The other day, a meme caught my eye. “If your job requires an ‘appreciation day,’ you’re not getting paid enough.” Since this was coming on the heels of Teacher Appreciation WEEK, it hit a nerve with me. Usually, I enjoy helping out with the special events hosted by our schools to celebrate our teachers, but since my kids aren’t physically in school, and most celebration type activities have been minimized, it almost passed by without me even realizing it.

Then, one of my kid’s teachers sent me a text appreciating ME for my work this past year, since I’ve been sort of an ad hoc teacher this year. At least I know now that the only possible gift that could show the proper amount of appreciation for our teachers is a very expensive bottle of wine, a month at a luxury spa, and seven nights straight of eight hours of sleep.

At any rate, I got to thinking about what other appreciation days and weeks we celebrate, and I came up with nurses, firefighters, law enforcement, dietitians, librarians and administrative assistants. I was not surprised to find days for doctors, dentists, pharmacists as well as special days acknowledging the women in those professions. I was a little more surprised to find appreciation days for linemen, farriers, auctioneers and miners.

Of course, if you Google things long enough, eventually you can find a corner of the world that celebrates even the craziest thing. I’m sorry to tell you, you just missed “Hug a Newsperson Day,” which happens every year on April 4.

You can’t go a week on social media without having some sort of “National Love Your (fill in the blank) Day.” If it’s not “Love Your Amazing Son or Daughter Day,” it’s definitely some kind of “National 4-Legged Friend Day.” We just celebrated Mother’s Day and Father’s Day is right around the corner. It seems like we can always find a day to tell someone that they’re amazing and wonderful and thank them for a job well done.

But what about the other 364 days of the year? My kids did a great job on Mother’s Day. I had my special breakfast, lovely cards and some new perennials to add to our ever-expanding experiment to see what plants we can manage not to kill. They even spent a few hours helping mulch and tidy up the backyard.

Three days later, I found myself beating my head against the car window, as G forgot his cleats for the third time this baseball season. The season is only about three weeks old. I made him go without them the previous two times, but this was a game, and the only shoes he had with him were his loafers.

It was sorely tempting to make him play in his dress shoes, but I didn’t want to handicap the team or take the chance of him losing his footing on wet grass and getting hurt. I would gladly have traded my new Spanish lavender for him checking and double checking the packing list of items that I’d texted him an hour before we left.

I feel the same way about teachers. I’ve never doubted what a challenge a teacher’s job can be. I grew up in a teacher household, and I know it’s not a 9-5 job. However, this last year I’ve had to juggle three different kids, with three different learning styles, and three different work ethics, and try to not lose my patience every other second of the day. I slam into Friday afternoon unable to see straight because I’m trying to remember which explorer saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time, what the volume of a cylinder is, and how to conjugate verbs in Spanish all at the same time.

While a lovingly prepared breakfast or basket of treats would certainly take the edge off that stress, having kids who are well-prepared and ready to learn every day of the school year would probably make their jobs a lot easier. Having parents or guardians who support them and back them up when it comes to enforcing discipline might be better than having a gift card for a cup of coffee.

I think about all my doctor and nurse friends who have begged people to follow precautions, wear masks and stay home for the last year so that they can catch a break. It doesn’t seem like too many people appreciated them then. Sometimes people don’t need balloons, or flowers, or cookie trays to feel appreciated. Sometimes, they just need to be listened to.

I look at so many of these jobs and think there is no way any amount of money could compensate for what the people who do them endure. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, though. This past year, since I followed a pretty strict grocery shopping schedule, I got to know my regular checkout folks. I was truly relieved every week when I saw them there and I knew they hadn’t gotten sick. As I got to know them better, they’d tell me about some of the headaches they’d had to endure over the week, people being rude or ignorant, and yet they were almost always pleasant and polite to a fault. There wasn’t much I could do for them, other than to be polite in return or to drop comment cards at the service desk, telling their supervisors what a great job they did. I don’t know that I found a grocery store worker appreciation day or week, but we definitely need one of those, too.

So, I’m going to follow my own advice to my kids and take those appreciation days and spread them out over the course of a year. I’m going to try to be a lot more conscientious about expressing my gratitude, particularly to those people who are doing jobs that I could probably do myself, but know that I really do not have the ability or the desire to do, and thank them profusely.

I’m also going to think about how I can make their jobs easier. I know it’s easier said than done, and there are bound to be days when I’m just not grateful for anything, but those are probably the days I need to be the most gracious. Of course, this could all just be an elaborate plan to get out of buying that fancy new fish finder that the Wonderful Husband has his eye on for Father’s Day. I know the fish will appreciate it if the kids and I show our appreciation for him just a little bit every day instead.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.