Can't Nautilus to my Home directory

[Ken Scott]

I have a 9 month old RH9 system running Gnome.  Every now and then
(essentially weekly) something occurs (have not traced what it is) that
renders Nautilus unable to open my home directory (/home/kens) or even
the /home  directory itself. I can manually type in and GUI to
directories below my home directory (/home/kens/downloads)  for example
and to others such as /mnt and /etc ok.
I end up rebooting  or restarting my user (via logout user).

Does anyone know a better fix or a troubleshooting plan?
Thanks
Ken S.