Figured it out.
Finally.
the seven days is up and it still doesn't work.
at the advice of a coworker, I reluctantly downloaded chrome, signed in to my account in an incognito tab( jumping thru the hoops, resetting password again, "securing" my account, code sent to recovery email, 2fa code to my *new phone number, yes this is me, blah, blah, ya da-ya da.)
left the tab open, and signed into gmail on my browser of choice.
clicked yes this is me on chrome
left gmail open on the private browser
closed chrome (with google signed in on an incognito tab)
opened chrome and got the prompt to enter password to sign in again. Signed into a different account and then signed out.
Uninstalled chrome.
signed out and signed back in to gmail on the private browser.
done.
no more problems.
thank god. Did not want to go thru changing my email address for five credit cards , two banks, usps, Amazon, myFico, ex,tu, eq, ck, hboMax, Netflix, PayPal, cash app, Venmo, eBay, half a dozen print subscriptions and dozens of other things I'm forgetting.
only problem is now I have a string of six characters added to my password
hold on I need to log in one more time to make sure it still works...
...yep
