Bette unfurled a spreadsheet that itemized the art holdings she’d collected through the years onto one end of the floor of the media/activity room in the first floor of their duplex.  The spreadsheet incorporated art that Tina had also owned before they’d gotten together.

 Tina was in the other end of the room, playing with Angelica on a play rug she’d brought over from Angie’s room, rolling it out in the media room so that she and Angie could be near Bette even as the brunette continued to work on the things that she and Tina were going to discuss.  Tina glanced Bette’s way, smiling as the brunette carefully smoothened out the edges of the spreadsheet.  The blonde turned her attention back to Angelica, who was re-arranging her dolls around a pretend table to ensure each doll had a seat as the dolls enjoyed their tea party.

The graph Bette had prepared required using the large format printer of an office supply store, as she’d needed several big sheets to print everything out.  Each sheet measured approximately 34 inches by 44 inches, which Bette taped together end to end, to form a single printout that she could lay out on the floor.

The format she’d decided on to group the information in her dataset was a simple x and y axis graph: on the x axis were the dates during which she’d acquired each work they owned, in chronological order, and on the y axis she’d affixed a point for each art work, based on a value scale.  Each point in the graph designated a work of art, and in the print-out each had a 3” x 3” picture of the work, in addition to key information.  She thought this presentation was a good way for her and Tina to quickly visualize what Tina said she was interested in knowing.  At a glance they could both see what they art and collectibles they owned according to date of acquisition, on the one hand, and current (approximate) market value, on the other hand. 

Bette maintained other versions of the same set of information in other files that she stored both in her home computer as well as in a private cloud, with each data tagged according to categories based on type of art, form of art, by artist, where each art work was stored, Bette’s notations and analysis of the art work, etc.   The core data itself was also stored in the private cloud, to which only a few people had access, including Tina and Brom, and Bette used special software to manipulate the information depending on what she needed.