Warning this post is alarmed

Did that thing today where you wake up about fifteen minutes before your alarm is due to go off.

Now when this situation arises, one of two things will usually happen.. you can either:

a) smile at the fact that you still have 15 minutes tucked up all cosy and warm, turn over, and pull the duvet up under your chin.  In some of these cases, you may even manage to drop off quickly again before the alarm actually does ring out to signify the beginning of another working day; or

b) lie there annoyed at the fact that you've woken up 15 minutes early, knowing that you're never going to get back to sleep as your bladder is too full but resolving to sulkily stay where you are as you'll be damned if you're going to get up a single minute early...

Today was a category b day.
It isn't always precisely fifteen minutes before the alarm goes off that this sort of thing happens but it's always a significant enough amount of time to justify trying to stay in bed for a bit longer rather than, say, when you wake up two minutes before the alarm goes off and you just think: "sod it, may as well get up". 

And if you cannot just drop off again, then you get this magical fifteen minutes which seems to stretch out for hours where you wait, like a condemned man, for the alarm bells to toll..  And scientists should investigate this phenomena of the time between you waking up and your alarm going on as I'm convinced that seconds actually slow to hours during this time, which is why if you do drop off now, you always feel a million times more refreshed when the alarm actually does go off.  But if you cannot get back to sleep in this pre-dawn nightmare before the day officially begins then it stretches out forever, and all of your thoughts during this eternal fifteen minutes awaiting the chimes are consumed by the fact that you'd very much like to get to sleep, and the more you think about it the less likely it is you'll drop off again.  The mind is cruel when it plays such tricks on you like this, isn't it?

So I feel today that I have been robbed of a quarter of an hour's slumber, and I may proceed to be grumpy all day as a result (not really made my mind up on that one yet, still mulling it over).  It wouldn't be so bad if I had something to blame for my awakening.  If I'd been woken by the neighbours having yet another barny (never let a psycho Geordie lass move next door to you, it's bad, bad news), or a car beeping it's horn outside, or even the cat deciding that my exposed foot was a legitimate target to pounce on, claws exposed - then at least I could be annoyed at them.  But no, for some reason I just popped my eyes open before I needed too!  Grr..