I would not, by any means, say my yoga instructor and I were ever dating, but when I left the gas on my stove lit for an entire 24 hours and thought my apartment was going to explode, he was the first person I called.

Five months before I moved to New York City, I found myself in a tiny apartment of a stranger in East Village at 4 a.m. The stranger's name was Brandy, she was a psychic and, besides telling me I was likely to fall pregnant within three months, everything she said about my future was spot on. She told me my ex-boyfriend was moving closer to me, (a fact he'd actually relayed to me earlier that day that I had not disclosed to Brandy), yet I was under absolutely no circumstances to see him, even if he looked really good in hats. She told me it was clear I wasn't looking for a relationship, but not to worry -- when it happened, it would be right. And, most importantly, Brandy told me about my career. She said in the coming months, I'd be actively seeking a new position and would be confused as to which offer to take. She told me I'd be skeptical about whatever job I'd eventually choose, but again -- everything would work out in the end.

Some of the most romantic moments in my life have happened by the water. 

"So, what was wrong with this guy?," Chelsea asked me at midnight while she sipped her margarita. We were sitting across from each other at a bar downtown we'd chosen specifically because of the cute lightbulbs, though the mere fact we'd even ended up together on this night was completely impromptu. I had been on a date, she'd been getting drinks with a friend and, after I'd told the guy I had to go home because I was pretty sure my stove was on, Chels and I met at the bar to recap our evenings.

Two hours after I posted my blog last Tuesday evening, I was walking next to the Flatiron Building after finishing an intense yoga class while talking to my mom on the phone. She sounded terrible -- she'd been sick and losing her voice for the past few days, part of the job risk included in working at an elementary school full of cute, but germ-y children, I suppose -- but, on top of that, she was highly, highly concerned with the material I'd just posted to the Internet.

I knew I shouldn't have been dating Jamie the first time he drove me home. We got into his car -- a rarity in this city -- and, as I leaned over to fasten my seatbelt, he leaned over to light the candle he keeps aflame in his cup holder every time he drives.

That was on our first date.

When I turned 23, I did so in a gay bar in the heart of New York City -- still in my yoga clothes and clutching both my mat and gin with an equal amount of effort. This was a much different scenario than when I turned 22, laying on a pullout couch in Chicago while eating pretzels and watching One Direction videos with my wonderful friend Ellen and, again, very, very different from when I turned 21, took four consecutive shots of Cherry Burnettes vodka, then immediately threw up at 12:01.

One of my most vivid memories from childhood involves eating in a restaurant with my mom and two younger brothers. The three of us kids were all under the age of 10 and seated in a booth, facing my mom, eating French fries and getting along wonderfully, as the Prandato children generally do. 

"I think I need to get better at dating," I told Zach on Saturday night. We were sitting across the table from each other in my kitchen in the complete dark, save for two lit candles and the bottle of wine we were splitting in front of us. It sounds romantic, but Zach and I do this often in the most platonic, bromance-y way possible since his job has given him access to a fully-stocked Spanish wine closet.

A few weeks ago, after coming back from a successful night at Barfly, I sat in a cab on my way back to the Upper East Side and decided to make a list of reasons why I didn't have a boyfriend. I'm not quite sure what prompted this, but it may have been because I'm mostly kidding, yet actually sort of serious about finding one with an air-conditioning unit before summer in NYC really hits.

Whenever anyone asks me how adulthood is going, I tell them that it's not. This isn't because it's going badly. It's because, despite me living alone and quite literally providing for myself, I really can't believe that I'm actually an adult.

Since moving to New York, I have had a lot of life experiences. I've become friends with Steve, the 86-year-old half-blind man who lets me hold his dog every time we're at Starbucks together while he tells me stories about when he worked at LIFE and I explain how TIME's iPad app works. I've attempted to put my contacts on in the dark at 5 a.m., which instead resulted in me scratching my cornea and showing up at an eye doctor like a lost little puppy with a swollen eye, but leaving content, knowing I now go to the same optometrist as Kanye and Kim. I've even survived Zayn quitting One Direction so, yeah, friends, I've seen some things.

I have expressed severe emotional instability just three times since I moved to New York City. Once was laying on my kitchen floor, inconsolable on a Saturday morning after first moving when I discovered my Internet was broken and that, not only was I incapable of fixing it, but neither could Dave, the Verizon representative I harassed for over two hours.

In the early hours of the third day of 2015, my parents, brothers and I packed up all of my belongings and an inordinate amount of IKEA furniture into a U-Haul attached to our car, then immediately drove to New York City. Along with my wonderful cousin and her wonderful boyfriend, we carried all of my belongings and an inordinate amount of IKEA furniture up six flights of stairs and into my new apartment on the Upper East Side.

For me, there was something weird about getting ready for my first Halloween out of college.  It wasn't just that I wasn't going to be spending one of my favorite holidays surrounded by the people that I had been celebrating with for four years, though that was a factor.  I was just not as fully prepared as I had been in the past.

After my friend Zach finished his internship this summer, he was unemployed for six weeks.  During those six weeks, he did a lot of activities, most notably one of which was finding an amazing job in NYC, but on more than one occasion, it was texting me that he was eating both pizza and pasta for breakfast.  In addition to eating meals with inappropriate amounts of carbs, Zach also spent an inordinate amount of time posting Buzzfeed articles on my Facebook wall.  He posted articles on my wall so frequently with such relentless dedication and about topics that ranged from mild to disturbingly inappropriate that it caused my mother to think we were in love, which is hilarious because Zach is actually in love with her.

In early October, I decided to make a return to Muncie for Homecoming and after having an extended conversation with a man who claimed to be a 1976 Ball State graduate, but that my friend Lillie insisted was actually a very dirty Muncie local, I made my way up to the bar to grab a drink.

Very recently, one of the nicest things that has ever happened to me, happened.  I was in my room packing for my trip to Indiana (i.e., laying on my bed, realizing I only own one pair of matching socks), when I received a text from one of my favorite humans, Andy Meyer.

The Prandato family has had three cats in the past 15 years and it has become clear that one thing is for certain: we are terrible cat owners.

I distinctly remember the first time I remember hearing the "F Word."  I phrase it that way because I was in third grade the first time I remember hearing it and I'm pretty sure that it's highly improbable I made it through eight years of life without hearing it at least a handful of times.  This hypothesis is based mostly on an incident that I have no recollection of, when my mother, brother and I, recent New York transplants to northern Idaho, witnessed a moose running through our backyard.  When re-telling the story to my father, my mom said "There was a moose outside today!" and three-year-old Jonny stated, "No, Mommy, it's not JUST a moose. You said it was a F*CKING moose!"  It's a family-favorite story that very accurately depicts our drastic life decision to move to Idaho, but like I said, I have no memory of that moment.