I had a problem with my Mac Pro waking up all the time, I tracked the problem using this line in the Terminal Window...

syslog |grep -i "Wake reason ="

Follow this link to find out what it all means...

http://osxdaily.com/2010/07/17/why-mac-wakes-from-sleep/

I found that an external USB hard drive cabby was waking the machine up for some reason, I swapped it to eSATA and the problem went away!

As for putting the Mac to sleep you can use the keyboard short cut Option-Command-Eject I never turn off my bluetooth Apple keyboard and the batteries last for ages !!! Although I think I misunderstand what your problem is to be honest.

Cheers

Cris.