[Kristi]

What stefan says had merit. I do not know why you are shrugging him off.

Your delete system seems too complicated. I would just find out what message is supposed to be deleted next, and schedule an update event when its supposed to be deleted, saving the index thats supposed to be deleted next, and save the time to deletion. Then delete that message, and then the update would run, finding out when the shortest time is left again by subtracting how much time has passed since the last update, and schedule itsself to run an update again.