Two of everything....nothing to show

Yesterday started out to be a very productive day, indeed. I sat down with my lovely heel flapped sock and I turned the heel. It worked out perfectly, now that I understand the concept. I didn't even have to look at what to do since it makes sense now. Great, I thought, I'll pick up the stitches then bag her up to knit while I'm at the concert (I went to a classical music concert yesterday). So I did, and I sat knitting while waiting for the concert to start, then I knit during intermission, then I knit during the talk back, and while I was doing that I saw it. One. dropped. stich. Right there at the first row of the gusset. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be a knit two together and I missed a stitch or what, but when I tried to drop a stitch down to pick it up, there was nothing to be done. I couldn't get the stitch back in the line up with out it looking seriously messy. So, I sat there in the hall ripping out all the rows back to where I picked up the stitches. It was a lot of yarn. And then, I had a very hard time trying to get the needle back into the the stitches on the top of the foot. Every time I got a stitch on the needle, then next stitch would ladder. Surely, it didn't help that I was with dark yarn in a dimly lit theatre, and then later in a moving car. But, I eventually got it back to where I started the day.
So I sat, frustrated on my couch, and turned the heel again, and picked up the stitches. Then I knit the first round of decreases and began my plain round when I saw it. I big, fat hole. Not a dropped stitch, just a nasty gap. One would think that since I had already messed up and not knit the extra rows on the heel flap and had to pick up more stitches than were slipped that there couldn't possibly be any gaps, but that one would be wrong. I managed to make a huge hole at the join, regardless. I'm supposing it's because the yarn is stressed out and the heel flap, with those angry stitches, needs to be ripped back and reknit too. I don't like this idea, but it's better than a huge hole at the join. It's not like the slipped stitches are all tight to begin with, anyway. Picking them up twisted, a la Kathy, seems to help prevent the ladder look, but I just want the slipped stitches to be tighter. Is there a way to do this?
In looking at this pattern from Wendy, it appears that she wraps her slipped stitches when she does her short row heels. Granted, this is toe up, not top down, but I wonder if that's a solution to making those slipped stitches tighter? If it might help on the flap in this case? To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what wrapping the stitch does for you, but the fact is it's going to bulk up the stitch a bit, which would help with my frustration around the looseness of the slipped stitch, but I just don't know if it works that way. So, what say you? Does it seem that if I just reknit the heel flap that it should fix my little stitch issue of them being too loose? You know, as long as I knit it the right length and only pick up the stitches once, like I was supposed to. Because before I noticed the drop stitch, it was looking pretty good. Or is there some better way of doing this, that I just don't know yet? I know there are alternatives, I just know how any of them work.

Geez, one little dropped stitch ruined my whole knitting day and got me all frustrated. Darnit! Isn't this supposed to be relaxing? Sheesh!