An unrelenting quest for deals keep sisters making buys for almost nothing.

The Coupon Queens stand outside the CVS in Seaside and grab all of the store’s advertising inserts off an unstable rack. As they turn to walk in, the rack still trembles from the attack.

The Queens – or as I really call them, mom and auntie – each grab a cart and urge me to do the same. In just a few moments, as our three shopping carts snake through the store, customers scatter. Between the 50 $1-off coupons they’ve printed from the manufacturer’s website and the store coupons, we are about to score multiple shopping-carts full of $2 energy drinks for… free.

My mom proceeds to walk up and down every aisle of the store, speaking in a language I don’t understand: Catalinas, rebates, CVS bucks, and on and on about previous deals obtained.

With seven mouths to feed and hydrate, my mother would get through her 50 bottles of energy drinks in no time. Even though I stray away from processed food and drink, my six siblings take a bottle to school every day.

“They are very unhealthy, but if I don’t buy them for cheap the kids will buy them for double the money from school,” my mother says.

“I AM AMERICAN. WE ALL EAT SNICKERS AND DRINK GATORADE.”

When products we use in the house go on sale, or when manufacturers’ coupons become available, the shelves in our garage start carrying a seemingly absurd amount of shampoo bottles, tuna cans and pasta boxes.

My mother and Kourtney Kardashian are in the same thrift-driven boat – coupon-a-holics who can’t say no to a good deal. Because she ran out of ideas to keep her show lively, Kardashian tried the phenomenon of extreme couponing for an episode of her family reality show “Keeping up with the Kardashians.” My mother and aunt were inspired by another reality show, TLC’s “Extreme Couponing” – and for the past year, have been using some of the best techniques they’ve gleaned.

At CVS, the two decide I am useless in searching for deals, so I am assigned the “snipping job.” With 50 store ads in my cart I spend the next hour cutting each and every coupon out with small purple scissors that are so tight on my thumb and index fingers I couldn’t write for the next week without pain. I spend so long in the corner of the store with the Covergirl cosmetics that Ellen Degeneres in all the advertisements appears as if she is speaking to me.

Everyone notices my mother in kick-back California. She is Muslim, born into a religious Palestinian family that took refuge in Lebanon, often wearing an embroidered headscarf and a dress with long sleeves that is so long it mops the floor behind her. Auntie wears more modern Islamic clothing – it’s basically the same outfit, except it’s bedazzled with fake gems made in China.

Their couponing habits are also noticeable. And they aren’t shameful at all, they say.

“I am American,” says my mother, who moved to the U.S. in 1995 when she married my father. “We all eat Snickers and drink Gatorade and are broke now.”

TLC Executive Vice President Howard Lee understands at least part of the feeling.

“It really hit a nerve because of the economic times,” he says. “We all have to buy groceries. There’s nobody who doesn’t have to do that.”

TLC’s show portrays super customers who obtain over $2,000 worth of product for around $50, asking: Who can buy the most while paying the least? Often enough, couponing leaves people overly attached to stockpiles, and consumed by the habit. It’s not unheard of for some to spend 60 hours a week clipping.

While some of the couponers on the show steal newspapers and use a process called recoding to obtain manufacturer coupons on products that don’t apply for the discount – and Photoshop certain numbers on the barcodes and replace them with codes that belong to other products – my mother plays it straight, gathering her coupon inserts from leftover papers. There have been times when she rummages through recycling bins at our post office like a raccoon, in search of coupon inserts so she can obtain more deals.

On the same trip to CVS my mother picks up 20 bags of chocolates, 10 packs of chewing gum, five packs of Oreos and three pieces of Physician’s Formula cosmetics, all for less than $10. Rather than pay out of pocket, she uses CVS’s rebate-like program known as “CVS bucks” to earn vouchers that cover the balance. She only pays the tax, about $1.

The next day she uses 50 $1-off manufacturer coupons on nail polish that only costs $1 each to begin with. Since she gets 20 percent off as a rewards member, CVS ends up owing her money. Since they won’t refund cash, they give her a store credit she uses on milk.

“Be frugal and you’ll always live in comfort,” my aunt says. As long as you don’t count the sore wrist from the scissors.