Intervals without setInterval()

Since Flash doesn’t like to wait for loadVariables to actually receive the information, I need to find a way to make flash look from time-to-time to see if the information has been received.

I would use setInterval, only it’s really buggy and there’s a high chance the interval will be called again by the user, which will completely mess everything up.

I also cannot use something like this:

onEnterFrame {
count++;
if (count > 10){
count = 0;

}
}

because the movie is stopped.

Does anyone know another way to make some form of timer that will count to x seconds?