Multiple issues with iCloud calendar, notes, and iDevices

Question

So many issues... where to begin?
Tonight I created a new note entry on my iPad. We had a birthday party for our twins yesterday, and as we opened the presents tonight, I logged who gave us what so my wife and I can write thank-you letters and credit the right people for the right gifts. I e-mailed the note (straight from the Notes app) to my wife to be sure she had a copy of it, and it sent me a CC: automatically per my e-mail setup.
That was a few hours ago. as of now, I have 137 copies of that e-mail in my in-box and they're still coming.
A few weeks ago, when I finally got my new iMac (previously I was on a G5 tower that was dying and, of course, unable to upgrade to an OS X capable of supporting iCloud... since I knew my me.com account would be closing soon, I bit the bullet and bought new hardware to support iCloud), I set up my iPad (first-gen model with latest supported iOS) and my wife's iPhone (iPhone 4 with latest supported iOS) to use iCloud with my account so we could continue to share calendars, etc. As much as I resented iCloud being forced on me just when I finally got me.com mostly working, I did like the idea of push-updates to calendars. With twin toddlers, my wife was regularing booking playdates and other activities which affected my schedule, so live syncing of our calendars sounded like a good idea at the time. Nevertheless, all I got was headaches from iCloud ever since setting it up:
We each now have double and triple calendar entries.
Some of her Notes disappear on her after a iPhone sync on the iMac.
Push notifications and calendar updates have never once worked. In fact, when entering items on what should be our iCloud calendar on one device or another, many items NEVER synced, over the air OR in iCal.
I can now no longer sync to my work calendar, which is in iCal on my work computer, a Mac Pro tower not yet on an OS X version capable of iCloud syncinc (for what that's worth). I have no control over updates to my MacOS at work, and feel as though it wouldn't matter if I did because live updates don't work for me anyway. But now I have had to re-enter a year's worth of meetings, work holidays, paydays, and late-night bookings, previously only on my Work calendar but once syncable to home, on my home calendar. Manually.
Oh, by the way, since I started typing this, my e-mailed Note from earlier tonight has continued to flood into my mailbox and now I'm up over 150 copies and they're STILL flooding in. I can see them piling up.
Rhetorically, why does iCloud suck so much? Literally, seeking an answer: what, if anything, am I doing wrong... and what can I do to make it work properly?
I feel like I did due dilligence, reading up on how to set things up right. I'm no stranger to Apple's way of doing things - I've been a Mac user since the SE/30 days. But while MobileMe and me.com merely frazzled me, iCloud is seriously messing up my life. I hate it and I hate being forced to use it in order to take full advantage of my hardware. The concept is great but I find that, in practice, it's an awful system (at least so far - hopefully, it will improve).
Any advice is welcome. Thanks in advance.
- Mike

Answer 1

By anychance did you or your wife use any forwarding options under mobile me.