Reb:
Welcome to the forum. I strongly believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. After years of study, I arrived at the following logic associated with Genesis. All scripture must be interpreted in the content of all scripture, nothing can be interpreted on its own.
First in terms of the number of days, it is true that the Hebrew word “yom” can refer to short or long periods of time. The terms “in that day” or the “day of the Lord” refer to long periods of time. However, every time the word “yom” is used with an ordinal number, it refers to a short period of time. I believe that creation was revealed to an individual (either Moses or kept alive via oral tradition until codified by Moses) over a 7 day period, similar to The Revelation was revealed to John. It is amazing to me that creation begins with “Let there be light” and this was documented thousand of years ago, when for a long time after the Big Bang, all matter was in the form of subatomic particles and all energy was in the form of protons. The individual to which creation was revealed had to put creation in the terms they knew, which explains some similarities between this creation account and Ancient Near East creation myth.
With regard to the creation of Adam and the Garden, there are clear discrepancies in the creation sequence. Note that no sea life was created in the Garden account. In the Garden account, the sun, moon stars and the earth have already been created. It is clear to me from scripture (writing of Paul) that through one man all have spiritual death and through on man all have spiritual life, so as Jesus was a real man, so too would Adam have been a real man. I don’t see how you can argue that Adam was made directly by God because of the very plain text in Genesis and in Luke, Adam is referred to as the “son of God”.
There is a clear pattern in the genealogies in the Old Testament, the line or lines leading to the Messiah are always given after the line or lines not leading to the Messiah with one exception, Adam. The first creation account closes with the phase “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth” using the same Hebrew word for generations as in many of the genealogies. I believe the first creation account describes the line not leading to the Messiah, and the Garden account shows the start of the line leading to the Messiah.
With Genesis 1 and 2 being sequential, there is no conflict with evolution.