WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY BONUS-DAUGHTER?

So Luscious is on the phone while I'm in the shower on Monday night, and as I'm drying myself she sidles up to me and says "Got some news."

"Oh, yes?"

"Cassie's coming to stay with us for a couple of weeks. She's on her way now."

My part in the kid-decision-making process has been completed- I've been informed. Battening of mental hatches commences.

Except since she's been with us she's been brilliant: taken part in the family stuff, gone in to her course with Lyn in the mornings, had lunch and girlie chats with her Mum, watched TV with us without complaining (She sat through Time Team and asked interested question, and we even watched The OC with her last night, so the love-fu is going both ways), and when lyn and I rose this mornign we discovered that her last act of the evening was to clean the kitchen from head to toe, just because. We even had a potential flash point over which bed she was going to sleep in for the duration, and how shocked was I when she acquiesced without a struggle?

She's been fun, and funny, and polite, and interested in being an active part of the family.

Ascribe it to whatever cause you like: the distance from her father's sorta-parenting-sorta-techniques; a calm before the storm; the rules we laid out before her in a calm manner when she arrived; a gift from the Giant Charlton Heston Impersonator In The Sky- I don't really care.

This is the Cassie I wanted back when I wrote my big-ass Year in Review meme a couple of days ago.

Long may it last.