Not Having Blend Modes in PSP AGAIN!!!!

I was working on a layout last night and trying to add an overlay then blend it into my background. Since the overlay was gray and I remember Mary saying something about that affecting blend modes, I colorized it first before trying to blend. Well, the only blend mode I got was Normal. And then I couldn't get Virtual Photographer to work on this layout either. Either PSP has a bug in version X, I have a flaky copy since no one else has this problem, or there is some interaction between kits that's giving me problems.

Birgit tried to help me with it, but she has never had this problem and her suggestions didn't help - although I really appreciate her trying to help me.

Anyone have any other suggestions on what I can try? I worked around my problems on this layout by using opacity settings and doing some things to the photo manually to get it the way I wanted - but I don't always get the effect I'm looking for - and I'm still not sure what combination of things causes this problem.

Sometimes I have the same problem trying to blend a photo.