I recently logged into google and asked that they index my domain (djhaskin.com). They asked me to put a TXT record in there proving I owned it and I did so. Then their "website console" thing showed that my website was indexed[1]. They have a console for this stuff now[2]. They recently showed me a page in there where that displayed some URLs that weren't indexed and which were. I requested a re-index of one of the non-indexed URLs, but the others were just broken/junk/RSS feed urls, so it was fine that they weren't indexed. The console gave me a ton of tools for making sure my site was indexed, and told me why if it wasn't.
I had plenty of tools to get my site indexed and felt like I was in control. I don't feel any sense of mystery about what is happening and I receive notifications when indexing fails.