Feeling incompetent, pls be gentle. I have yet to find a means of increasing the padding on text boxes - I'm sure somewhere there must be a setting, but honestly I'm too frazzled to keep looking. No shading eliminates the problem in some instances, but background is a photo and in some places, I need the beige box. Help, please, please, please, oh Pleeeeeeze!

Try adding this code to your pages as a Code object of type "In Css".

.dfltt{padding-left:6px; padding-right:6px}

If in doubt about how to do this, see Help > Load tutorials > Code. Change the padding in the code (6 pixels) to whatever you want. This will affect all text objects on the page -- and won't show until you preview or publish. if you want to change only some text objects, that is possible too, just a little more complicated.