Photographs Lost, Part 2

...Continued from yesterday:
     So, then, last Thursday Tom and I drove to Seaford, Delaware to spend a few days visiting my 96-year-old mother, here in a restaurant, captured  in one of my few  post-lost photos from that trip.

      It's a long drive from Columbus to Seaford, about 10 hours with our standard lunch break, which we always take at the Subway in the River Valley Mall in Ohio just west of Wheeling, West Virginia, and our standard dinner break, which we always take just south of Baltimore at a Greek restaurant called Hella's which has, Tom swears, the best crab cakes on the planet.
       My sole pre-lost shot of Hella's, taken on a previous trip a few years ago.

       It was during our dinner stop at Hella's on this past trip that my camera first started hesitating when I tried to snap some photos of the restaurant and our food.   When I pressed the shutter button sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.  And the zoom-out had ceased to function.  I had a strong feeling that my camera was on its last hurrah and that, dang, I should have brought my new one along! (See yesterday's post)
     My fear was that my camera would give up the ghost entirely any minute now, and  I awarded myself a big HUYA (see post from  5/9/2015)  for being dumb enough to leave a brand new camera still in the  box sitting at home.
       Still,  I kept my fingers crossed for the next couple of days I  and managed to take lots of pictures in spite of the recalcitrant shutter button and non-working zoom-out.  I took mostly pictures of my mom,  of the things we did and the people and places we visited.  I took pictures from our Friday night dinner at my brother and sister-in-law's house where they made the most delicious home-made chicken pot-pie, mashed potato casserole and corn bread.
       Those pictures are, alas, among the lost, but I did get the super-easy recipes  from my sister-in-law, which I  share, pictureless,  below:

CHICKEN POT PIE
COOKED CHICKEN PIECES
2 CANS CREAM OF CHICKEN SOUP
1 CAN CHICKEN BROTH
ONE BAG OF HANOVER FROZEN VEGETABLES
PILLSBURY PIE CRUST
MIX CHICKEN,SOUP, BROTH AND VEGGIES TOGETHER
POUR INTO GREASED 9X13 INCH CASSEROLE DISH
ROLL OUT PIE CRUST WITH ROLLING PIN AND PLACE ON TOP OF DISH TO COVER INGREDIENTS
BAKE: 350 DEGREES FOR ONE HOUR and 5MINS OR UNTIL MIXTURE IS BUBBLING AND CRUST IS
BROWN+

MASHED POTATO CASSEROLE*
5 LB RED SKINNED POTATOES
1- (8 OZ) CREAM CHEESE (OPTIONAL)
1- (8 OZ) SOUR CREAM
SALT AND PEPPER TO TASTE
ONE STICK MELTED BUTTER
2 CUPS SHREDDED CHEESE
ADD WHOLE MILK FOR DESIRED TEXTURE
WASH, COOK AND DRAIN POTATOES. DO NOT PEEL.
MASH POTATOES AND ADD SOUR CREAM, BUTTER, SALT, PEPPER AND
MILK. (OPTIONAL TO ADD SOUR CREAM)
ADD SHREDDED CHEESE LAST TO POTATOES AND BLEND SHREDDED
CHEESE INTO POTATO MIXTURE. ADD MORE MILK IF NEEDED, TO CREATE
DESIRED TEXTURE.
PLACE INTO GREASED 9X13 INCH BAKING DISH.
TOP WITH EXTRA SHREDDED CHEESE, AS DESIRED.
MAY COOK IMMEDIATELY OR REFRIGERATED OVERNIGHT. IF
REFRIGERATING OVERNIGHT, THE DAY OF THE DINNER, BRING TO ROOM
TEMP FOR AT LEAST ONE HR BEFORE BAKING. BAKE, UNCOVERED,
AT 350 DEGREES FOR AT LEAST 30-40 MINUTES OR UNTIL HEATED
THROUGH.
IF DOUBLING RECIPE, YOU MAY NEED TO ADD MORE COOKING TIME,
UNTIL POTATOES ARE COOKED THROUGH AND TOP IS BROWNED

CORN BREAD RECIPE
2 BOXES CORN MUFFIN MIX
2 SMALL CANS CREAMED CORN OR ONE 14 OZ CAN CREAMED CORN
16 OZ SOUR CREAM
4 EGGS
1 ¼ STICK MELTED BUTTER
MIX INGREDIENTS IN A LARGE BOWL. POUR INTO A GREASED 9 X 13 INCH PAN. BAKE AT 400 DEGREES
FOR 30-45 MINUTES (UNTIL TOOTH PICK IN CENTER COMES OUT CLEAN). COOL AND CUT INTO SERVING PIECES

   For dessert I made a batch of my now renowned blueberry bars, the recipe for which can be found in the  7/6/2016 post.

        Anyway, on Saturday morning during a shopping trip to Walmart with my Mom - who proudly admits she likes going to Walmart and goes almost every day - I made an impulse decision:  to buy a cheap little emergency camera in case my ailing Canon ended up going to camera heaven before my trip was over.
      (Sigh)  Would that I had resisted the siren song of this cute  $29.99 digital blue demon;

...because, though I have no idea how or why, I'm sure it was that nasty little Vivitar that sucked every photograph off the memory card  - the 32 GB, 10,000-photo card that was three-quarters filled with a year's worth of pictures -  that I was trusting enough to feed it.
     What happened was that when I returned from Walmart I removed the memory card from my old pink Canon,

...and inserted it into my new blue Vivitar, just to try it out, which I did.  I snapped a couple of trial shots.  Then I deleted them.  Then I removed the memory card from the Vivitar, put it back into the Canon, and carried on snapping for the rest of Saturday and Sunday.
      However it wasn't until Monday during our drive back to Columbus when I pulled out my camera to look over my photographs, as I'm always doing,  that I saw to my shock that I no longer had over 7400 pictures.  There were only a few dozen pictures left, those I took since removing the memory card from the blue camera and returning it to the pink one. 
      And that's all I really know.
      Where did my pictures go?  When I thought I was deleting one picture was I in fact deleting thousands?  If that's what happened, how did it happen? 
       (Sigh) Don't know.
        In truth, I guess I feel less sadness over losing those thousands of pictures from the past year - after all, the best ones are saved on my blog - as losing the ones I took on this last visit to my 96-year-old mother. 
       Who knows if I'll get a chance to take another?

*this recipe bears a remarkable resemblance to my mashed potato casserole recipe, which is also very good, the difference being that this recipe leaves out the dash of hot sauce and horse radish that mine calls for.  The recipe for my mashed potato casserole can be found in the 10/9/2014 post