Today is Thanksgiving, the day we share turkey, dressing and pecan pie.

As I’ve done for all my adult life, I can use Thanksgiving as a time to give thanks for all the wonderful people in my life and the many blessings I’ve been fortunate to receive.

This Thanksgiving, I’m going to turn the sentiments around. It’s time to stop focusing on my blessings and thank people who seldom get the thanks for what they do day in and day out.

Your neighbors. I’ve got great neighbors.

They check on my dog if it’s raining and always have a smile for us.

They’ve saved us when a water pipe broke, checked on our house when the alarm went off unexpectedly and will bring the empty trash cans and recycling bins up to our house when they know my husband’s out of town.

I need to thank them with a personal visit, not a text, and express how important they are to our whole block.

The grocery-store baggers. In the old days, sackers would bag up your groceries, load them in a cart and help you put the bags in your car. We’d tip them and everybody won.

For those of us who still physically shop in the grocery store, the baggers do the job but don’t get the tip.

Thank them for bagging your groceries. Make some small talk with them. You’re already standing there so why not acknowledge the person separating your eggs from the bread.

The librarians. I love the library. When I was a young girl, the library was my favorite place in the world.

I was in love with the wonderful smell of old books and bindings, the towering bookshelves and the thousands of books that allowed me to learn, relax and visit people and places from all time periods.

Librarians do a lot more than check out books. They shelve books we leave on tables, read voraciously, create seasonal displays and encourage children to become life-long readers.

I haven’t thanked them for their knowledge and willingness to recommend books to library patrons. They deserve thanks for keeping the library one of the last quiet sanctuaries in the world.

Behind-the-counter workers. People feel workers at the fast-food joint or the corner store already get paid so why thank them.

It’s their job, after all, to take our money, bag up our purchases and do everything fast and efficiently.

You are correct. But you could smile and thank them.. Look at life from their point of view. People are surly, grouchy and in a hurry. They stand there for over eight hours and have to smile at customers they probably want to punch in the face.

The mail carriers. Email and text messaging has replaced birthday cards and letters we put in an envelope and mail.

But there’s hundreds of postal workers who still put your mail in the right slot or box every single day, and we don’t even know what those people look like.

No matter how paperless we’re becoming, the U.S. Post Office is still delivering mail to you, whether that’s junk flyers or your paper copies of your credit-card statements.

Tape a note to your mailbox thanking your carrier for delivering your mail and your packages.

Our readers. I want to thank you for taking time to read my musings all these years, both in print and online.

If you’re a subscriber, thank you for supporting your local, home-town newspaper and the folks who deliver the paper to your driveway every day.

From my heart, thank you for giving me your time and allowing me to share my thoughts with you every week.

To as you ponder all of life’s blessings, consider those who seldom get thanked and make sure they know you appreciate them.

It’s a great way to start the Yuletide holiday season.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.