ICloud :: Song Could Not Be Found While Playing Music?

I'm running the most current version of iTunes with iTunes Match turned on with my main library on my MacBook Air.  About 2 months ago, I decided that since all of my music was in the cloud, I no longer needed to use that space on my MBA (I know, I know...). So fast forward and every time I try and play music in iTunes on my MBA, I get the charming "X song could not be found. WOuld you like iTunes to try and locate it." There is no option to play the music from iCloud on my mac nor is there an option to download the song from the iCloud onto my mac. I have turned on the "iCloud" status column and have almost 5000 songs that are "matched" or "uploaded." Everything I've read leads me to believe that, similar to my iPhone, I should be seeing a cloud with a download arrow in it next to all of those songs. I can see all of my songs and download them just fine to my iphone and ipad.  Thoughts? THe goal here is to download everything I have in iTunes Match to my mac, BACK UP those files BEFORE I delete them this time, then re-delete a portion of the ones I don't listen to that often.