I agree with @sam, please work to fix your Documents folder problem.
Meanwhile, if you are truly in need of a workaround, the sugar-datastore package provides two programs, copy-from-journal and copy-to-journal, that can be used in the terminal. They aren't easy to use, but they do give command syntax details.
Sorry for the delay, but socialhelp logins were broken. The sugar-devel@ mailing list was working fine, but I don't know if you subscribed.