Over before it began

I can't believe I let this little project slip away so quickly; I will be adding to it shortly, but I had a minor hiccup in my writing:
My 2 novels (lifelong projects it would seem; I have been working on both since I was about fifteen) were being stored on a usb thumb drive (yes! I know I am a stupid stupid woman - I do have several backups of these files, but none even remotely recent - I had done so much writing recently that I got well over 30,000 words ahead of the last back up).
For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to save another inconsequential file on that same thumb drive - I needed to print out this third file and my puppy had chewed through our printer cables. I took the thumb drive to my Mum's house to use her printer, which I couldn't do anyway because I had saved it in the wrong format and Mum's computer couldn't read it. I then went to the post office to post some parcels.
Now it is gone... the thumb drive, that is. I have searched my house and my Mum's house; turned both places upside-down looking for it. I need to call the post office next and hope they have it sitting in one of those weird 'lost and found' boxes you see in the cartoons. I am so upset for having lost it that I couldn't bring myself to do anymore writing.
I have finally plucked up the courage to write some more scenes for my main novel (it felt so wrong writing them in a blank file - without my other 55,000 words sitting above) and yes, backed it up in 3 different places! Now all I need to do is find that darn thumb drive, or my life will never be the same.