Maybe try meditating before you go to sleep? Or listen to some kind of guided sleep meditation tape? Those can be helpful ... Most likely, your excitement about dreaming is stressing your brain out a bit which makes it hard to fall asleep. So, don't go to sleep thinking too hard about dreaming, just calmly tell yourself that you will remember your dreams when you wake up, and go to sleep. You'll just have to trust your brain to remember. As for your dream recall, it will get better over time. As dutchraptor said, write down all your dreams even if they're only two-second fragments. The more you write your dreams down, the more frequently you're going to remember them, and you'll remember them in more detail.

As for the weirdness level of your dreams, don't worry about it. Everyone's dreams are different. I sometimes have dreams about pretty average life, like shopping or going to school, etc. But I also get pretty strange dreams as well. For example, last night I had a dream that involved cows and giant chickens with human legs walking around, and one of the giant chickens started peeing corn kernels ... So yeah, you're definitely not the only one with weird dreams!