Where Is My Inner Gypsy?

Above, you see a picture of Ms. Moon in her brand new shorts dancing with her poodle-mutt, Buster. Buster obviously needs to go see Miss Beverly, his adored groomer, and Ms. Moon obviously needs to have a chat with Mr. Blackwell or preferably, Tim Gunn.
I went shopping on Wednesday. I was already in town, having gone by Mr. Moon's place of employment to do some data entry for him, which is something I do about once a month and it's sort of enjoyable, being in an office situation and pretending I know what I'm doing. Of course, I always screw something up and come THIS close to storming out and saying, "Well why don't you do it yourself, then?!" when he tries to explain to me what it is I'm screwing up, but by the time the next month has rolled around, I've forgotten all of that and I put on a skirt and blouse and go pretend to be a secretary again.
Anyway, after a good two hours of hard, secretarial labor, I determined that I OWED it to myself to go buy something. It'd been a long time since I bought anything new for myself and I needed to go get the battery in my watch fixed anyway, so I trotted over to the local retail mall and found the battery man as soon as I walked into the mall. He was great and fixed my watch right up. I love my watch, even though I don't wear it very often. It's a Timex and it has that great Indiglo feature which is just about the coolest thing ever. You can use that Indiglo as a flashlight if you really need to see in the dark. So I was all happy and fired up, having my watch working again and I decided to go upstairs and check out the Gap, which I had just been to the week before with my daughter, Lily. We hadn't seen anything that day but blechy brown ugly clothes, but I was thinking I'd missed something and I'd try again. I love the Gap and I'll tell you why- the selection is limited. No thousands of racks of different styles and colors. Just a few racks of a few styles and a few colors, making selection so much easier. As I have said before, I basically live in men's cargo shorts and tank tops and I love to find the cargoes on sale at the Gap because you can get a pair of shorts that will last for eons for less than twenty dollars and that suits me just fine.
Well, they didn't have any men's cargoes on sale, but they did have women's and by golly, I bought a pair. Not only are they women's, but they are PURPLE! Sort of. Which just blew my whole wardrobe concept out of the water like A NOOKULAR (why can't politicians pronounce nuclear? huh?) BOMB. I mean, I have khaki cargoes and beige but I've never had purple, plus they were women's, so you can imagine how exciting this was for me.
I shopped around Dillards for awhile, in the women's section, hoping to find some t-shirts that I'd seen a few months ago that were gorgeous graphic prints but which cost like a hundred dollars, hoping I'd find them on sale for 75% off, which is almost like free, but I couldn't so I didn't buy anything there.
And then I went to Marshall's where I found two tank tops, one black and one GREEN, which is also a brand-new concept for me because all my tank tops are black. Plus, these weren't those tissue-thin ones (which means you have to wear at least two shirts which defeats the purpose of shirts and really doesn't work for women having hot flashes) that come down to your knees, but racer-back, regular thickness ones that come down to a normal place for a shirt.
So I was feeling pretty sassy and proud of myself for just pushing that wardrobe envelope until I realized that I'd just bought exactly the same things that I've been wearing for at least a decade, only in slightly different colors and I got a little bit depressed.
I thought that by this age I'd be one of those lovely eccentric women who wear great costumey, gypsy outfits, all velvets and colors and drapey and just....FUN! You know- hell, it's not like I'm trying to "fit in" anymore. Plus, I thought I'd be wearing terrific dramatic make-up like stark eye-liner and eye-shadow applied in layers of gold and purple and teal. AND, big chunky jewelry. Turquoise, amber, giant stones like Wilma Flintstone would wear. Sparkly and heavy and when I made an entrance, I'd make an entrance! I may not have youth and beauty on my side anymore, but by golly, I can have drama!
Right?
But here I am, still wearing my cargo shorts and my tank tops. I put on make-up approximately once every two weeks. My jewelry is still subdued and smallish. Except when I'm wearing my armful of silver bracelets which I've already been doing for most of my life and I hardly ever do that anymore anyway.
I keep thinking about that commercial with Diane Von Furstenburg and how she says that although she never knew exactly what she wanted to do, she always knew exactly the sort of woman she wanted to be. Which is why she's a card member, but that's beside the point.
I thought I knew the sort of woman I wanted to be, too, and I thought I'd be her by now.
But I'm not.
I'm just an aging old hippie in cargo shorts with no make-up on.
And just like with a lot of things I thought I'd be or that I'd be doing by this age, it hasn't happened yet, this transformation into a wild gray-haired gypsy woman who knows what she's doing and knows where she's going because she has the confidence and wisdom of her years.
But my hair is turning gray, slowly, and I did buy purple(ish) cargo shorts so maybe I'm heading there. Maybe I, too, will become the woman I always wanted to be.
I'm not giving up hope yet.
I'm going to really, really try to become the woman I want to be, the colorful butterfly who swirls and whirls her gypsy skirts around her and who flashes her psychedelic eyelids.
Maybe I need help.
Tim Gunn- where ARE you? I'd love to make that man some nice dinner and then sit around, letting him give me fashion advice while we sipped thimbles full of sherry.
"Make it work, dear," he'd say as he was leaving. He'd bend over and kiss me on the cheek and I would. I would MAKE IT WORK!
Meanwhile, I think I'll go put on some mascara. It'll be a start.