I may have found out how to do this. I'm answering my
own messages now, this is really getting bad. (The next
step will be talking to the monitor.) In the Locals window
of the debugger I was able to watch the caption property of
the Add and Edit buttons change based on what had been
clicked. So based on these captions, I can allow or disallow
usage of the combo boxes by using something like ..

IF AT_C("Add",this.caption)#0 && same thing for the edit button
thisform.cb1.enabled=.T.
thisform.cb2.enabled=.T.
thisform.cb2.enabled=.T.
Else
thisform.cb1.enabled=.F.
thisform.cb2.enabled=.F.
thisform.cb2.enabled=.F.
ENDIF

DODEFAULT()

It seems to work so far. At least they're turning the right
color at the right time.

This is appealing because I still don't have to modify the
class itself, in case I want to use it for something else
later.

Thank you so much for your help.

- Bob