Hope springs eternal.

Today has been long and not as productive as I'd like.

Some days are just like that.

Hopper is stressed over my upcoming surgery. She stresses easily, and it comes out in all sorts of rough ways. Like stressing over her dad going on his run today. We really have no idea what sets her off. Sometimes it happens. Other times, she's fine with him going for his run. Today, she started having a meltdown a good 15 minutes before he left. The meltdown didn't stop for 30 minutes after he was gone.

She was upset he was gone, but she started fixating on something, and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what she was saying. While she's verbal, she's not always intelligible, and she was definitely struggling. She also often says, 'no' when she means, 'yes', and vice versa and very often, she doesn't hear what we're saying correctly, so it can be quite the puzzle trying to figure out what she's saying. And while sometimes it can be a bit humorous, it can also be quite traumatic.

For 30 minutes, she cried and tried so hard to tell me and show me what she was asking. She kept trying to act out what she was asking. She would draw her one arm up, so her fist was by her shoulder, and the other arm was outstretched. It looked like she was trying to shoot a bow and arrow.

But she's never even seen one.

I asked her, if it had to do with Daddy's run. No. It didn't. But it resulted in more crying and exasperation.

Was it on a street driving away from here? No. And cue crying.

Was it at the store? Nope. Not there either.

Was she talking about exercises? No. That wasn't it, and the drama continued.

At one point, I joined her in the crying. It's so frustrating to not be able to help her, and it's so hard to see her go through the pain of not being understood.

I asked her repeatedly to show me where it was, if it was in the house. She said it wasn't.

Finally, I just asked her to follow me, and I pointed out some workout things my husband uses to strengthen his forearms. If he doesn't use them, he has a problem with tendonitis. So I took her to them and asked, if that was what she was talking about.

It was.

Finally.

She was trying to find out, if he was going to do his exercises when he got home. He wasn't. But she has such a hard time living in the moment, because she's always looking ahead to what's going to happen or not going to happen next that she just can't relax. Today was a prime example.

After I finally figured out what it was and discerned her unintelligible jargoning, she was fine, but my neck and shoulders are still tight all these hours later. I'm just so glad she was able to go to bed with a smile on her face, and it all but forgotten.

Somehow, I was able to get 6 or 7 loads of laundry done today, even though we didn't get started on the list just yet. We'll be kicking into overdrive to work on it tomorrow. I think we'll be able to get most of it done.

I hope.

I need a bigger win.