Well, I am not sure if this is clue or not but I went through a sequence of turning off ALL my Shields and then, while leaving both my email and Avast screens open, started opening up each Web Shield one by one, each time logging in and out of my email. My email login worked for each web shield as it opened. When they were ALL open, I then closed my Avast Monitor screen and my email login failed. I then went back into Avast and repeated the whole process over again (ie: shut off my shields and then turned them back on, one by one) BUT THIS TIME, I pinned my Avast Monitor screen to my Taskbar and everything works - my email logs in and all my web shields are up. Go figure.
Thanks everyone for helping. I hope that I have fixed my problem. If not, I will be back to continue the conversation.