DIRTY LAUNDRY summary

Rox once managed to miss two flights … in one day. The first time she was overly optimistic with the Google Maps estimate, leaving at the last minute. Luckily the British Airlines lady was sympathetic and booked her on another flight that same day. You can imagine that lady’s amusement – and Rox’s embarrassment – when she showed up at the desk four hours later, having missed the flight again.

Luckily the lady’s patience and good nature extended to another flight the next day, which Rox managed to make. But as her ADHD was undiagnosed at the time, the whole thing was very distressing.

Do you know what a shadoof is?

It’s an ancient Egyptian irrigation device. If you were friends with Rox during high school, she would have told you all about it. She might have even shown you the functional clay model she had made, or shared her history books, or shown you some presentations, or given countless other obscure facts – all about ancient Egypt.

Picture this: Rox is in her university library, passionately helping her fellow students study for their upcoming economics exam. She’s writing on the board, going through her notes, doing everything she can to make her audience understand the finer points of supply-and-demand law. It’s the ultimate study session.

Unfortunately, that’s not an exam that Rox needs to study for. She was on her way to cram for her actual exam tomorrow, when she heard some other students struggling with a topic she was familiar with. So she took the opportunity to abandon her extremely important study plans and help.

Remember your friends from high school? How you all went your separate ways – to university, or abroad, or wherever life was calling – and promised to stay in touch?

If you’re like Rox and have lived with diagnosed or undiagnosed ADHD, you may have struggled with this. Not because you don’t care about them or want to stay friends. Your attention is like a spotlight, brilliantly lighting up whatever’s in front of you. But the things outside that light, like your childhood friend who moved to a different university? That kind of fades away.

In Rox and Rich’s house there’s a cupboard. In this cupboard are the forgotten, often expensive, relics of the many impulsive financial decisions that Rox has made. Not least of these are the supplies and materials for “House of Resin,” a company that she spent three weeks building after seeing someone making a beautiful wooden table inlaid with a waterfall made of blue resin.

Other failed businesses include a record label and a chain of unisex children’s clothing. All started with an intense and fiery passion, and have been all forgotten and relegated to what Rich calls the “hobbies graveyard.”