You have something to eat or drink first

You often have some wine or beer before bed -- that is, the woman you've become often does. The college boy you used to be had taken to drinking ****, occasionally to excess, but mostly for the effects and not the taste. He had liked sweet drinks, and had learned to tolerate cheap beer because it was available and because he had thought he was expected to. He also hadn't minded white zinfandel because it was sweet and had a lot more **** than beer.

You, on the other hand, don't like sweet drinks any more. Since you finished university, you've stopped drinking sweet coffee and tea, tend to drink beers with no obvious sweetness, and developed a real fondness for dry rosé wines and those extremely dry Sauvignon Blancs produced in New Zealand. The residue of your former self squirms a bit, deep inside the Carrie self that's now your own, and you find you enjoy that uneasiness very much.

You put a little salt in a tall glass, fill the glass with cold water from a pitcher you take from the fridge, and drink most of the glassful. You have some adequate, very dry, Sauvignon Blanc box wine in a nearly-full three-liter box in the fridge, and you dispense about four ounces of it into one of your slightly expensive white-wine glasses and have a sip. You enjoy it more than usual, mostly because the remnant of your former self genuinely hates it and you genuinely like it.

That delicious clash between what I like and what he likes... I love it! you think. Then you raise your glass and say, softly but definitely aloud, "To the new me, Carolyn Susan Ma!" and down half of what's left in the glass. Gradually you finish your glass. After that you think for a while,