Sometimes your ~/ (home folder) permissions mess up in Mac OS X - this is how I fixed mine. Bear in mind that THIS HAS ONLY BEEN TESTED ON AN ADMINISTRATOR ACCOUNT!. What this process does, is to recursively set YOU as the owner of your ~/ (home) folder, and ALL files and folders within it.
You may like to Google "ACL fix Mac OS X" - this is just a quick fix, to get you up and running, but should sort you out without needing anything further.
