finder and menu bar malfunctions

I have a MacBook Pro (about 4 years old now) that I've just updated to Monterey. Yesterday, after allowing an update, Chrome stopped working and all of my menus, including the left menu in the Finder are either gone or grayed out. Chrome has no menu at the top, none of the directory buttons in the finder work and the main menu, including the apply icon, bluetooth, volume, notifications, etc are all gone. (This is not a simply issue of hovering my mouse over the top of the screen to get it back. That doesn't work). I can open some applications but the mouse won't drop the cursor so I can type in a word document, so no editing. I tried shutting some things down in the Activity Monitor but those buttons are grayed out too. I have restarted several times and even did the command+shift with the long press on the power button with the power cord unplugged. No dice. What the heck happened and how do I fix it?