I am sorry I have written so poorly. I guess I was more tired than I thought. There are two issues.
The first is on an item I used F8 on. The instance then does not let me do any thing but change its location and size. I cannot scale or rotate it without it disappearing. The 'box' surrounding it stays but the item becomes invisible.
The second issue is the timeline keeps disappearing. I click on the Window column open 'Timeline' it shows up. I use anything else and the timeline disappears. I go back up to Window and it does it all over again.