Now at the point where I have to actually start thinking if I'm going to continue playing - continuing at the level I'm at is too painful - so, searching around for another chess site on which to begin honing my skills.
And I found this: Lichess.org
Free, open source (not that I need that), and - a bonus, whereas chess.com frequently crashes my browser, or becomes unresponsive or takes far too long to make a move - this site works clean and quick. Note that this is not necessarily a flaw in the site - my laptop crashes on many sites - usually a result of too many embedded ads or media, videos, etc. - long overdue for a "better laptop" - but it does help to play something in real-time so I can assess quickly how and where I'm fucking up.
Now to get better...