I’m grateful for windshields, wind socks and wine cozies. I don’t drink wine but it’s nice to know the wife’s bottle of red is warm and comfortable before taking its dive down her gullet.

Guard rails, duck tails, and tube socks — I had a friend, in the 1980s, and his duck tail was long enough to tuck into the back of his jeans. He wore tube socks, too, and chances are he’d seen a guard rail.

Trifecta.

I’m grateful for feather dusters. With a proboscis I can stretch to ridiculous lengths for tickling my kids. Laundry baskets, yard sale art, and any portraits of Jesus that seem sort of ridiculous.

My wife is also grateful for silly Jesus.

Foot powder deserves my gratitude, trust me. Yours too. No, really. Throwing darts, porch furniture and the modern beer can. Civilization in a few short words.

Back-bead seat cushions, improvised funnels when you run out of gas, aluminum foil antennas, stained welcome mats, slick doorknobs that can only be turned with a sleeve-covered hand.

Society is much better off for daredevil ceiling fans, the kind that jerk back and forth violently as they spin, threatening at any moment to fall out of the ceiling.

And bathtub tread. You lose a full yard of glide along the bottom to keep your feet while toweling off. Tradeoffs, am I right?

Garish wind chimes made of poorly assembled natural materials. Seashells. Driftwood. Mushrooms.

I’m grateful for hot sauce, though I don’t like spicy food. Some people just love it so much.

I’m grateful for light switches that glow, Christmas lights left up all year, eyeglasses on rainy days and all the bald spots in my beard.

I’m grateful for food. Yeah, that’s a good one. And coffee, while it’s in the cup and hasn’t yet splashed all over the interior of my car.

I’m grateful for dogs that eat car-seat crumbs, and wives that pretend to let you install said car seat, then do it again — the right way — behind your back.

I grateful for gratitude, for being finally able to recognize that almost everything in life is a gift at one time or another, if for nothing else than making a good story somehow better.

Did I mention soft toilet seats? Grateful for those, too, even when they leak like a Whoopee Cushion and get your in-laws in the next room to exchange that disapproving look of theirs.

Doilies. Dollies. Dames. Daft Punk. Doorstops. Anything with rhubarb. Out-of-tune calliopes and the revelers who sing along.

Moms, wives, and cranky cooks for the holidays. Love you, Amy! Happy Thanksgiving.

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James Faulk is a writer living in Eureka. He can be reached at faulk.james@yahoo.com.