The reason everyone is having such a hard time answering you is not the difficulty of what you're trying to do. It's the difficulty of explaining it to someone who is thinking about this the way that you are. Your approach is so far off, we're not sure where to start. It's also kind of hard to know exactly what it is you're trying to do, based on your approach.
You keep using the word timer. Are you using the timer behaviour? or are you referring to the wait x seconds command? You keep saying you don't want to have to rely on the timer to switch animations. You don't. But then why do you keep programming it that way? Is the problem that you just need to set your animation speed to not play? could you use "on animation finished" to trigger the next animation? I'm trying to help, honest. I just think you're not going to get much farther if you don't get a better understanding of how C2 works..
Have you done many of the tutorials? I really feel if you had, you would have approached this much differently than you have.
I mean no offense, and I hope you don't take it as such. I'm trying to help
EDIT: also, if you'll upload a capx (the forums will tell you how to do this). I guarantee someone will get it working like you want.