Middleditch Littlebitch

Meatload The Invader

If you haven’t had a dream where you’re skating down a hill covered in snow just in your shoes, go have it now — it’s amazing.

For some reason I’ve been dreaming a lot about Meatloaf the dog lately.  But first, the setup.  Naturally, in my dream I had this brand new 40 inch (it was specified in the dream) plasma flat screen TV.  And of course, knowing me, I just had to take it apart.  That’s so like me.  The thing was, after I took it apart there was no telling how to put it together and I was left with a pile of junk, with things in the TV that had absolutely no business being there, like pots and pans and shit, and the reason I put so many italics just then was because in the dream it was just so “God, classic Thomas, taking things apart all the time and then not knowing how to put it all back together” which is a sentiment not accurate to my life.

Either way, a friend of mine named Robin Collins came by, and upon spotting my TV all helter skelter, confirmed my “classic” nature and concluded that the best way to overcome my recent shortcomings was to take our dogs out for a walk.  He has a dog apparently.  So where do we go?  A hill, naturally!

Yes, aside from Meatloaf, apparently I’m going through a real hill phase.  We start walking up this mighty hill.  Past shops and other hill-walkers, other dogs, other everything that you’d expect on a pleasant day on a hill.  Very Silver Lake, which is where I live, and is, go figure, covered with hills.  And that’s how it goes — until we reach the top and we look back down to discover that secretly there’s been a huge snowfall and the entire massive hill we’ve been walking up is now covered in a winter wonderland coat of snow!  Huzzah!  Without even talking about it we both proceed to launch ourselves down the hill, skating on the snow just with our shoes; another theme of mine being that if there’s a hill I’ve got to go down it in some exciting manner.

We blast down the hill, dodging all the people we’ve seen on the way up.  Kids have built jumps and we launch off them, pulling X-Games style tricks off them.  I somehow master the backwards-but-going-sideways hockey hustle, like when you’re going in for a hip check, and I blast some old lady and send her groceries flying.  It’s epic.  It didn’t happen, but in hindsight my brain should’ve played the high pitched no-soundcard PC squealing of the original Ski Or Die theme music.

But then I stop.

I skid to a halt.  Oh shit.  Fucking Meatloaf!!!  I left her back on top of the hill!  With this realization, the dream quickly turns into a horrible panic dream in which I’ve lost my dog, she’s probably been abducted and used as a bait dog for dog fighting, and it’s all my fault.  I only get halfway back up the hill when I wake up, totally anxiety ridden, and confused as to why I couldn’t have just woken up at the bottom of the hill after a good “jam sesh” having completely shredded that bitch hill with my cool ass New Balance running shoes I had on.

Whatevs.  Meatloaf is alive now, and just then I accidentally spelled her name Meatload and thought it was too funny to not be mentioned.  You’re welcome.