looking for clues about temporary, random widget insensitivity

[Paul Barton-Davis <pbd Op Net>]

my program Quasimodo uses a rich set of GTK+ widgets. one recurrent
problem that i've had from day one has been temporary insensitivity of
widgets to button press events. i am pretty sure that its something i
am doing wrong, but i don't know what to look for. 

when the program starts up, for example, the buttons are not
sensitive. if i swirl the mouse around, leave the window, do a few
things like that, then they will work. later, some other event (often
another button-press event) will lead them to be insensitive until i
play more games with the mouse.

it feels like a button-release event that isn't handled right, but
that justs my guess. 

just so its clear, i don't do anything with GTK_STATE_INSENSITIVE.

any clues ?

--p