Probably the first thing I would try would be to press the Escape key. Second would be to quit Word & Re-open both the program & the document you saved.

I'm starting to think you might have something wrong within the system after your posting of this issue http://www.gnutellaforums.com/chat-o...eshooting.html
The only occasion(s) I can recall such a thing happening with icons there was something wrong (but I can't remember what it was now.) I could brainstorm possibilities but that might only complicate things.
I'd suggest you use all of your utilities to check out the fitness of both your system and hardware including your disk drive(s) & video card.

* BTW Joe, we are receiving messages your email account is full & notifications cannot be sent to you. Perhaps you can look into that & remove some of your old emails. Otherwise you might be missing out on some very important emails (since nobody can email you to that address now when it is full. We first noticed this some months ago.)