Mysterious Stacking of Desktop Icons

I have a bunch of folders on the desktop.
I had a problem where Preview stopped responding. I used Force Quit, and it didn't kill Preview. I tried shutting down, and one program, Excel, also stopped responding. Again Force Quit didn't work. ****! Finally I was left with those two programs and Shut Down wouldn't work. I had no choice but to turn off the computer using the power button. When I restarted, the folders on my desktop had disappeared. Double ****! I ran Disk Utility. Disk okay. I repaired permissions and restarted. Still no folders, but I could open a Finder Window, and see the folders in the Desktop. After reading discussions on the Apple site, I began to worry that I had the mysterious missing desktop, but my symptoms were different.
Then I found out that all my folders were still on the desktop, but hidden under my Time Machine Disk Icon, or perhaps I should say on top of my Time Machine Disk Icon, but only the Time Machine Icon was showing. So I could drag the icons off one at a time.
I plan to drag all the folders off the Time Machine Icon, and put them in a folder, and not on the desktop. Any problems I should be aware of? Why did the Icons wind up in a single stack? Is there some magic incantation to make them unstack?
Thanks,
Confused in Texas

reset your finder preferences. delete the file /users/username/library/preferences/com.apple.finder.plist. then control-option click on Finder in the dock and select "relaunch".

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