Too Much Oil? Or Not Enough? Who's To Say?

In the wake of both my cars fucking up, I was scared as hell that, for some reason, the minivan was running out of oil.  It was making funny sounds.  Rattling, for example, as if it's starving for something, like oil.  And even though it wasn't on level ground, I was paranoid/fearful enough to check, and goddamn, on one side of the dipstick it looked absolutely full and on the other side it looked half empty.

So, what to do?  After thinking about it, I decided to put just a tad.  Did it just now -- half a quart, maybe.  I poured it into the minivan while it was on the driveway, which is also not level ground.  If it is starving for oil, I doubt half a quart is going to do much.  But I am scared shitless that I totally have read the dipstick wrong and I have in fact overfilled it.  I've heard very bad things about overfilling, just as I have been told more than once the consequences of ignoring checking your oil and not filling it up.

Right now, I just to say how fucking fed up I am about how I need to be Goldilocks when it comes to putting in oil for my car.  I have to be worried about not enough oil, but I also have to be worried about putting too much in.  And beyond all that, for the life of me, I can't fucking tell how much oil is in my engine on the basis of a dipstick.  One side of the stick tells me it's fine, the other tells me it's not.  People say it's easy to check.  Bullshit.  And I'm about to do damage to my parents' engine because of it.

Oh, well.  I'll see if I fucked up when I drive the van tomorrow.  That's assuming the power door on the side doesn't pop open as soon as I hit a fucking pothole or something.