[whpalmer4]

On your Mac, in the Data preferences, do you have Clean Up Inbox Actions which have: set to Both a Project and a Context, or something else? It sounds like you might have it set to a Context, which causes them to go off to the Miscellaneous project after a clean up if no other project has been set. If you added the actions on the iPad, it auto-synced after a minute, the desktop picks up the actions on its next sync, a cleanup happens, that sounds like what might have happened.

I always use "both Project and Context" for that setting, as I don't want actions wandering off without being fully processed.