I’ve done this before.

Where I allow all of my careers to ramp up all at the same time with a cheese-eating grin on my face.

The grin sometimes fades at night when I’ve had a glass of wine and I’m trying to figure out how I’m supposed to #beallthethings. Even that… the hashtag, #beallthethings… I think I use it more to encourage myself more than anyone else.

Real estate got real for me a couple of weeks ago with 2 closings happening a week apart and another transaction threatening to fall apart/blow up/explode/implode one moment while moving along nicely the next. Moving forward required communication skills and patience. Usually I’m good to go with communicating and patience but this particular deal went far above what I am comfortable with.

In the end, it looks like things have settled and both sides of the deal are happy and we are hopefully moving forward to closing. With one more listing under contract and then that absolutely gorgeous listing from that last picture.

It really is a recreational paradise. I enjoyed writing the description for the mls listing. I mean, I am a writer, right? I could allow myself to use the badass descriptive words I wanted to and they aren’t misleading or exaggerating.

I even became a Sports Afield Trophy Properties agent in order to list this baby with the groups they align themselves with. Its a neat gig and it means this listing gets seen by a ton more people than those who are expressly looking to buy a home.

All while driving back & forth to Deer Lodge every Tuesday and every second Friday to be Dr.Me.

Did I mention the ferrets are back?

The Fyfe Bee Gees and their besties, Fallon and Ivan Roesner are all back in Fyfe Life. We finally bought a Critter Nation crate for more room for them, too. Old Quebec is still there and the bunch of them climb in and out of that when they’re playing around.

Its great having them home again. No matter what, ferrets make you laugh.

Its how they are built (no spine, seemingly), how they move (goofy AF), how they sleep (intertwined), how they interact with each other (rough-housing and pure love) and with the other spirits in the house… all of it is generally quite funny if not downright hysterical.

Ivan has developed a penchant for this big ceramic vase-like thing in our kitchen. When they’ve been out for a few hours and its time to go to bed I can reliably find him in there. The rest are either in their new Fyfedom (see what I did just there?) or the golf bag so they are easy to round up.

And did I mention Jazz Champion is back, too?

The way my routine works hasn’t allowed for Jazz to play with the ferrets outside of the Fyfedom. Not yet anyhow. We still haven’t let little Martini interact with the weasels just because there are a lot of ‘what if’s’ but I think Jazz and The Business would be good. The 5 of them beat up on their young German Shepard when they’re at the Rosener house so a Bernerdoodle would be pretty easy, right?

I do think they would all be fine but with my careers requiring so much of me right now (my own fault, nobody to blame but me) I don’t want to mess with the routines.

I am excited to put career #3 in action when I go to Seeley Lake Elementary on the 31st to give talks to the 5th and 6th graders first, then the 7th and 8th graders about my books! These talks are always fun and they generate great discussions. Not all of the kids will have read my books but part of the talk is about how I always wanted to write back when I was their age and how I got the process going finally back in 2013.

I’m really happy that friends and former veterinary clients of mine reached out and asked me to do this. I enjoy giving young people different ideas about who or what they can become when they get older. Even if that means they might turn out like me, with a bunch of career paths. (I’m still not 100% sure what I want to be when I grow up…)

And while everything is ramping up I’m honestly toying with a leap back into career #1. Seriously!

‘Cause I’m just not busy enough!

I have missed coaching and the freedom of gliding across a frozen, smooth surface for a long time now and there is opportunity for me to get back to it. (Public session in hockey skates at Glacier Ice Rink is happening tomorrow afternoon… hopefully I can still walk the next day!)

Skating is my first language. I’m fluent.

I can walk you through the mechanics of an axel even if you’ve never skated before. That doesn’t mean you can DO the axel (especially not in skates) but I converse (gush?) effusively when I’m talking about (and coaching) power skating or figure skating.

I blame these guys, particularly the one on the far right, Chris Reiser. Our hockey boys (I affectionately call them mine) from Hazen were so supportive and encouraging when we visited them for a great meal and drinks in Bismarck last November. We all joked about having me coach power skating to their kids and, well, you never know. I’ll just say that Chris made some connections and I’m busting out my Vapors tomorrow afternoon.

I’ll probably have to bust out some Ibuprofen afterwards, too, but its worth it!

I’m living by my calendars right now and you all know I thrive on being busy like this. I sometimes have to pause and think about who someone is when I see them, and where I know them from.

“Is this a pet parent?”

“Did this family love my books?”

“Was I your skating coach one time?”

“Did these folks maybe buy a house I had listed?”

Like I say, I create this chaos and I can handle it because I have my coping mechanisms.

Things might change in that regard very soon (more on that later) but those changes will have to make other (big) changes in real estate, vetting, coaching and writing as well as real life and it all may or may not make some sort of sense for me and I may or may not have to redefine my life and my ways of handling working big jobs at a high level.

I’m not joking when I say I’m a teensy bit afraid of the future partly because there are elements out of my control.

And I don’t like that.

It occurs to me that today is the first day of Spring. More changes.

Mother Nature handles it really well despite the rain, the mud, the slick roads, the mess, the brown everything.

The uncertainty.

I need to take a page from her book, don’t I?

There are many big things to be excited about and to look forward to as well throughout this next phase of my life.

I shall continue to book my world with my varying careers and try to continue to do all of them at the level I expect out of myself. The animal spirits surrounding me right now are awesome and hilarious and cuddly, too. I also feel a wealth of support from friends and family and coworkers and clients and the list goes on.

Here’s to controlled chaos. And Happy Spring!