JQuery :: Stop Queuing With The .show() Effect?

I'm just trying to get used to jquery. I decided to try and make a simple drop down menu so I used the jquery show/hide effect with mouse events. I just have issues with this effect and wonder if I am going about it in the right way. here is my code for the show/hide:

$(".menu").mouseenter(function() {
$(".submenu", this).show("fast")
});
$(".menu").mouseleave(function() {
$(".submenu", this).hide("fast")
});

If I move my mouse over the mouse event area the menu opens the way I want it to and If I move my mouse off the mouse event area it closes the way I want it to. But if I do it rapidly its like jquery has to open and close the menu for each instance I go over or out of the area and it has to play "catch up". My mouse could be inactive and somewhere off in the corner and the menu is opening and closing "x" amount of times to complete all its tasks. From what I understand this is called "queueing" in jquery and this feature can be turned off so I tried something like this:

$(".menu").mouseenter(function() {
$(".submenu", this).clearQueue().show("fast")
});

Doing this causes a worse problem because now if I go rapidly eventually they won't even open at all. In the best case I would like the menu to have a slight delay when I move the mouse off of it and then when I return the mouse to the menu I would like it to cancel the previous "mouseleave" event.

It is possible through the show effect or should I should I be using the animate effect to create a custom animation. If so what do I "animate" with the animate effect. I tried ".animate({dispaly: "show")} but all that does it quickly shows the menu and then it disappears.

to explain the basics of my menu design the class "menu" has the top level menu title within that element itts child is the submenu element with all the submenu items on it. The submenu is set to absolute positioning so it doesn't effect anything when it opens/closes and by default the display is none. This all works great with the ".show()" effect except for the queueing issue.