Mrs. Columbo,
The problem is probably your slow dialup connection. I have the same problem. It takes a long time for all the smilies to load, if you haven't used them in a while.
We use a lot of very active emoticons. A lot of the emoticons are so elaborate that they have large data files, and so they take a while to load, and when you add them all together, they take a loooooooog time to load. You can click on the
View more Emoticons link, and then minimize it , and let it fill in, while you do other things. Then, when you are ready for it, it will be complete. If you remember the code for a smilie, you can just type it in. For example, :(banned): will give you

. (Leave out the parentheses though--I had to put them in, so you could see the code). Be sure to leave a space, before typing the first colon. If you forget to leave a space, it will look like this:banned:.
At least I think that this is the source of your problem. If they still don't fill in after several minutes, please let me know.
Luve
Galahad