Lion, external monitor, and wake from sleep - please help!

For the most part I love Lion. However, the changes they made to the external monitor support are not helpful for me. Let me explain...

I have a 13" 2009 MBP. In my office I use a monitor stand that the laptop can slide into from either the left or the right, and the monitor sits on top. Previously I would simply take my closed MBP in sleep mode, slide it under the stand, and plug everything in. Once the power cord and monitor cable were plugged in, as soon as I inserted something into the USB or SD-Card slot (or I think even the ethernet jack) the laptop would wake from sleep and the monitor would come on.

Now, however, this doesn't happen. My only option is to plug everything in, open the laptop so it wakes up, then close the lid, then slide it into the stand. This is definitely NOT an improvement! Before I had my phone at the left of the monitor stand, and would slide the laptop in from the right. Now, though, I have no choice but to slide it in from the left (after going through the above hassel), which means I had to move the phone off of my desk.

The energy saving preferences have the "wake on network access" box checked, which would make me think that it would wake up as soon as the ethernet cord is plugged in - but no such luck. I also have wireless in the office, but it's hard for it to recognize that when it's in sleep mode.

Has anyone else had this problem? Is there a solution I'm missing here? I'm using a wireless keyboard and wireless mouse, so of course those won't do anything while the computer is asleep.