Apple Notes disappear after iCloud sync

Thank you for the support. I've done all those things. Here's the play by play:

1. I use a Macbook Pro and iPhone 8. I create notes on my devices, but in the iCloud folder.
2. A few weeks ago I noticed that nothing was syncing, so I googled how to get things to sync and was following those instructions when sync seemed to "wake up" and that's when my Notes disappeared from both my Macbook Pro and iPhone 8. It was as if iCloud woke up and pulled my devices back in time by about a week or so
3. I googled around for instructions on how to recover notes - there was never any Recently Deleted folder and no searches turned up the disappeared notes
4. I downloaded a tool on my Macbook Pro to recover the Notes source files, but I am not an IT person and I quit after getting quite confused
5. Unfortunately my Time Machine was not up to date.
6. Is there some kind of like log file or snapshot file on the Macbook Pro that will have those notes?
7. It's very frustrating