Desktop goes light grey after wakeup

Sometimes my Mac's desktop goes light grey after wakeup. There is something that looks like a status bar at the bottom.  After a few moments the desktop appears in color again, and in another moment or two I get control of the mouse again.
If the Mac is sleeping, and I hook up my phone or iPad to charge it, it will not draw power until I wake up the machine and have it go through the rigamarole again.
This is a recent phenomenon.
Any thoughts as to what is causing this and how to fix it?  I run Onyx regularly.
Using OS X 10.9.5, 2.7 GHz with 8 Gig of RAM.

A standard fix is below. However, if this does not work, then you will have to erase the drive first. Give this a try and cross your fingers.
Reinstall Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks without erasing drive
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported then click on the Repair Permissions button. When the process is completed, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks
OS X Mavericks- Reinstall OS X
OS X Mountain Lion- Reinstall OS X
OS X Lion- Reinstall Mac OS X
     Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet
                 if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

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