge deal if she has to replace a paperback library book, it can't be more than $20.)

She will hang out in the backyard in a deck chair (and a sweater, it's not spectacularly warm out) and read her murder mystery. When Annie seems to be at a good pausing point in her reading, she gets them both lemonade and asks Annie how she's liking her new book. Which one did she pick to read first? 

Black Beauty, which she likes very much. Ginger is a fun character.

Evelyn will try to gentle elicit a few more book opinions and then they can go back to friendly reading, until 4:30 pm at which point they should head in (Evelyn is getting pretty cold by now) and pick something to make for dinner. Annie can't technically have a "look" in the chest freezer for inspiration but she can probably read some labels, and Evelyn can tell her what the unlabeled food options are? 

Annie is quite willing to poke things, too, and finds frozen pierogies. "What are pierogies?"

"Ooh, good idea! I forgot I had those." A previous child liked them but since then they just haven't been in Evelyn's mental rotation. "They're a sort of dumpling that people in Poland eat, but now you can get them here too. These ones are stuffed with a sort of creamy cheese filling with potato and onion. You can boil them or fry them. I usually boil them because you can get away with doing it from frozen." 

"They sound tasty!"

Then pierogis for dinner it is! Evelyn makes a coleslaw to go with them. After that there's a bit more time for reading, and then upstairs for bath and teethbrushing and (if Annie manages to take less than 20 minutes in the bathtub) a few more minutes of reading before bed. 

Annie likes being in the cool water and will have plenty of time to read tomorrow.

Then Annie can have a nice long bath, and by the time she's dried off and in underwear, it's pretty much time for lights out. Evelyn will offer a goodnight kiss again in the most lowkey way she can manage. (She's definitely expecting a no but she still remembers the time a child – who had never said yes to a goodnight hug or kiss, and Evelyn assumed the offer was unwelcome – asked her, plaintively, why she didn't like him anymore, and then it took several minutes to unravel that it was because she had stopped offering.) 

Once Annie is in bed, she makes herself tea and types up some log notes, mainly focusing on Annie's music-triggering misophonia and her discoveries about how extensive it is. She mentions Annie's offhand comment on the George's ("I wouldn't put it that way because I am three and a half years old and can easily be taken places whenever convenient for others by physical force") which in context definitely comes across as some level of abusive, even though anyone who's ever looked after a three-year-old has probably at one point or another resorted to scooping them up and taking them somewhere against their vehement protests. She mentions Annie's enjoyment of classic children's literature, and their conversation about Annie's future and how she might like to live somewhere rural and/or with deaf parents, if a potential long-term foster family or even adoptive family came up meeting those criteria. 

She spends a while looking for e-readers that come with waterproof cases, but the only one she can find with a made-to-fit waterproof case is the Kindle, which is out of her price range to buy for a specific child.  

...She sends some emails, to her police-checked neighbor and some foster parent friends, putting out feelers about childcare. The longer-term issue here is that Evelyn is going to be very picky about additional placements while Annie is here, but she can't actually cover her day to day expenses if she's only being paid for a single placement. The obvious solution, in her mind, is to talk up how Annie is lovely company as long as her (admittedly somewhat complex) needs are met, and arrange to cover some mornings and afternoons so she can give some foster trainings, which her agency is pretty much always asking her for. 

- oh, that's an idea. Miss Dolores Enderbridge (very emphatic about the 'Miss', despite being eighty-seven years old, because she was NEVER MARRIED) lives two blocks down and used to teach English at an exclusive girls' boarding school. She loves children, and used to volunteer at after-school reading programs even in her retirement, but though she's ablebodied enough at home, she can no longer drive and doesn't get out much anymore. Evelyn has never heard music on at her place and isn't sure she even owns a stereo; she certainly doesn't have a television. What she does have is one of the most impressive home libraries that Evelyn has ever seen, packed with obscure literature - heavy on children's literature, given her teaching background - from the first half of the 20th century or older. She's very proud of how she's held onto copies of hundreds of books that aren't in print anymore. She's probably even police-checked, given that she used to volunteer in schools. 

Evelyn can't send her an email - she doesn't have a computer - or even give her a spur-of-the-moment phone call, Dolores is notorious for never answering her landline unless she's expecting a call (because it's "always salespeople, what's the world coming to"). Also she had really better run it by Annie's social worker first, but Anthony seems like the laid-back, uninvolved type and she expects he'll sign off on anything that checks the boxes and doesn't cost his department any money. 

In the morning she runs it by Annie over breakfast. "I know a lady called Miss Enderbridge who lives a few streets down. She's retired now, but she used to teach literature classes to little girls and she has practically a whole library in her house, and she's read all of them. I was wondering if you might want to go over and visit sometimes? If you get along, she would probably love to have you over for a morning or afternoon sometimes, and then I could go shopping and do errands without it being any inconvenience at all."