I have "Do not disturb" on all the time. One reason for it is my ruined credit (a very long story why) and most of my incoming calls are from creditors so I do not want them to distract me at work, but it is also a very nice way to have complete control over when you have conversations with people. I do my own recruiting so I phone screen people a lot and I make phone appointments with them and call them at the agreed upon time. I also go for short walks when I talk on the phone, so I kill two birds at once. You can say to your problematic distant relative that you have "do not disturb" on at work all the time and only listen to your messages after work because you are very busy. Saying so would accomplish two goals: inform her that you would not rise to the occasion with her and, subtly, remind her that you are busier than she is and that your time is valuable and deserves protection. Hopefully she will catch the drift. You can even tell her that you now exercise during lunch hour and are not available to retrieve voice messages, but would however check messages and return phone calls after work. If she does not get instant gratification of bothering when when she wants to bother you, she might stop her pursuit of you altogether. I also like Sarah's suggestion in re: Google and would take it a step further. Say, if your relative asks about butterflies, you can text her or email her or Facebook message her telling her that, by the way, on Google, she can specify image search - butterflies - Google Search - to see only pictures of butterflies, or, if she has her own picture of a butterfly, she can use Google's reverse image search by uploading that picture and let Google figure out what specifies of butterfly her butterfly belongs to, and on and on, that kind of thing. And end with "from the questions you were asking I figured that you did not realize how powerful Google's capabilities are" and that you would be more than happy to show her how to perform advanced searches on Google. All with a poker's face. Hopefully she will cease and desist after that.