Briefly "wake up" Arduino in response to an event I want to connect a device to a door handle, so whenever someone opens the door I'll be able to send a message via my arduino that is connected to a WIFI shield.

I have a simple orientation sensor, so I know when the handle is being pushed. The problem is I don't want to keep the Arduino on all of the time (energy issues).

The orientation sensor closes a circuit for about 100ms, so I thought to connect the battery to the Arduino in series with the sensor, but the problem is that it might take more than 100ms to connect and send the data - I need at least 5 seconds to be sure.

Any ideas on how to make the Arduino "power up" for 10 seconds each time someone uses the door handle and then to cut off the power?
Easy answer: Don't.

Have the Arduino sleep most of the time, and let the door handle invoke an interrupt that wakes it up. Then do whatever processing is required, and then go back to sleep.

This won't work as well with a full Arduino as it would with a bare MCU since the rest of the board has its own quiescent load, but once you get it working with an Arduino you can get a bare MCU, wire it up, write the code to it, and away you go.