1997 Taurus SE RPM's Revving up randomly.

[jdsausville]

1997 Taurus SE DOHC 3.3..Been noticing a spike in RPM's primarily when using cruise. It will be doing fine and then spike to approx: 3000-4000 RPM's. It'll stay there for a couple of seconds and then return to normal. Then it may do it again or may not for 20 miles. It also does it w/o cruise, but to a lesser degree. We also have a transmission issue that happens (also randomly) when the car gets to normal operating temp.. It will wind out in first gear then jump into second. I usually just let off the gas and let the RPM's reduce so that it doesn't slam into 2nd. It doesn't do any of this when the engine is cooler and sometimes it will and then it won't. Very frustrating to say the least. The car runs great other than these issues. We've drove it with the transmission issue since we bought it and it's never changed or gotten worse, around 7000 miles.. Tried Lucas-no change. Seems electrical for both, but I'm no expert, so all help will be greatly appreciated.