You know, I can totally understand why everyone in town wants to come to the river and have a look. It IS amazing, and (as every news story quotes someone saying) something we’ve never seen in our lives. If I didn’t live here, I’d want to come see, too. But when the national news guys show up — and do something really stupid — well, it makes me want them to go away.

The guy is named Jay Gray, and he works for NBC Nightly News. He opened his story on the flood tonight standing chest-deep in water behind the Maria Montessori School. You know, the school where the parents and teachers are watching water creep up their carefully placed sandbag wall. (It’s also inundated with trash, which is infuriating for a different reason. That’s the back of the school in the photo opening this post.)

Every kid in Harbor Town knows you don’t go anywhere near the water in normal times, much less now. We’re not even letting our black Lab Buddy swim, despite the heat and humidity today. (Here he is with Andy and Tomas on the gravel berm that is now keeping the river off Island Drive.) So why are national news reporters standing in the water? Yes, yes, I know … it’s so that the story is more dramatic.

Believe me, if you live down here, it doesn’t really get more dramatic than this.

Here’s a look at the Wolf River Harbor and the Pyramid from the south end of Harbor Town. There are usually benches to the left of where I took this photo, but they have been underwater for two days. The gravel path usually  is several yards from the water line.

Here’s a look through the two newest condo developments to the Pyramid on the southernmost part of Mud Island; you get to these condos by going south after the roundabout rather than north to get to our house. Sandbags are everywhere, but I think they might get flooded anyway; the road is unimproved, and there’s not much barrier between them and the rising water. What a bad day to be featured in The Commercial Appeal’s real estate section. You can’t see this view unless you are on foot; the road closed yesterday.

And here’s a look north from the top of the riverwalk, where you turn right to go across to Second Street, an access road that is flooded now. (Yes, that’s Tomas being goofy. We’d been on our bikes for a while at this point, and he no longer likes it when I take his picture.) Lots of water out there; the river is three miles across at Memphis now.

We went on a little drive this morning to see what else the river and its tributaries were up to, and the Wolf River, which flows (sort of) perpendicular to the Mississippi, is flooded as well. We had read about the closing of the floodgates, but I couldn’t quite picture it until I saw the major one at Chelsea and McLean, among many others. This floodgate in the photo is on Second Street, across the harbor from Harbor Town. So that’s what they’ve been using the sandbags for.

In actual news, it appears that the levees are holding up just fine, and the crest will still be at 48 feet on Tuesday. (The river gauge is still broken, so I hope that’s right. The rumor mill is working overtime on exactly how high the river will get.) Lots of misery still to come, but for now, we are enjoying the evening breeze, and some shrimp salad and berry crumble, made just for me on Mother’s Day. Life is pretty good.

Don’t let this peaceful sunset fool you: We are still in Floodland, and have become the biggest tourist destination in Memphis. Andy was in a traffic jam that backed him up halfway over the Auction St. bridge on the way home from work, and officers in at least three patrol cars were yelling at sightseers down here tonight. Lots of them have come to look, and some have come to fish — these river catfish, below, must be 20 pounds each, caught on a line stretching into what was Greenbelt Park. I hope Miss Cordelia’s, Tug’s, Paulette’s and the rooftop bar are doing great business, because it really is a beautiful night. Clear, cool, calm. Finally.

The river, of course, continues to rise, to near 44 feet, which is 10 feet above flood stage. How do I know this? I have become a river stage geek — this is the link we like the best for its detailed information. Pals in Memphis will note that this chart says the river will crest at 48 feet (same as last night, whew) on the morning of May 11, not May 10, as predictions have said.

I have calmed down some from last night, too. I believe all the reports that say a crest of 48 feet won’t flood our house, and may not even flood the access roads to the island, though I still think the water in the parking lot is pretty scary, and we are still preparing to leave if we have to. All it would take would be any standing water on Island Drive and it would be closed. Still, I think we’ll have more notice than I thought would be true last night, when I was gathering up my jewelry and trying to think about packing a bag to keep in my car. Might still do all that, but at least I’m not panicky about it any more.

Part of the reason I’m calmer is that I’ve been trying to focus on real reporting and sources, not the wild rumors floating around on Facebook or the totally lame reporting from some of the TV news stations. This morning I flipped on the news to see some TV reporter standing near the flooded parking lot (in my picture), exclaiming that he’d never seen the river so high! Then he stopped some slacker dude who speculated that the Army Corps of Engineers was probably lying about how high the river will get. What editor let that crap on the air? You call this journalism? Give me The Commercial Appeal and The New York Times; I even heard a snippet of a local story (a good part of Dyersburg is being evacuated) on NPR by WKNO’s own Eleanor Boudreau this afternoon. Real journalism. Scoff if you want, but I want real reporters supervised by real editors who know how to check out sources, debunk rumors and avoid stupid speculation. Ok, I’m done ranting now. At least for tonight.

If you click The CA link above, you’ll see that it’s a story posted tonight about possible Mud Island evacuations. Yes, we know; you’ll see that the water is creeping up the foundation of our friends’ house I wrote about last night. But the NYTimes link is even more heartbreaking — it’s about the people whose land is flooded because of the decision to blow the Birds Point levee up in Missouri. I thought all day about the 88-year-old man who’d lived in the spillway his whole life, above the grocery that he and his wife ran until everyone moved away and she died. He’s sleeping on the couch at his daughter’s house, wondering what to do next.

Sort of puts my anxiety about jewelry and furniture into perspective, you know?

Look closely at the shoes in this photo. Beat up, last legs, shot … they are trashed. Why? Because the kid wearing them has been waiting for — make that dying for — the sneakers he ordered at Christmas to show up. The sad tale:

All during the run-up to the holiday, all T. really wanted was the unconscionably expensive privilege of ordering custom-made Reebok Zigs online. Okay, we said, but that’s your biggest/best/only present. Okay, he said, I really, really want them.

On Christmas morning when he went to place his order, the site was down. The next day, still not available. And the next, and the next. Finally, we got an email with a promo code to use when we finally did place an order. SORRY was the promo code. (I should have known, and stopped the order right then.)

Finally, on December 30, he placed his order. And found out that SORRY only applied if you weren’t ordering custom shoes. Harumph, I said. They’ll be worth it, he said. Even though the company told him when he placed the order that the shoes wouldn’t ship until Feb. 6, and we’d made it clear that there would be no other new shoes before then. Okay, he said.

Well, it’s tough to keep a kid’s sneakers together, and today, four days after the promised ship date, I finally reached someone at Reebok customer service. It seems the custom shoes T. ordered had a defect, and were being made over. The new ship date: Feb. 19. Which would have been nice to know without having to call about it. No record of any order at all existed online at the link they had sent me.

“I’m so sorry,” said the nice woman on the line. “Has anyone offered you any compensation?” I didn’t tell her about SORRY; just said no. “Hold on,” she said. A few minutes later, she was back on the line: Apparently our order was still “in the window,” and there would be no compensation. By now I had begun vowing that I’d never buy another Reebok product, after I was going to have to tell my kid he’d now wait for nearly two months to get the one Christmas present he had been waiting for. “You could call back on Monday,” she ventured, “and ask to see the tracking,” which I guess is code for “that’s the first day we can give you any discount or coupon for botching up the already overpriced, long-delayed order with our company.”

Yes, I know it’s just a pair of athletic shoes. And maybe this is cosmic payback for letting him buy something I don’t really think is worth the price. But it was his Christmas present, darn it, and it makes me MAD that Reebok isn’t at least able to ease his long wait for gratification.

I sure hope those shoes are worth it, whenever they finally show up.

I should be used to it by now, but I can never get over how, the minute the turkey leftovers are put away, Southerners get out their Christmas stuff. Maybe it’s like this in Ohio now, too, but when I was growing up, no one put their tree up until at least the second week of December, then we kept it up until Epiphany, or when the magi finally reached the Christ child.

I need to stop complaining, though, because a short walk around my lovely neighborhood tonight was just what I needed for the post-holiday blues. It’s appropriately chilly, the big tree in Christmas Tree park is lit, and the halls up and down our block are decked.

Now for some holiday spirit of my own.

So where have I been for the last year and a half? Why have I not been writing regularly, though I whine about it to nearly every friend I have? I’ve been asking myself those questions for quite a while, and some of the answers I’ve come up with aren’t too comfortable.

Yes, I miss journalism, and asking questions all day, and telling other people’s stories. But I also miss the instant cred and name recognition that came with having a regular newspaper column.

I’ve been worried that if I admitted I was still a journalist — or still wanted to be — it would somehow be a step off the hard-won path to my newer vocation, as someone who is painstakingly learning how to be a fundraiser, school communicator and manager in a culture I’ve never experienced before.

But almost every day I come up with a column idea, or get mad about something, or see a story — not all of them are at St. Mary’s, though some are — and think: I should be writing about that.

So here goes. Please read, comment and help me find my voice again. I hope it never really went away.