How do I stop my notes from doubling when I modify them?

First of all, I got notes to sync correctly between my mac and iphone by doing a lot of hokey pokey (activating and disactivating) and restarting several times. Now they do sync. I have since added my fabulous ipad mini to the mix.

My only problem is that my notes double. First it started on my mac. It would create a duplicate of the note, now on the ipad it's doing the same thing. Now even on my iphone sometimes it will duplicate the note after a modification. It's not the end of the world, but it does make one nervous about potentially deleting the more recent note instead of the less recent one by error.

Additionally, my mac sometimes refuses to create a note the first time, i.e., I creat note, it dissappears, and I creat new note again and it stays the 2nd time. I am aware that I may potentially be causing my own problems since my apple ID is @mac.com not @me.com or @icloud.com, but before having to give up my @mac.com identity I'd like to make sure it will provide a solution. I also do not want an @icloud.com email address seeing as seems impossible to reinitiate the apple ID password by mail if the Apple ID is the same as the email with which it is associated.

Any suggestions to avoid doubling notes? Any ideas why notes (friends experiences) does not sync automatically when it's activated? We've had success going in and modifying each note to get it to sync, but it's not a very elegant solution. Why don't notes sync automatically all the time?