Character Animator crash will not quit

Character animator has begun crashing at some point every time use it. An even greater problem is:

1. When it crashes, it gets stuck at the spinning beach ball

2. I got to force quit, the UI disappears, but the app is still listed in the Force Quit window

3. I wait awhile, repeat the force quit. CA will not go away or reopen (through applications or by opening project)

4. I check activity monitor and can't see any related process running (that I can identify)

5. My computer won't restart because it thinks CA is still running

6. I am forced to hold the power button down to force a shut down.

So, I've tried these things:

1. Signing in and out of Creative Cloud

2. Deleting preferences, caches

3. Uninstalling CA and reinstalling, then unistalling all CC apps and reinstalling

4. Disk repair

5. Wiped everything from my computer and did a clean install of Catalina (not ready for Big Sur)

So, I'm stuck. Help.

Specs:

OS: Catalina 10.5.7

  Model Identifier: MacBookPro14,1 (13-inch, 2017)

  Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Core i5

  Processor Speed: 2.3 GHz

  Number of Processors: 1

  Total Number of Cores: 2

  L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

  L3 Cache: 4 MB

  Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled

  Memory: 16 GB

  Boot ROM Version: 429.120.4.0.0

  SMC Version (system): 2.43f11