was unable to create an icloud address. What am I doing wrong?

Went thru list of guidances. Already had an AppleID from years ago. Used the third option and called AppleCare. Talked to Rashan (pardon if misspell names) who couldn't help, then passed to Mickey who had me go through the same process. Then Mickey informed me of some stuff that made the iCloud account a moot point: The option to include Mail in the iCloud account asks me to set up an iCloud EMAIL account. As far as I know (since I have not tried ALL the apps in this sidebar) this is the only item that requires me to CREATE an iCloud email account.

There is something wrong with the iCloud signup. It may be that I already have such an account and just don't know it but Mickey says that can't happen - it won't ask me to create one if I already have one. But she admitted they have recently had some problems with this.

However, this is again moot for me since I don't NEED an iCloud email account, having a perfectly good Google mail account. To get into iCloud to look at my data (outside of my own Mac instantiations) I just sign into iCloud.com on the web, according to Mickey. So thanks for the help... which didn't.... but I'm good.