Where's the finder?!?

So this has happened twice and I can't sort it out w/o a restart. I do something like drag a file to an app and...shazam finder ends up out of my dock and on my desktop. Dunno why it does it. its always shows up back after a restart but why and how do I do put it back. I tried double clicking on the icon and it acts like its not there. In the pic its hiding behind mail app so you can't see it but you can see its not in the dock.


Thanks

The only thing I can even think of should be easy to check. Does the Finder appear in the Applications folder. If not, try dragging the folder to the Applications folder. I can't imagine why that would push it to the desktop.

This may be the strangest OS X thing I have heard of. I'm interested in seeing the answer.

have you tried repairing the disc permission in
applications>utilities>disc utility ?

Yeah, I'm not sure why it does it either. It's whacky and its only happened a handful of times. It becomes totally unresponsive. If I close out all apps. it shows up in the menu bar and I can kinda access it through the "go" menu. Double clicking does nothing to the icon. WIERD!!
Let me know if anyone else has this issue.