problem w/ path referenced in menu

i am having a problem with paths referenced in menus.

using drupal core functionality i go to
Home > administer > Site building > samplemenu > Add item.
and add an item with the path my-page-path
where my-page-path is the path set up for node/109.

it saves correctly but when i go to Re-edit the same item,
instead of showing the path to be my-page-path which i had typed in and successfully saved, it shows
node/109.

more importantly, when i try to use menu_tree_all_data('samplemenu'), the item contains
$item['link']['href'] with value node/109 whereas i want to get at my-page-path.

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i think a patch is mentioned here:
http://drupal.org/node/162633
but i think that patch addresses the admin problem not the function problem.

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bottom line, i would like to be able to access the correct href, is there any way i could do that?