For some reason, Houdini will sometimes randomly prevent me from accessing the gizmo for expanding container size, or my source object will disappear, where I'll have to reset Houdini for everything to go back to normal. And sometimes the gizmo for the wind driver will disappear, and resetting Houdini won't even do anything, and I'll have to delete the node and recreate it.

Some nodes require that you need to select them then press the Enter key to activate their mode. You may be experiencing this. When I first started I was kind of confused why some nodes worked and some did not. Houdini is a very context sensitive kind of app. Where your cursor is on the screen is very important when you issue keyboard commands. For instance, as I mentioned above, press the Enter key while your mouse is in the Network view will cause you to dive inside the node, however, pressing the Enter key while your mouse is in the 3D view will cause the node to activate.