why is pages so f*$&#$ difficult to use

You don't describe what your problem is.

Personally I love Pages.

 

So did you managed to use it? Or was this thread created so that you could rant about it?

 

In the menubar, make the color (object) floating and the alignment "none". Then, Arrange>Send objects to background and Arrange>Make objects selectable unchecked.

Next is the odd part. If the object doesn't cover the whole page, you can click outside it and start editing the text. But when it covers the whole page, you've got to do some sort of combo of left clicking and right clicking to get text editing back. Or, I think you can just click the "Outline" button twice to get back to text editing.

Counterintuitive? Yes!

 

I don't know. 6 months of Pages and I got much more good-looking documents than in 15 years of using MS Word and that because, for me, Pages is much easier to use than Word. YMMV though.