Jeremy thanks for asking.
As I was walking myself back through what I did, I think I figured it out, and it was my mistake.
I was doing a “quick edit” and I checked “make this post sticky” and then I changed the date of the post from 2011 to 2012 (because I wanted it to appear at the top of my site), and it moved into the “scheduled posts” category. (I should have changed the day as well as the year and kept it in the past instead of putting it in the future, which I hadn’t meant to do.) When I changed the date a second time it was switched back from “scheduled” to “published” and that’s when it went out in the feed. I just have to remember to never set the date in the future again when I’m playing around with post orders.
