I have a dream ...

So now that everyone knows about my spastic sleeping habits and how my poor abused husband rarely sees a long stream of sleep, I've decided to divulge my most intimate thoughts to you: my dreams. I am a person who has a rather unusual dream almost every single night. They say that dreams come from what you did that day, or what you have been thinking about recently ... I don't think so. Rarely do I spend my time thinking about dressing up in Ninja Turtle costumes with my friends just so we could go to the mall and slide around on our backs. Nor do I think that if I eat asparagus my two front teeth will fall out and become their own "Lori's." These are just a few snippets of my normal nightly episodes. Sometimes my dreams are scary (to me at least). These are the only dreams that have any sort of sense to them. For some reason I am very frightened of alligators, so my scary dreams usually contain some sort of alligator chasing me around. But, that particuar alligator tends to run on his two hind legs, panting like a dog. You would think that right before my wedding I would have had dreams about my dress getting ruined, showing up on the wrong day or anything else along that path. Not me. I remember one specific instance where I had picture dream. It seemed like two solid hours of looking at the same black and white scene like out of an old movie: a still picture of a drop of water falling into a pond. Now, here are my questions:
1. Where does my mind come up with this crap?
2. Why do I care?
3. What is the purpose of us dreaming?