Odd Blips in Cyber-Land: Disappearances, Appearances

Punish me, please, if I ever declare that I am tech-savvy.

I want to blame this on my computer/iPhone, but —

Today after a quick lunch, I went outside to take in a few moments of sudden sun, and while taking  cliche photos of roses (I insist, because they make me happy) like this....
 
...mid-snap, I saw a baby chicadee just inches from where I was squatting. I inched closer, closer still, until I was about a foot from her. Very slowly I switched my camera setting to movie, and began recording. The parent-birds were alarmed and making a racket all about my head, and I managed to reach out and stroke the baby, just once, with my index finger.

Got home and planned this blog piece. And that's when things began to get really weird....

I went to my nephew's high-school graduation, and like a good citizen, turned the ringer on my phone off prior to the start of the program. Halfway into the valedictorian's speech, music began playing somewhere around where I was sitting. I looked at my sister and we rolled our eyes — who in hell was messing around on their iPhone in the middle of a graduation ceremony?! The nerve!! I heard some commentary, like a radio personality. People sitting close to us also began to look around, shaking their heads. More music. I whispered to my sister, "It couldn't be my phone — I turned it off already." I reached down into my purse, unzipped the pocket where I'd stashed my phone, and the music suddenly got very loud.

Holy crap. It was my phone, er, radio, er, iTunes. God knows what. I silenced it, quickly, feeling a blush creep up my face. Yikes. (Giggled.)

Don't know how or why that happened, but my phone has a habit of bursting into song at unplanned moments. (If I'd only taken the time to listen to the music being played, I'm certain there would've been an embedded message.)

Once home, I uploaded my photos to my computer, went through the standard Do you wish to delete photos from your iPhone protocol. Yes, delete.

And everything disappeared. All photos — gone from phone, gone from iPhoto.

Baby chicadee: gone.

Roses: gone.

I've waited 55 years to get that close to a baby bird with a camera in hand, and not only did I have a camera, but the camera had video capability. And suddenly: all was gone.

I dithered, nearly wept.

Told myself that everything is ephemeral.

Told myself to get over it.

Told myself to be thankful to have even experienced that one moment — fleeting — of grace.

And just about when I was coming to a place of acceptance and peace for my perceived stupidity at deleting the photos — blammo — they appeared.

And I mean they just leapt out onto the screen. I'm not exaggerating — one minute they'd been deleted, the next minute they were all in front of me, in full-buxom-blossom and chirruping chickadee-dee-dee delight.

Sent down from some heaven, some repository of repentant images.

Moral: all is not lost.

And here's my mysteriously-recovered 14 seconds of baby chickadee: