hmmm this is very weird indeed. I just looked over on the steam forums and there is nothing that I could find at least, you would think something like this would bug the hell outta people so it would be near the top of the skyrim forum, but no such post exists atm...
The only thing I can think of that I did before I noticed this was update a few mods with NMM. Mods like static mesh improvement, real cover, skyrim project optimization, and the race menu mod. I did uninstall B3 better breezehome mod and load back some backed up saves before I had that mod and then....there was that damn icon....it should be noted I had not played in several days. I have not yet tried disabling mods with the NMM and playing vanilla, but as another user in this forum stated that didn't help them, so I'm wondering WTF is going on!?