Alex, what is Provo Canyon?

I can't think of the right category, though, for the question. Potent potables? But that only applies to half of the question: As the sun sets on Lindsay Lohan and my eldest daughter, where are they both laying their heads to sleep? Yep, in scenic but the willies producing Utah County: there's a whole lot of religion and bad architecture going on down Provo way, makes me shiver. The difference is that my chaste and Polly Purehearted daughter is snoozing away at Girl Scout camp where I delivered her excited little GS self this morning and that other gal, the one who is deeply, deeply troubled, sad and self-involved, is sleeping it off a little further on up the canyon in her new get clean digs.

And how about this for a comparison of extremes. Lindsay leaves a drug rehab center after a month of therapy and heads to Vegas to sip energy drinks, wink, wink, yeah energy drinks, with a whole lot of folks who didn't take any stinking sobriety pledge. She so very obviously values her own sobriety and would never take any risks with her career and health, not that Lindsay, she's too much of a smart cookie for those kinds self destructive high jinks.

As opposed to this moring, when I asked Ellie if she had packed her fanny pack, she jumped like she had been shot because she just remembered it still contained two contraband packs of Trident gum that she learned from her last GS camp experience are forbidden fruit and not welcome at GS camp. She tore into the pack, emptied out the gum and cast it away from her, out devil, out. My girl won't even try to smuggle sugar free gum into Trefoil Ranch even without an aspartame detecting ankle bracelet.

But won't my girl get a kick out of knowing that she and Lindsay spent the week just a few miles apart? breathing the same bracing mountain air, both riding horses along side the Weber River, attending group meetings to discuss the principles of beating addiction though a twelve-step program? Oh wait, that one's just for Ms. Lohan. Ellie will be making boondoggle key fobs, whew, what a relief, much better.

And, yes, I agree that I know too much about Ms. Lohan's escapades because (a) you just can't escape the coverage, it's shamefully pervasive, and (b) my girls want to know what it all means, why is she always getting in trouble?, what does rehab mean? what's a DUI? We have some interesting conversations about how Lindsay just keeps forgetting to say no. So we wish Ms. Lohan the best, but since the true human drama is happening about 150 miles south of Provo Canyon, all my best thoughts and hopes for recovery are for those miners and their families tonight. Sorry Lindsay, you're on your own.