In the spirit of abundance

Here are my top three favorite ideas for making a million dollars:

1. Write a book called The Madonna Effect about feminism, reinvention, and the new expansion of options for women and gays in particular.

2. Make mouthwash in small quantities for people to take with them and sip after meals. Distribute them in five-packs. Make the bottles recyclable or little single-serve pouches. No need to spit. Made with xylitol (Google it. It's amazing stuff), you would actually do good by helping people decrease tooth decay and possibly even other bacterial illnesses -- more important than ever for westerners accustomed to a diet high in white flours, rices, and simple carbohydrates. You would actually be doing people a service to make this for them, and you would both feel you had earned your worth in such a relationship. Xylitol may actually turn out to be an important tool in fighting the widespread incidence of diabetes. (The catch is that you can't allow people to ingest too much of it. The other catch: you'd need a lot of money up front to get it going.)

3. Well, this idea is not likely to make anyone rich, but it might save lives: Find a way to match the waste stream of fabrics from these places that make "miracle fabrics" -- the ones that knit up on impact to protect Olympic skiers and the ones that allow your clothing to weigh one pound and protect you from extreme cold -- with people like patrol personnel in the northern realms, Indian reservations where EMTs need uniforms that will protect them from the elements and perhaps even from each other. I still have the backpack made of Kevlar and I believe woven into Cordura fabric I used to travel repeatedly to Europe, the material used in bulletproof vests, as the salesperson was pleased to note and we were pleased to repeat.

It's weird to have all of this obscure fabric knowledge that I don't even know what to do with. My mom looked at me blankly last month when I said something about a tea towel with a "dobby weave." I explained that dobby refers to a weave that creates a pattern in the fabric, much like a herringbone twill or jacquard, anything where the design or pattern is woven into the fabric itself, as opposed to printed on it or free of any pattern. I still dream of being a textile designer when I grow up. Let's see, what are we up to? Mother, wife, writer, documentary filmmaker, designer (perhaps some kind of industrial design), architect, rock star, atelier, milliner, ski racer, backup singer for Gomez.... But I digress. Again!?