Believe me, I am so relieved the CPS has been closed. I was pretty sure they would close it without finding any grounds as it had been a month, maybe more, since the investigation had started, and they were not making an effort to remove either my daughter or me from the house, which I figured would occur if they had grounds for it. Luckily, they are not requiring me to go to extra CPS counseling stuff (they can if they feel it's warranted or if they have insufficient evidence of child abuse), mainly because all their facilities are in Houston, close to downtown, a driving nightmare for me (which I told the CPS caseworker), especially at rush hours & lunch. I think that, along with the fact that I have been seeing a pdoc for so long, was the main reason they let me skip the CPS psych assessment if I went to therapy on my own; they didn't have an assessment place in the area I felt comfortable driving to. Also, the psych assessment was so long, I wouldn't be able to pick my daughter up from school and would either have to use childcare or beg one of her best friend's mother to let my daughter walk home with hers, their home being less than a 10 minute walk from the school as the friend has both a grandmother and teenage (maybe around 17, 18 years old) sister at home or H would have had to have to take an afternoon or whole day off (to drive me) and/or get my daughter from school.

I have no more leaking sink, but unbelievably (or perhaps not, the luck I've been having), my dryer stopped heating to dry laundry. Completely no heat. Since I don't have a clothesline, I've had to hang clothes off shower/bathtub curtain bars to dry. I think my husband may have figured out the problem, but he can't get the part until Monday or Tuesday. There is a supply store near the school where he teaches, but it is closed on Sundays. He can perhaps go Monday after teacher training, though I am unsure whether the training is at his high school or one of the other high schools in the district or a meeting building the district owns & uses, sometimes for training, and none of those are close to his school. Tuesday he has another professional development day (with students off again), and I believe that one is at the school where he teaches. He could order the part off Amazon, but that would be 2 days for delivery. Also, I am not 100% sure he has found the problem. I had taken my night meds last night then gone to the dryer to fold clothes before bed as the medication can take 20-30 minutes before the full effect hits me, and that is when I discovered the dryer wasn't heating at all (it does not have a pilot light). H did think it was one of 2 possibilities based on Youtube (an ignitor or something else), but I got too tired before he could get the dryer apart and determine an actual cause. Now, I've got laundry hanging everywhere in the house to dry mostly on the shower/bathtub bars, and that is going to be going on a few days now, which is a bit of a pain (as well as thicker items drying much slower and perhaps needing ironing too, most don't from the dryer).

I woke early this morning, maybe because of sleeping 12 hours yesterday. Today, I have curbside grocery pickup. Also, I have to stop by 2 other grocery stores to get one thing at each that my daughter likes to eat but are not sold anyway else. I'll ask my daughter if she wants to come along. She likes grocery shopping. We can stop at a Starbucks (I have a gift card with plenty of money on it), so she can get a frappucino. She likes coffee flavor a lot; I am not sure why unless it is because I drank a lot of coffee (especially Starbucks) while breastfeeding; maybe the taste came through a bit in the milk. I remember also one day as I was trying to load stuff into the car, holding my daughter as a toddler (maybe close to 2 years old, but she was in the a very low weight percentile, around 3, 5% for her age/height), and when I looked over, she had sipped (from the straw) and swallowed a bit of my mocha frappucino and had the hugest grin on her face once I noticed. We haven't gone to Starbucks together in awhile, so it would be a bit of a treat for her. Starbucks is near the bank where I have a check around $25 to deposit (from a stock dividend my grandmother gave me as part of college graduation, though the stock has not increased or decreased much in value since then), and bank has a drive through ATM that takes checks and deposits them. I only use that function when the bank is open or if the check is a smaller amount, under $50 or so. And my daughter works hard at school; her grades are very good. Even when she has 20 not-so-clear Spanish words to spell and translate such as last week, she gets good grades. Her last test was very hard, with the the Spanish words starting all starting with "e" or "a" and containing either "r" or "rr", so they were harder to remember English definitions, and she still made a 98. Not bad considering we are Anglo and speak no Spanish at home. She has quite a bit of allowance/tooth fairy money, so maybe we could stop at Target or someplace like Michaels or Barnes & Noble or the dollar store if she wants to use a little for a treat for herself. It is a bit tedious as she takes awhile to make a decision, but that is OK. The worst that will happen is I'm late home to start dinner, and I always have the breakfast for dinner option ingredients for that case.

Weather is cooling off (not much, just a little), but we still have lots of mosquitoes outside and frequent rain. I'm thinking of asking H to find a new game on the computer or for the iPad which 2 people can play and that he thinks my daughter will enjoy & the rules will not be so complex, I am lost right away, so we can play together as a 2 player game. Also I remembered my daughter seems to like making collages (did them in GT camp over the summer several years in a row), and that is something I wouldn't mind doing. One year they based it on a short story they read first; another year they had a topic such as things they enjoy/love. I get plenty of free magazines from signups I find online, not to mention occasional free newspapers or catalogs. Last camp, the GT kids (daughter has been in the GT program since kindergarten) mixed ingredients into the paint to create texture before painting, and she liked that too. It was simple stuff, like flour, glitter, sand, cornstarch, etc. And I did do 2 easy adult crafts at the library (sadly, the librarian running the crafts retired and they are not doing them any more), one being a soap craft with scent (I've got essential oils, lavender or lemon would work), adding a food coloring to the soap and placing a plastic fish in the middle of the soap, but you could add any small plastic toy there, and tying them off with clear plastic if you lack a soap mold. We also did a thankful tree for last Thanksgiving. I have the vase from last year, most of which you fill with are dead leaves, interesting grass (i.e., weeds), fallen acorns, small fallen pinecones you collect off the ground, small sticks, then you punch out round bit of paper, write down things you are thankful for, and add them to the small branches like a tree. That would involve some walking around the neighborhood and local park, but it's not that tiring, especially if you stop at the park and sit or swing (my daughter's favorite activity on the play equipment); the park also has one of those free book exchanges (give a book, take a book) though it tends to be hit or miss, you never know. For some reason, the park has less mosquitoes than elsewhere in the neighborhood; maybe the city sprays more often there due to baseball games, scrimmage football (football is king her), and soccer games & practice. Maybe a picnic at the park one weekend or look for shells or at the local beach, even rocks as a lot of nearby gravel roads/road shoulders here are made of rocks that can contain fossils or bits of petrified wood, gemstones (not super valuable but interesting or pretty), and my daughter has an interest in that. H has a good book on roads to look for these things in Texas, some of which are nearby. Not sure if it is do-able today with having to get groceries and rain chances at 40%, which here means very likely rain, unlike when they predict 40% in Long Beach, CA, where H grew up, and his dad & sister are still out there. Not too likely for rain in that area of California unless it is around the end of December/early January, even then not a given.

So I've thought of a few things to do with my daughter. Also, there is drawing with sidewalk chalk (our front yard having fewer mosquitoes than the back yard) and even doing simple dumbell weight exercises (might have to refresh myself some on YouTube though) with her as she likes lifting dumbells, and we have 2 sets. She also likes jumping rope, which I used to be very good at in P.E. when we'd jump for as long as we could without messing up to raise money for a cause, but we'd need to get better jump ropes at home for that, and right now the outside activities would have to being early morning or evening. I wish we had some money as a local bayou does night hikes with a limited amount of people so the guide can keep count especially as some areas are very dark to search for various nocturnal animals/insects with a small lecture/question session beforehand; once we did a bat hike, and I know they have an owl hike and in the spring a hike for viewing fireflies. I just can't remember how expensive it is; not awful in my recollection, but maybe too much money, I'd have to find out the cost and discuss it with H and see if she wants to go on another night hike (she seemed to enjoy it in for the bat hike, and it was neat as fireflies were out later than usual for the time of year due to excessive rainfall from Harvey). So maybe some things to do with her as well as getting her a music playlist for her iPad. We have family sharing on iTunes purchases, and there are some songs she really likes listening to that I already own. And there is a doll game she likes to play with me, even though it is tedious. H can't stand it at all, but in the right mood, I can do it 30-45 minutes, take a 20 minute break or so and then continue it.

Some possibilities at least after thinking about it though I should probably write these down lest I forget them, which is a good possibility. Maybe cooking, but she is paranoid about raw meat, eggs, and knives though she will use a potato peeler to peel cucumber, carrots, etc., and I told her my mom had us using farm eggs without sell by dates (I learned in food microbiology that uncracked eggs are one of the toughest foods for preventing bacterial growth inside until cracked (though the shells can contain bacteria such as Samonella (so it's a good idea to wash the shells first), and Samonella can get in through shell cracks or very rarely in the U.S. hens with infected ovaries, but it is much rarer than people think, and I told my daughter that I ate dough/mixes with raw egg all the time coming from my grandparents (both sides) and never once got sick. I did order a no-bake dessert recipe mix for grocery pickup this week, and maybe she will help with that, assuming the store is not out, though I did give them the option to sub things if they can (usually they can sub but sometimes not). And she would definitely help with things like putting together salads (excluding potato salad, which I don't make anyway). She does like jigsaw puzzles or used to, so that is another choice. We have a lot of puzzles I've done before & taken apart and a couple undone puzzles, maybe making Thanksgiving or Christmas cards to give to family/extended family when we next get together. She doesn't tend to do that in December between celebrating both her birthday (usually 2 celebrations (one for school friends, one at home on her actual birthday; we have to do the school party early in December before school friends go on vacation or to spend Christmas with family even though my daughter's birthday is not until Dec. 14, 3 parties if my mom does one at the extended family Christmas) and Christmas (usually 2 events, extended family (we only exchange gifts for the kids under 18 & under to keep costs down; still my daughter has 5 cousins.) She can definitely make cards for my mom, grandmother, her aunts & uncles - my sisters - (only the aunts are blood relatives, none of the uncles), even her great aunts/uncles (again only the great-aunts are blood relatives).

So I have realized there are plenty of things I can do with my daughter, and maybe even looking at crafts/ideas on the computer or Pinterest can help with more inexpensive ideas. I really need to make a list and ask my daughter how she feels about each activity as right now her interests have changed a lot even from 1 year ago. I see her trying different hairstyles in the mirror, and she never did that last year, for example.

We have to go clothes shopping for her too; she has gotten much taller than she was before school started at the end of August, making nearly all her dresses too short, but she hates clothes shopping though it has to be done. I can't be having the school calling regularly needing me to bring new clothes because her dresses are too short (though still within the school dress code, maybe it is her proportions or something as she is growing).

Now I've got a lot of actual ideas of things she might be willing to do or try, I'm feeling more positive about spending time together we both will enjoy. I just have to put these ideas into effect.