Text tiny and upside down - any ideas?

Hey - I've been working on a Motion Project with 4 video/still layers. It's pretty simplistic - 2D layers only. I've always taken text for granted but I'm experiencing something weird. When I select the text tool and start typing - my text is microscopic (almost invisible) and when I blow it up to the max size it's still not very big - but it is also upside down. I can drag the bottom handles up to flip it the right way - but I'm still limited in the size I can get when I max that property all the way out. Any ideas what's going on? I've tried different fonts - right now I'm just trying it with the basic arial.

I started a new project just to see if it was my system and in the new project with a text layer there are no problems. I open up this project again and the problem persists.

It's an HD 1920x1080 project - using Motion 3. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.