Very long dream

I was in girls home. I went to visit a foster home to see if it would work out. I didn't want to like them, but before long I did like them.They had several floors, like 6 or 8 floors, not really sure cuz I never reached the bottom. I stayed with them for awhile. We were listening to music on one of the levels and then the dream jumped....(not sure what goes between)...I was on really good terms with Patrick, he had just gotten out of jail I think. We talked on the phone a lot and he lived basically right across the street. I needed to borrow his van to go look for a job but he wasn't home. I knew where he kept the keys and figured he wouldn't mind so I borrowed it anyway. I went to the places I needed to go and to be extra nice filled the gas tank up all the way. Then the van started acting all funny and I could barely control it. I was trying to get back to his place when a police car came up behind me. They said to pull over and I stopped in the middle of the turning lane because I was having such a hard time controlling it. Then they started acting like they thought I was dangerous or something and started yelling into the van for me to get out. I was like "ok." and started getting out. Once they saw that I was cooperating and trying to be helpful they calmed down, didn't even make me finish the stupid drunk driving tests (touch yer nose, walk a straight line..) because right in the middle of those the female officer noticed these lights on the front end of the van. She started asking me questions about what I had done that day. I mentioned the gas and she asked if I had filled the other fluids. "Not all of them..." "I was just wondering because in these vehicles you have to maintain a fluid balance or the system gets messed up and it's almost impossible to drive like that." So they determined that it WAS just a fluid imbalance , not reckless driving or drunken driving or anything like that and they let me go. I took the van back to Pat's house. I waited for him to get home because I wanted to explain about the van. I waited for hours, he didn't show up and I had someplace I had to be, so I left. I was supposed to meet someone at this restaurant, a friend. I get there and she's waiting outside. On the way to the restaurant some one kept either trying to kill me or trying to keep me from getting there. Once in front of the restaurant he started shooting, sniping. We go into the restaurant. I think it's one of those restaurants inside a mall with it's own entrance or something- either that or it just had a really funky layout. We go inside and then it gets a little hazy. We're walking around and we meet up with my mom (not my mom in real life, but she plays my mom in this dream) she starts pestering me about dating. Starts pointing out guys she thinks I should like. Some of them are cute. She is also pestering me about my career choices because she doesn't think my area of research is going to bring me much money or acclaim. (At this point in the dream I am suddenly a scientist.) I tell her I'm very happy in my work and maybe I will go into another aspect of the field soon, but for now just be happy that I'm happy. She also acts all worried about how I keep looking over my shoulder and up at the ceiling. (There are sky lights up there and the sniper was on top of that building.) I explain the sniper situation. She doesn't believe me. She doesn't believe my friend. I tell her she can go look at the bullet holes in the statue outside if she wants proof. I get up to go show her exactly where the bullet holes are and we walk towards the front of the restaurant. We get to the door and then the dream changes again. Suddenly I'm back inside the restaurant and I'm waiting in line. I'm on my lunch break and I start talking to this guy. He is also a scientist and we start talking about work, nothing too detailed so I still don't know what field I'm in. I think it has something to do with young adults or something. I keep thinking about teenagers and how I want to help them. He asks me on a date, we start to work out the details, date, time, where, do we meet there or does he pick me up... And the dream changes again. (There was a bit of a transition here, like time passed or recessed or something, I have a feeling that something happened, just don't know what.) So then I'm (back) at this one guy's house and he's talking about music, we are listening to his cds and he picked up this one and said it was this one band. I liked the music a lot, then this other guy came over and wanted to borrow that CD. He told him that it was in the player. The new guy looked and said "No, his is Odyssey. Here's ____. " Then the first guy said he thought he had put it in the player, and that he guessed he must have just not looked at the CD. I got the impression that neither of them liked the band Odyssey, I couldn't understand that because I thought it was great. ( I did a search online for a band by that name, couldn't find one yet. There are lot of songs with that in the title just no bands. The album cover was a bunch of guys with long hair, they looked like a 70's or 80's hair band and some of their stuff sounded like power ballads.)At one point I was driving down the street inbetween scenarios... I was either driving down the street one block over from my grandparents' house or one that looked like it and I looked over and could see between the trees. (When driving down the street near my grandparents' house there is one point where there is a clearing in the trees and you can look through and see our driveway and tell if anyone is home or if anyone is visiting before you get there.) I looked over way before the clearing and was surprised that they had put a trash dump right there, it was full of newspapers all piled up and stacked on top of each other, not neatly, but like someone had made an effort to stack them. Then as I'm driving along there is another set of trees then another clearing and that clearing is a dump too, a bunch of junk, couldn't classify it as a specific thing, just junk. There are 5 or 6 clearings in all. One is old broken toys, one is newer toys that have been ruined and when I get to where the clearing for my grandparents' should be there's just trees and the next clearing is ... Well, different. There are walls and a floor, no roof or anything so it's still technically outside, but it was like a toy store. I pulled over because this was just too weird, and i climbed down into the "toy store". I looked around and so totally wanted to get some of those toys, some because i thought they were cool, some because i thought Caitie would think they were cool. Then I climbed back up and Tonya was there with me, she said she thought the toys were for sale and we would have to wait until the clerk came back. While we waited we looked the toys over and played with a couple of them (they had these puppets and who can resist trying out a puppet or marionette?). The guy came back and we started asking prices and deciding what to buy.Then it went on to another part of the dream, I just can't remember where this fit in.