Im embarrassed to say that even after reading all of these posts on how to get myself out of this loop, I'm still stuck!
So I did what others did and changed the URL to my domain name. Originally they had localhost in my URL so I just figured that should be changed...little did I know I'd be where I am now. I have gone into my wp-config.php folder and added the lines according to directions from http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL. No luck so I undid that addition. I then tried the other way on the Codex site - saved a copy of my database and then edited the URLS directly in my _options folder but STILL no luck there either!
I apologize for being a twerp on this forum but I could really use the help!
Cheers