1. No matter how prepared you think you are, the project you’re working on is going to require more than one trip to the hardware store.

2. Blue cheese dressing is really, really tasty.

3. I can say anything I want to about my family… but woe be unto the outsider who looks at one of them cross-eyed.

4. It’s important to know how to change your own motor oil.

5. When you’re family, distance doesn’t matter.

6. More often than not, the best thing you can do is stay home.

7. I’d rather spend a day with my animals than most people I know.

8. In the summertime, a whole tomato is a perfectly acceptable lunch option.

9. Sometimes the truth hurts, but hurt fades and truth remains.

10. The things you look back on most fondly are usually the moments that didn’t seem that extraordinary at the time.

Father’s Day is usually the time when we build a laundry list of superlatives about our male parental unit. That’s a temptation I’m going out of my way to resist. The relationship between fathers and sons far too complex to distill into generic terms like “best” or “greatest.” God knows there were some rough patches over the years and we both had some culpability there, but we’ve probably got a better and more healthy relationship now than we ever had when we were living under the same roof. Some sons go through their entire lives with a father who’s little more than a genetic donor. For up and down, good and bad, I’ve had a dad. That’s pretty much a jackpot.