No need for apologies or to feel embarrassed! Just keep asking. The thing that makes forums enjoyable to visit and join in on is the active community. If no one asks questions it all gets quiet and fizzles out, like sitting in a cafe, in silence, on your own, with a weak coffee. Much more fun to have a buzz of chatter and share ideas, I love seeing what other people are making and I learn a lot from the active posts whether I will ever make that pattern or not.
I think missing the final increases would reduce the stitch count and make this section a bit shorter which is probably not crucial with is being cowl, or you could work the final rows straight to get the length without increasing the width.
I also think that it will be quite acceptable to decrease the stitch count almost anywhere (although not all in one spot) as the cowl will be gathered and layered when worn so a couple of decreases will not be super noticable spread across a mid row which in any case will end up hidden.
I’ve noticed with many colour work patterns the stitch count can change between each/every stripe of motif due to there needing to be some number fewer or extra to make each motif fit the item, with this in mind it would be fine really to just decrease evenly across a round in any of the plain rounds following the joining, either the joining round itself or those few following it in the main colour.