Mavericks: Finder LH column not showing all folders, can't store PS files?

Question

Out of the blue, when I opened Finder yesterday, I no longer see my desktop listed in the LH Column... all I see are external hard drives, both USB and NAS.  I have closed everything and restarted my iMac three times and nothing has changed.  I'm hoping its some obscure setting that has somehow been triggered by accident but I am baffled, because I did try looking at preferences to see if someth there is amiss but I'm probably too much of a neophyte to really know for sure.
Another annoying feature of Lion and especially Mavericks is that I seem to be having a lot of trouble opening existing files on my WD MyBookLive NAS data drive, modifying them as needed, and then _trying_ to save those modified files in the same NAS drive.  I've had that drive for at least 2 years and _never_ had a work in progress issue like this with previous versions of OS X.  ANd yes, if I open finder and select the exact file I want to modify, then select "Open in Adobe Photoshop CS4" I can open the file.  But I can't open the file from within PS or save the file to the NAS drive/folder where it belongs.  So unless I figure out a Mavericks fix... I have to copy an entire folder with all sorts of images and logos and text... to an external HDD and work on it there... IOW, Mavericks has rendered my 2TB NAS drive somewhat useless unless you accept redundant storage as the norm.  

Answer 1

I forgot to mention i've also made this "make shift" refresh button
tell application "Finder"
tell front window
update every item with necessity
end tell
end tell
Copy it, open Script Editor and save it as an executable application in your Utilities folder. Now put shortcuts to it in your Dock or your Sidebar or whereever. When you run it, the frontmost window in the Finder will be refreshed to its most current state from disk.
When I can see all items(when freshly mapped) and I click the app i've made above it removes the same files and folders from view.