I've had a spate of visitors recently, which is just fantastic because it means there are always fresh flowers in my pad, and I never have to buy them. Someone will bring them from the farmer's market or we pick them together on a walk around the neighborhood or someone snips them off the jasmine jungle in the driveway, but I love seeing fresh flowers to remind me that I'm loved, even when I'm all alone (especially when I'm all alone). Also, the jasmine INFUSES my WHOLE LIFE with LUXURY and GLAMOUR and DELICIOUSNESS, and it's everywhere in Santa Barbara right now, and it's totally free for me.
Here are other reasons I love visitors:
Sam made me remember what it's like to Meet Someone, as she and her girlfriend had made it official at a approximately 5am at a some artist colony in a warehouse in LA (I was sleeping fitfully on a couch in the middle another warehouse). She couldn't finish a sentence or maintain a conversation or answer a question within any sort of acceptable time frame. Minutes of silence would pass while she frolicked through meadows and bathed in unicorn sweat and eventually caught the lollipop train out of St. Fallinginlurrrveberg, and she would say, "I'm sorry, what?"
Lindsey reminded me how much I love living in Santa Barbara. After a hike with Kristie (our ovaries were angry with each other that week, so it was kind of a reunion hike), Lindsey and I did dinner and drinks and woke up the next day to go wine tasting before I had to go to work, where friends and customers brought in vegetable curry and rotisserie chicken and their records for me play, since I decided to do all vinyl, all night, on Sundays. From the foothills to the valley to the goodland: I've totally chugged the Santa Barbara kool-aid.
Esp will be blessing me with her presence for a day of whale watching (a few times a year, my bar rents a catamaran and sells all-you-can-drink tickets for a two-hour tour of the sea lions and the whales and the dolphins) and an afterparty at my barback's pad.
But the thing I love most about having visitors is walking them out the door, turning the lock, and looking around my girly little studio, and being grateful that I live somewhere my friends enjoy visiting, and totally appreciating having my own place that is all mine and no one else's.
I like to go on vacation to better appreciate coming home.
I like to have visitors to better appreciate being alone.
I'm not sure if there's a next logical conclusion that I'm missing with those statements, but it works for me.