{"id":555,"date":"2026-08-14T13:28:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T13:28:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/?p=555"},"modified":"2026-09-15T21:01:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T21:01:26","slug":"another-dog-and-two-years-coming-up-on-three-in-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/another-dog-and-two-years-coming-up-on-three-in-retirement\/","title":{"rendered":"Another dog, and two years, coming up on three, in retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>9 Minute, 4 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

I haven’t written for a while, and as you may recall, one of my primary goals in retirement was to write, write and write. The lack of writing doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been anything to report on, or that my brain and hands stopped functioning at the same time. Much to the contrary. You see, as soon as there was one thing to tell you about, another popped up, and then another and another; until overwhelmed, my brain and hands became selective in their functioning. Instead of reporting on anything, I sat back and watched Victor, at the age of eight, now nine, become a Roblox video game developer. If there is one thing I have always been very content doing, for the last eight, now nine plus years, it is sitting back and watch my son grow. Gush, gush, gush!<\/p>\n

Becoming a video game developer<\/h2>\n

A a little over a year ago, Victor discovered Roblox<\/a>. His first encounter with it was on ThinkNoodles’ Roku Channel<\/a>. He started by watching ThinkNoodles (the name of the YouTuber) and others play games on YouTube. Some of these games are played on a platform called Roblox<\/a>. Watching a video of someone playing a video game is something I simply cannot get my head around. Victor, like many of his friends, enjoyed watching these YouTubers play games. There were even play dates where some of the time was spent watching their favourite games being played on YouTube. We parents limit this activity during play dates as much as we can. The idea of a live play date is for the children to play with each other. Sometimes it works and sometimes, well heck it’s their play date!<\/p>\n

From all of the watching, Victor asked if we could install the Roblox Player<\/a> on one of the phones. Which we did. Then he asked if we could install the Roblox Studio<\/a> on my computer. Roblox Studio<\/a> is a “free” platform (very much enshitified<\/a> – a new book I am reading) where developers can create their own games. Then you get your friends, and your dad, to play them (Lucia has somehow managed to avoid this parenting duty.).<\/p>\n

So it has been, for the last year or so, that I have watched Victor develop video games. This started with Victor creating simple games on Roblox<\/a>. Then he wanted to add sound. So he had to learn how to add sound. This even included recording a soundtrack with his friend and then adding it to the game. Then he got curious about the actual animations (movements) of the characters. So off he went and taught himself how to create animations. He has researched and taught himself more and more. It’s very impressive. My involvement is encouragement, everything else is him.<\/p>\n

It is most likely, when we finish building our house (more about that in another post), it will include some kind of studio where he will create and launch a YouTube channel. He wants to play his games online while subscribers watch. I will finally have a reason to subscribe to YouTube for the first time. More gush, gush, gush!<\/p>\n

Dog number three<\/h2>\n

\"Photo:<\/p>\n

Dog number three is Sabuesito, the name given to him by Victor’s friend. I couldn’t pronounce it so I started calling him “Sabi” and it stuck. Sabi followed Lucia home one morning when she was out walking Gracie and Chiquita. Kind of looks like he might be a beagle, we’re not sure. One thing for sure though, his main focus is eating, anything and everything. Sabi was a street dog so he lacked any house manners, but his happy nature and tail, that never stopped moving from side to side, got him a visit to the vet and a temporary home. While I refer to him as not very clever, Lucia’s mother and aunt point out it wasn’t lack of cleverness that got him into and house; two meals a day and a rather comfortable bed. Needless to say, Lucia’s mother and aunt have fallen for him big time, but from a distance. Gracie adores him. He plays rough, something that Chiquita neither does nor understands. After a year, he seems to have developed some self-control over what he eats and where he disposes his waste. What I am trying to say is — he is now part of the family and we each have our own dog.<\/p>\n

Back to the retirement<\/h2>\n

The last year has been relatively quiet other than trying to put a house on the land that we bought during the first year of retirement (again, more about the house building in another post). Most of my time has been spent with domestic duties like shopping and cooking. The major activity, since last I wrote, was trying to help with the survival of Victor’s school. You can read about the initial involvement in Dance, dance, dance<\/a>. I would like to provide a bit of an update, especially to those who were able to donate some money towards the school’s survival.<\/p>\n

What has happened to all the dancing?<\/h3>\n

Let me start this update with some sage advise Lucia and I received many years ago from my parents when we first moved to Hamilton. At the time we were looking for a way to get involved in the activist community within Hamilton. My parents, who had moved from Toronto to Hamilton and were doing their thing there, advised us to stand back and watch the community in action; to watch the players and the relationships. In other words, don’t jump in without knowing what you are jumping into. We followed their advise and were relatively successful in contributing what we could to the activist community in Hamilton. We attempted the same approach with Victor’s dance school, but perhaps did not wait and watch long enough, or attempted to apply a method that worked in Hamilton but not in Mexico. Who knows? We did however, learn a lot.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:
Playground preparation in progress \u2013 Photo: Robert J. Allison<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I wrote in July 2025, the school was in financial trouble. One thing they did to to alleviate some of the financial strain, aside from setting up a GoFund Me page, was to downsize the building they were using for the school. They found a new place to conduct their classes. It required a bit of fixing up but was able to accommodate the remaining students. There were a couple of rooms for dance studios, a couple of rooms for classrooms and a kitchen. The new facility lacked a playground. It did have an old dilapidated swimming pool which we were told could be turned into a playground, but the playground was not a priority for the administration. However, it was for us and the children.<\/p>\n

We had engaged the children at the old facility to help define and build a new playground. It was to be a community project. The change in building made the playground all the more necessary, given there was no where for the children to play. So we jumped in with the money that had been donated from you dear readers and our own money to build the playground.<\/p>\n

We saw the playground as a way of giving the remaining children, and their parents, a project that we could all continue to work on. By the time the school was relocated to the new building, there were six of the younger children; 3 boys and 3 girls in the lower elementary part of the school. We engaged the children by asking them again, in given so much had changed, what it was they wanted in a playground. Once we had their input, we asked one of the parent who ran a construction company for advise on what needed to be done based on the space we had been allocated at the new location.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:
Victor and a parent removing tiles \u2013 Photo: Robert J. Allison<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The space was a small swimming pool that had seen better days. It was full of debris with a lot of decay to the structure. We asked the construction parent that ran the construction company if they could design a playground based on the input provided by the children? Could they build what they designed? What would the costs be and what could we do to keep the costs down?<\/p>\n

It turned out that we could do a bunch of preliminary work like clearing out the debris that had accumulated. We could also strip all the tiles from the pool in preparation for the laying of cement. The preliminary work was ideal for getting the children involved in building their own playground. We purchased the appropriate gear needed for the stripping of the pool tiles: googles, hammers, chisels and gloves and set to work. The children were delighted to be asked to destroy something. This all happened in the fall-winter of 2025.<\/p>\n

The plan was to have the playground ready by the end of 2025. The children had the pool prepared for construction on schedule, but the construction company encountered one delay after another. We entered 2026 without a complete playground. We also lost two of the children and the main teacher to other schools. The playground was completed sometime by the end of February. Victor and I marvelled that while we were watching the playground structure go up ever so slowly, we passed by a construction site every day where a three storey office building was rapidly moving toward completion.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:
Playground construction in progress \u2013 Photo: Robert J. Allison<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The loss of the two students and teacher, placed a strain on the school activities that could be made available to the children. With each student that left, there was less money to pay for instructors. Those of us who remained, hung on as best we could, hoping the school would rise from ashes so to speak. We were down to four students, Victor and three girls. For March and April, I went to the school each day and sat in an empty room while Victor participated in whatever activities were being offered. It wasn’t long before we lost another student and the remaining three families agreed that there was no sense of in continuing. This was a relief to all, including the administrators, who (I surmise) were happy to get out of the schooling business and focus their energy and time on the business of dance.<\/p>\n

The involvement with Artifice, while failing at schooling, provided a wonderful community where we developed a number of friendships; Victor with other children and us with their parents.<\/p>\n

At Victor’s new school, I have promised myself that I will spend much more time watching and listening before getting overly involved. <\/p>\n

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I haven’t written for a while, and as you may recall, one of my primary goals in retirement was to write, write and write. The lack of writing doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been anything to report on, or that my brain and hands stopped functioning at the same time. Much to the contrary. You […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mexico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":570,"href":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions\/570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}