The children's museum

In between winter storms last week, while the roads and sky were clear, I took my daughters to a local children's museum. We were in dire need of a change of location with having been housebound due to the weather. I knew the girls would enjoy the museum, but it did not occur to me that I would enjoy it almost as much as they did.

While my daughters painted, mixed dyes and squished red and blue play dough together to make new colors, in between taking photos of them I gazed around the studio.

 The back wall caught my eye almost immediately

  so I turned to see what gems the other walls held.

 Even the gift shop offered a photo op.

But it was the water room that held us all spellbound. In between taking shots of my daughters playing and getting thoroughly soaked even with a waterproof smock on - just how do kids manage that? - I took photos of one of my favorite subjects. Yep. Water.

After reading the text on this display, it must be said that I stood there staring at the information and hoping that my mouth had not fallen open. You see, while I am in no way the most intelligent person I know, neither I am the dumbest...but that is exactly how I felt.

Vortexes in Nature: tornadoes, hurricanes, conflicting tides and toilet. The equation in my mind was flushing the toilet = tornado. Hmmm... While the workings of a toilet are not foreign to me, I just had never thought of it in quite that way before. Flushing the toilet = tornado.

Of course, now every time someone flushes in our house, I keep picturing a mini tornado, or waterspout, fighting valiantly to raise up and out into the atmosphere instead of going down into the toilet drain pipes. Not a pretty thought, or one I am particularly proud of, but the trip the children's museum put it there.

Potty humor aside, the beauty of the movement, translucency, reflectivity and power of the contained vortex was just too strong to resist. I could have stood there for hours taking photos of the water as it danced within its confines.

 

The child in me, the one who always has to touch the paint to see if it really is wet, fairly itched to run my hand through the water to see if the pattern, once disturbed, would stay on its new route or revert to that pictured here. The temptation was too much. It reverted.