Apparently, it's not enough just to insure your house with homeowners insurance. Not good enough for the mortgage people anyway. They need insurance that we'll be insured so they insure themselves by having us pay a whole year's worth of insurance up front, at the closing. And from then on, the mortgage people add our homeowner's policy into our monthly morgage payment. I'm sure this is a totally normal thing. But it just seems weird. Like we've wound up instituting a system of sanctioned paranoia. I mean, a whole year's worth? Six months, okay.

What about eminent domain? How long will it be before we have to purchase imminent domain insurance? Or does that already happen and I just happened to miss the line item. What about our health? How come they don't make us pay a year's worth of health insurance up front to insure we'll be healthy enough to continue to pay our mortgage every month? How'd that one slip through the cracks?

I shouldn't have written that down. What if some mortgage company exec reads it? At Massachusetts rates, we can't afford a year's worth of health insurance!! That's $6300!!!