Thanks, I think I'll try that.There is a sneaky and devious thing you can do with the CMOS version of the 555 that could be advantageous here.
An astable multivibrator can be built in the usual way except for the resistors. A single resistor is used between the output and the timing capacitor. When the output is low, the capacitor is discharged to the trigger level, setting the output high. The cap now charges to the threshold level, sending the output back low. The duty cycle, except for the first cycle, is very close to 50%. If you put a pullup resistor on the discharge pin, it becomes the logical complement of the output pin, so you could drive one N-FET with the discharge pin and another with the output pin.
[Edit] You can do this with the bipolar (ordinary) version of the 555, but the duty cycle won't be 50% because the output HIGH voltage is less than the supply voltage. The higher the supply voltage, the closer the duty cycle will be to 50% because the difference between the output HIGH voltage and the supply voltage is more or less constant.
see Figure 17
http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lmc555.pdf