A Slippery Slope

"Look at that tree," I said as our car drove along California Route 46.
"Nice," Mr. Wonderful said at the steering wheel.
"Its foliage is beautiful."
"Yes."
"Wouldn't it look good in our garden?"
Silence.

One of the best things about traveling is souvenirs and how they give you new ideas for your own life. Sometimes what you see sparks an idea for: 1) A gift for friend; 2) A gift for yourself; or 3) A regift for your boss who made you work overtime without overtime pay.

While vacationing in the California Sierras, Mr. Wonderful was hesitant about my affinity for the tree because: 1) It was large; 2) It had a mass of leaves; and 3) It dropped every last one of them on the ground in the seven seconds that we were looking at it. If my spouse had to choose between raking leaves and going to the home improvement store 106 times in one day, he would take the latter, hands--and drills--down.

But the tree was just one of the good ideas I'd gotten while we were vacationing in California's mountain country. I also liked the indoor stone fireplaces, the outdoor fire pits and the random boulders decorating the grounds. My spouse informed me that we already had an indoor brick fireplace, an outdoor fire pit and although we didn't have any boulders, we had some nice pebbles near the front door, which were sort of like boulders.

Sort of, like. Not. But wouldn't another another fireplace, another fire pit be better? More was always better.

Determined to find some idea I could import to our house I saw one at the hotel.
"Aren't the little bears on that statue cute?" I said laughing at the carved wooden bears clustered around the hotel's welcome sign.
"It's a slippery slope," Mr. Wonderful said pointing to a second larger statue of three bears foraging. Together the statues would have created a fine grotto that Smokey the Bear fans would have loved.

"Look there, and there, and there," Mr. Wonderful said pointing out three more bear statues, which were composed of increasingly more bears. It was a regular Bear Jamboree!

I grabbed my camera to document the situation since I hadn't seen so many bears out of hibernation since my last family reunion.

Bears, bears everywhere! I even took a picture of a bear statue which had its own cameras! I thought it was hilarious!  

Mr. Wonderful was not amused. He likes simple things and usually I do, too, but there was something comical and appealing about the bears. When I stopped looking through my camera viewfinder, I noticed there were even more bear statues. Whoever did the landscaping for this hotel and its grounds was "barely" thinking because when I scanned the property I noticed two dozen works of "bear art" aka "Be'art".

Then it ht me. This was indeed a slippery slope for more was not always better. One well placed bear statue would have said it all about the nature of the hotel. Yes, the landscaper would have been wiser to have used just the original statue I'd seen of the two little bears. Or if they wanted to express their humor, the bear with the cameras. Or if they wanted to express their "more is better" motto, a bear falling over a slippery slope. A slippery slope indeed.

"Do you want any souvenirs before we leave the Sierras?" Mr. Wonderful asked as he loaded our luggage into the souvenir-free car.

"I've got everything I need," I said linking my arm through his.